A Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Penny has risen up from her first job as a Program Manager at the Rover Group through a number of career development roles to her current role with Johnson Controls UK Ltd as Regional Manager for Leadership, Development and Training for the UK and Sweden. It is Penny who is responsible for all the staff training within the company and she enjoys having plenty of autonomy and a good challenge in her everyday working life.

Penny has been a member of the Women’s Engineering Society from when she left school and joined MentorSET as soon as it was formed as a mentor, and subsequently as a mentee. She certainly doesn’t feel that being a mentee shows any sign of weakness, in fact she feels that being part of MentorSET shows that people take their professional development seriously. She says “As a manager, how can you take your staff’s professional development seriously if you don’t care about your own?”

Penny was mentor to a woman who was in a completely different industry to her own, yet it didn’t matter, the work life balance and career direction issues that were causing a problem were not related to a particular industry and Penny was able to help. They met in person, in a hotel and it required about an hours drive for each.

One thing Penny emphasizes is that there is no fixed end point or goal with the MentorSET mentoring scheme and so it is very useful to fix some objectives and goals at the outset of a new mentoring relationship. Whilst having no fixed parameters to work to may be seen by some as a slight disadvantage of the scheme, it is this individuality and flexibility that is actually one of the biggest strengths of MentorSET; it really can be tailored to suit the needs of the individuals involved, allowing the mentee to gain the maximum benefit from the mentoring relationship.

A common myth of mentoring is that mentees will be starting out in their careers and mentors will always be much higher up the career ladder and more senior. Well, to prove that this is not the case, Penny decided about 18 months ago that she needed to be mentored herself. She was feeling that she needed some help to give her some direction for her career. Penny saw her mentor twice and used her as a sounding board to help her organise her thoughts. Penny still sees her mentor, but now as a friend, and they meet for dinner about every six months. Penny is currently very happy with her work life balance and although she works long hours, it is driven by her and not the company.

Mentoring has helped Penny enormously, both as a mentor and as a mentee and she continues to be committed to the scheme and wholeheartedly recommends MentorSET to others. Penny’s company is now considering introducing a mentoring scheme and her experience will be invaluable in the setting up of such a scheme.

Anyone wishing to find out more information about becoming a member of MentorSET should contact Jan West, MentorSET Manager at manager@mentorset.org.uk or look at the website www.mentorset.org.uk