Today I told my mentor that my 'Five Year Plan' is to quit. Ooops.

[MirandaGreenwood]

Sorry - quite flippant title but kind of close to the truth

For context - I'm 40. I want to leave my sector of work (academia, social sciences) by the time I'm 50. This is very unusual - most people work in social sciences in academia for their whole career and even beyond once they're drawing a pension. This is not my plan for my life.

Today I had a mentoring meeting to set short, medium and long-term goals.
I was totally honest and said that my plans were shaped by the fact I wouldn't be in academia in 10 years time.

My mentor was quite taken aback. I think it was the combination of my unusual plans, my honesty about them, and the fact they're unshakeable. In fact, I think he was a bit standoffish with me for the rest of the meeting.

I chatted with a friend who works in a more corporate environment about it this afternoon, and she reckons it was a massive faux pas.

What are your thoughts?

Just to note - this isn't something I'm too bothered about, just wanted a sense of whether I'd accidentally made an absolute lemon of myself.

In what context are they mentoring you? Is it a scheme organised by your employer? (I.e. do you both work for the same place or are they external?).

I guess it depends on whether you're hoping to be promoted in that time? Being so honest may affect your prospects if they think it's not worth promoting someone who's planning to leave anyway.

Meh my workplace put on a phenomenal "women's empowerment" type course. Half of those who attended left the job within 18 months and we all attribute it to getting our confidence up on that course to quit 😂. It really was an amazing course, quite literally life changing for me.

The only problem with speaking up in your manner is the risk of being first on the chopping block because you've laid out your views.... Passed over for training, promotion etc in favour of the lifers. That kind of thing.

If I'm mentoring someone it's both for them and for the sector. If they plan to leave surely my time is better spent with someone who plans to stay.

No judgement but that's the truth of it!

@TheFlis We're both in the same department so employed by the same people. Technically we've had a mentoring scheme for years but just now our head of department has given everyone a kick up the bum to actually engage with it. So this was our first 'new' mentoring meeting.

@LimeOrangeLemon Well, yes, I think my mentor was working on the assumption that my plans would be promotion in about seven years. Those are not my plans at all. But promotion is weird and, no, it won't affect my chances if I do get into a position to apply for promotion in that time.

@MrsTerryPratchett Everyone gets time built into their workload for mentoring so its not a 'waste' as such because he's been given time to do. Plus, I'm still around for 10 years, not leaving tomorrow 😂

It depends what’s the aim of mentoring doesn’t it?

True mentoring should then build up on the fact the OP wants to do something else within those next 10 years and help her build up to that.
Much harder to do when it’s a colleague though…. Plus they probably don’t have the skills to do that either. (I imagine no one you have had training around that?)

@MirandaGreenwood are you supposed to have some confidentiality around those mentoring sessions?
I personally think that, when it’s done by colleagues, it’s basically a ticking box exercise. Closer to a yearly review meeting with your boss (in which case, this might not have been the best thing to say 😁).

Yes, absolutely. The reason mentoring hasn't really taken off at my place before is because the purpose is quite opaque. I mean there's a pretty standard set of markers of 'success' and most people are pretty astute at seeing where they don't meet those markers so we don't really need mentoring in that sense. Plus, we kind of do informal mentoring anyway among each other - asking for bits/pieces of advice about a situation, getting someone to read your work, giving presentations about projects to groups, pitch to peers type of things etc.

In some ways yes it is a tick-box exercise but in other ways it can be useful to have an outside perspective on things like how you hang your work together, key networks to get into, as well as what's needed for the next promotion.

You're right - no formal training in mentoring at all.

And, yes, its confidential

I dont think its such the massive faux pas that your friend thinks. I work in the civil service and we are all pretty open about when we are applying for other jobs / thinking about moving on, which i know isn't the case in corporate environments. So that could just be a cultural workplace thing. But it does sound like maybe he was taken by surprise. Has he worked in academia his whole life? Maybe he felt a bit like it was a personal judgement on him (which im sure it wasn't!!) that you weren't planning the same route. I've come across people like this in my career, where I've always believed that people need to do what is best for them at that time.

Ive worked for my current manager for about 6years in a couple of different roles. He is a brilliant boss and mentor, who was a massive support during my difficult first pregnancy. When we did my career development chat last year, he asked me what my plan was and i said "to have another baby". I think he was also taken back at first but i wanted to be open because our plans for the team needed to take that succession planning into mind. Here we are 10months later and I'm currently 20w pregnant with DC2 so at least i met my "success measure". 😅