Product Training for the Technical Expert

20 Developing New Product Talent: Effective Mentoring of New and Junior Employees

This book is primarily written for technical subject matter experts. Think about that term for a little bit. Subject matter expert. Perhaps you feel it is overused. Maybe you wear the title with pride. Either way, you likely are one and the designation comes with responsibility. You worked hard to get the technical knowledge and skills you possess, but you did not get them alone. Even the greatest inventors only discovered a new or better way to do something. They did not create something out of nothing. Now it is your turn to help others. Perhaps that will come in a formal training setting, but it may also happen through mentoring a new or more junior employee. This is not a task to take lightly.

The need for technical experts to share their knowledge is greater today than it ever has been. There are many books and articles written that highlight and even dramatize the pending doom if the aging workforce doesn’t more adequately educate the new workforce generation. Statisticians track the number of engineering and technical diploma graduates as a way of measuring the technical health of a society. But those in charge of the technical knowledge of a company have the added concern of something harder to quantify: experience.

Why Mentoring Matters

Most people like the concept of mentoring. Even if they don’t, most would fear some sort of social backlash if they vocalized their disdain for being ...