At Woodmeister Master Builders, we’ve created a culture of mentoring in which everyone has the opportunity to learn from each other. The following excerpts are from Woodmeister employees throughout the company, who shared their experiences with mentoring and the impact it made in their lives. 

 

Share the gift of mentoring.  It can make a difference to someone that will last a lifetime!

 

About 7 years ago, I started working at Woodmeister a few weeks after being interviewed at my high school by David Harelson. I was 16 at the time, and a sophomore going against a couple of juniors and seniors for the job. I was very excited to even have the opportunity to go up for a job like this, and when I learned that I got the job, I could not be more ecstatic. Never before had I worked in a corporate environment, and I knew the experience I was about to go through was going to be quite invaluable.

 

As I learned the flow of things for the first year or so, I made a million mistakes. I sometimes wondered “How could I possibly help my-coworkers fix their tech issues if I can’t stop creating more problems?” I was like a sponge, ready to take in anything I could possibly learn from Dave. I thought of him as a genius since he always seems to have a solution for everything that is thrown at him. Over the years, Dave took me under his wing and showed me the ropes of the IT world. He taught me to have patience and confidence when tackling every day issues.

 

When I look back and see how naïve I was when I started, I feel a sense of gratitude towards Dave and Woodmeister for putting up with my mistakes with such patience, and for also being so willing to help me throughout all of my transitions at work and in life. Thanks to Dave, I am now pretty much independent at my job, and I have much more confidence in what I do. When people come to me with their technical issues, I now have an instant solution about 95% of the time. I guess I just needed to learn that this knowledge comes with experience, and that I was going to learn that the hard way. There are still so many things for me to learn, and Dave is always there to lend a helping hand. I’m proud to say that I’ve actually taught him a few things myself as I have been catching up with modern technology pretty well. 

  

To me, being a mentor is about spending extra time and effort with someone. A mentor guides someone in the development of knowledge and sharing of experiences without holding back information. A mentor does all this without wanting anything in return.

 

Mentoring is helping, inspiring and believing in others by sharing life, work and personal experiences. As each individual approaches opportunities and challenges where they can apply their gained knowledge through a mentoring process, they believe in themselves, realize their full potential, create their own successes as well as learn through their failures.

 

Mentoring, to me, is at the heart of what makes us successful. If you want to build something that will stand the test of time you have to start with a strong foundation. By passing down what we have learned from our successes and our failures we help to grow those around us thus strengthening our foundation. When you give to others the knowledge you have gained from experience with no expectations you get more in return than you could possibly have imagined. Here are two quotes I try and emulate in my own life;

 

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. - Jack Welch "

 

“An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.” -Sir Robert Baden-Powell"

 

One of my earliest memories is working in my father’s workshop creating things out of wood. As a child, he instilled in me a passion for working with wood that still excites me today. He showed me how to cut and sand wood, and how to put the pieces together with my hope of creating something beautiful. Over the years I’ve learned new woodworking skills and acquired more tools but it is my first experience working with my father that is my special mentoring memory. He shared his gift and love of woodworking with me. 

 

We’re in an industry where all of us are responsible for keeping youth interested in this as an occupation, as a career choice, and a good one.  That doesn't happen without mentoring.  This is a field, an industry, a trade that for thousands of years has been passed down by mentoring and it is not something that you just learn by going to school.  So if all of us as leaders in the industry can embrace that and realize that every interaction we have whether it is with a subcontractor in the field, or with our own people in our own offices, over a particular question or issue or subject, that every one of those interactions is an opportunity for mentoring.  The only way that mentoring really works is if you don't treat it as something you have to do, but rather something that's just part of how you do your work."  

To me a mentor is someone who selflessly leads by example, carries themselves as a leader in whatever their respective field or department is, and is an all around positive influence on every person and situation they encounter.  I believe that mentors come in various forms, as teachers, managers, and even peers. The different mentors I have had throughout my life have made me the person I am today, and I say that not as a cliché, but as the absolute truth, and I think the same can be said about most people. Mentoring defines generations of people, it teaches us not only specific tasks, but also how to carry on with our every day lives. It teaches us how to behave and interact with others, right from wrong, and many other valuable life lessons.

 

To me a mentor is someone who selflessly leads by example, carries themselves as a leader in whatever their respective field or department is, and is an all around positive influence on every person and situation they encounter.  I believe that mentors come in various forms, as teachers, managers, and even peers. The different mentors I have had throughout my life have made me the person I am today, and I say that not as a cliché, but as the absolute truth, and I think the same can be said about most people. Mentoring defines generations of people, it teaches us not only specific tasks, but also how to carry on with our every day lives. It teaches us how to behave and interact with others, right from wrong, and many other valuable life lessons.

 

I feel so lucky to be part of this company because mentoring is stitched into the actual fabric of the organization. I feel as though no task is too difficult because there is a vast network of great mentors here, and every one of them are willing and eager to help with any problem I encounter. This does not happen everywhere, it is unique in my experience to Woodmeister.

  

My longest Mentorship was with someone that I will never forget, Anthony Polletta. He came in my life in 1998 and has never left. He took me under his wing as his student. He told me that we were going to learn a lot together and told me to buckle up, that this was going to be the ride of my life. I laughed and at the same time he, I could not wait. I felt so pumped up that someone I did not really know all that well was willing to take the time and the effort in working with me.

 

As the mentorship continued to grow so did my inner challenges. As my confidence grew so did the awareness of there was so much more to learn.

 

Thank you Tony, for your time, thank you for your energy, your teachings will always be remembered and never be forgotten. You will be with me everyday as I hopefully can become a Great Mentor like You!

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