MES IT Leadership Network Joins Forces With IT Leader Mentorship Program

The biggest advantage of the program for IT professionals both on the mentoring and mentee side is that they get to continue to sharpen their skills, says Tracy-Ann Palmer, founder and CEO of We Build Character.

(Tracy-Ann Palmer, Founder and CEO, We Build Character)

MES Computing’s parent company The Channel Company’s MES IT Leadership Network has partnered with We Build Character-- a professional training and coaching organization.

In the partnership, MES will team potential IT leader mentees with We Build Character’s mentors.

Tracy-Ann Palmer is the founder and CEO of We Build Character, which Palmer said is “focused on building the next generation of leaders.” She is also the chief revenue officer of Exostellar, which offers an AI-based platform that helps organizations monitor and manage their cloud workloads.

Palmer, along with Adam Dennison, VP, Midsize Enterprise Services, The Channel Company, spoke about the new venture with MES Computing.

“If you have somebody in your network or on your team that is looking to advance ... let's look at an outside voice,” Dennison said.

Over a dozen mentors from the MES IT Leadership Network, all CIO level executives, will serve as mentors following the We Build Character program structure, Dennison said.

“We are pairing up people from our MES community with senior leaders within our MES community,” he added.

The biggest advantage of the program for IT professionals both on the mentoring and mentee side is that they get to continue to sharpen their skills, Palmer said.

“They're essentially having to eat their own dog food, in other words, when you are continuing keeping yourself abreast of leadership, what's happening in the industry, you continue to remain sharp. You don't lose focus. You don't sit, you don't get into bad ways because you are continuing to keep yourself sharpened by those skills continually coming in,” Palmer said.

“We actually do mentoring best practices, so they're actually getting to also learn from their peers on perhaps different scenarios or situations that their peers would handle,” she added.

Palmer explained the details and benefits of We Build Character’s mentorship program, which was launched in 2008.

“I was actually facilitating a CIO panel. And every single one of the CIOs on the panel said something very profound: ‘I can teach technology. I can't teach soft skills,’” she said.

She said IT professionals can be taught how to be developers and have an abundance of technological know-how, but when they are presented with an opportunity of becoming an executive or project lead, many have not developed the skills required to find success in those leadership roles.

“They move from these technical individual contributor roles into these team lead roles or leadership roles, and they don't know how to do it because no one has taught them,” she said.

“We don't focus on the technology. We certainly make sure we're up to date with all the trends and everything that's happening in it. But we focus on the soft skills. What does it really take to be an effective team lead, to run an effective digital transformation, to really make sure that the technology investment that you're going to the board with or to your executives, that you really are able to build that business case and help them understand the value that you're going to bring to the organization, by investing in that technology.

It's all the soft skills that go with being the influencer [with] being a really strong leader: understanding change management, understanding P&L, understanding financials,” she said.

“Because we're preparing and building skill, [IT leader mentees’] confidence level goes up. The minute their confidence level goes up, their demeanor is completely different,” she added.

The MES Mentoring and Leadership Program Powered by We Build Character will officially launch in January.

Here is information for those interested in learning more about becoming a mentee. And you can go here if you are interested in becoming a program mentor.