Ari's Senior Blog: Blog 21: Mentorship

Literal

Interpretive

Despite not doing anything truly hands on, what I gained from this experience was that the profession of being a manager is definitely a difficult job. By difficult, I don’t mean impossible. In terms of difficulty, I’m referring to all the duties an operations manager has to be responsible for and the importance of communication. For example, my mentor not only has to deal with employees but also with clients from various airlines. The reason I consider communication difficult is because it is a skill that can only be improved upon over time; my mentor has been in management for a while and going through failure and successes is something he knows. As I am now, I know I’m not the best communicator. But this is only something I can become better with over time. Being in a warehouse environment and attending IPoly has certainly opened my eyes to the amount of communication I will have to do in the future.

Applied

While my topic of warehouse operations management was not particularly hands on, the principle of managing and being an effective communicator were as clear as day. Going over reviews and reading that the responses had to be well meaning justified the importance of feedback for employees; it’s obvious that if an employee is conducting unsatisfactory work, then they will most likely receive a less than satisfactory evaluation. The forms of motivation that I focused on were less external and more communicable by the manager. My mentor himself has been a great help for this project, especially in terms of motivation, which is the heart of my essential question; he helped me craft my second and third answers.

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