A Good Mentor

A portion of the newsletter

Once upon a time, in a deep jungle, lived a great master.

One fine day a pupil joined him with high aspirations.

In his first learning task, the master told him, "Go and see my garden."
After pupil's return, the master asked, "What did you see?"
The pupil replied, "Master, I saw many charming birds flying in your beautiful garden. I want to encage some and feel their flying spirit.
Master replied, "Go again and look, listen and learn."

Next day, the master asked, "What did you see?"
The pupil replied, "Gurudev, I saw many charming birds in your beautiful garden, I wish if I were a bird I would fly higher and dipper in the sky."
The master replied, "Go again and look, listen and learn."

Next day, the master asked, "What do you see?"
The pupil replied, "Gurudev, I saw many charming birds flying in your beautiful garden. They are birds, gifted with flying skills and I am a human being, gifted with observation skills. Their duty is to fly high and my duty is to observe deep. I have no right to encage or emulate them."
The master replied, "Now, you are learning."

Above parable demonstrates the perfect way of mentorship. The good mentor is not the one who presents the refined intellect to their mentees but the one who inspires his mentees to refine their own intellect. Mentorship is also not "Learning-by-seeing or listening", but it is “Learning-by-doing".

Penned by,
Toastmaster Mithilesh Kumar

(Published in TOIT, May 2016 Edition, Infosys Toastmasters Newsletter, inspired from a famous essay of great Hindi poet and author Sachchidananda Hirananda Vatsyayan 'Agyeya' )

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Knowledge Transfer, Process Definition

I was in Gurgaon this month from 6-17th June for my company's(Infosys) new process transition work.  The official trip turned very unusual by sudden change in climate and working hours. When you know that you have to sync with your KT, the complete transition process transit to burden from responsibility. I wanted to know many things but you have very little to share. I have long curated template to fill and you have just started working off-late. Only thing to treasure is their smile filled nice professional attitudes. The other party must have acquired the similar notion about me in due process. In the end, it was job well done as per my team's expectations. However, my KT were nice human beings. I liked their company. :)

Apart from work, this trip was filled with four get together and two family unions. The learning is that if you want to meet somebody and you are in their town then the better strategy is go to their home, you will double your enjoyment.

Apart from sharing exciting updates, this time I had a runners delights to share. I found an upper hand in KTing :)

I got new motivation to learn Jazz from one my best pals who is achieving new accolades in his part time dancing career.
Very soon you can see my new jazz avatar. :)

See you on the dance floor,
Bending Mithilesh.

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