From The Desk Of... Tara Thomasson

Hi everyone,

I am Tara Thomasson, a technical fellow at Lockheed Martin and I am serving as a representative on the SME Member Council.

A passion I have found at this point in my career is mentoring. It was a decade into my career before I heard the term mentor. I don’t know about you, but I assumed mentors were purely for networking and therefore only C-suite executives were afforded them.

Thank goodness, I learned I could not have been more wrong.

There is no doubt that my career has been positively impacted by the mentors I have had over the years. Today, my life is far more enriched by the mentoring that I am doing. I am blessed to be an adjunct professor at Texas Christian University where on the first day of class each semester, I tell my class that I am also there to be a mentor to them.

What is wonderful about mentoring is that there is no formula. It is up to the mentor and mentee what type of relationship would work best. You do not have to hold monthly sit-down meetings with your mentee to discuss the progress on their five-year career plan. Sometimes merely being available when they have a technical issue is all a mentee requires. It did not take very long before I realized that I was mentoring beyond the technical realm. I was able to give guidance on business acumen and how to give effective presentations. I found this was just as fulfilling as explaining technical content.

Lastly, I believe that mentoring will help us keep early career talent in manufacturing. Early in my career through my everyday working relationships, I unknowingly developed informal mentors. These were the people outside my immediate circle, but still within my company, whom when I had a technical problem, I would reach out to. When I hung up the phone, I may not have had the answer, but I would feel better about the path forward. Those mentoring relationships saved me from leaving my company multiple times. We need to strongly encourage the development of these types of mentoring relationships. Ultimately, all of us would benefit from them. There are members willing to assist - reach out to them and me on SME Connect and let’s talk.