At the beginning of the event, Mike Shen, a HR executive from a Fortune 100 company and Gallup certified strengths coach gave a keynote speech on “becoming a better version of you”. Mike emphasized three core elements for self-development:  change your mindset, play to your strengths and improve your focus. He stressed that “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared with what lies within us.” Professor Martin Lockett, Dean of NUBS China,  thanked the global mentors and the GMP team for their contributions to the programme and indicated that this is a programme that can bring students new insights and novel patterns of thinking. It also helps students build mindset, such as learning to view things from different angles through communication with mentors and peers.

Dr Xuan Feng, Director of Global Mentorship Programme, introduced the new development of the programme in this academic year, the video presentation session. In order to improve students’ digital capabilities, GMP students were working in groups to produce a video for their presentation topic. Then the videos were evaluated by GMP mentors and three groups that performed the best in the video presentation were selected to compete for the best presentation in the final poster presentation event.

Below are highlights of the three groups who stood out in the video presentation.

Group 1: Going to the first job 

Getting the first job is a crucial step on one’s career path. The first group explained three factors that influence one’s first job decision: opportunities for personal development, salary and corporate culture. They further provided suggestions on how to make good career choices. Firstly, one needs to gain better awareness and make strategies based on knowledge of the external environment and individual capabilities. Secondly, one shall make a career development plan combining one’s own experience with experience learned from successful professionals. Last, one’s career plan needs to leave some flexibility for future adjustment.

Group 2: Opportunities and challenges working in a multi-cultural environment

Working in a multi-cultural environment brings opportunities and challenges to employers and employees. Students of the second group believed that diversity of cultures and skills can enhance empathy, commitment and trust among individuals as well as simulate creative thinking. However, differences of language and other habits may generate some negative effects on workplace relationships. For example, people holding different cultural values and religious views may encounter difficulty in having deep communication and building long-term relationships. Viewing these challenges, the second group students made the following suggestions: 1) employees shall do some research about different cultures in advance. They should communicate more often, understand and accept the differences and proactively seek opportunities to know each other better. 2) employers are supposed to ensure fairness through policies and provide employees with cross-cultural training.

Group 3: The Characteristics of a Good Mentor

Mentors can play an important role for one’s personal growth and career development. Students from the third group indicated three characteristics of a good mentor: take responsibilities, shown professionalism and have good personality. When a mentor actively responds to his/her mentee and also cares for the mentee, this mentor has shown a strong sense of responsibility. When a mentor is professional, he/she is willing to share one’s own experience and provide suggestions for mentees’ future development. Finally the students also indicated that, a mentor with good personality is patient and always willing to share and help.

Alumni sharing is one highlight of this year’s GMP poster presentation event. Zhefan He and Juncheng Shen, major in Finance, Accounting and Management, shared their views of how GMP has helped their personal and career development. Zhefan and Juncheng joined GMP in 2017 when they were both year 1 students. They built a team of year 1 and year 2 students and won the best poster presentation. Three years later, they are in the winners’ teams of the 4th Global Grand Challenges Summit Collaboration Lab.  

Recalling his time in GMP, Zhefan emphasized his mentor brought him lots of career insights that helped him make future career choices. By working on the poster presentation with peer students, he improved his team collaboration awareness and competences.  By communicating with his mentor who is a sustainable development consultant, Zhefan realised that when making career choices, one should not just focus on short-term results that benefit oneself, rather, he/she needed to consider social impacts such as how one’s work can foster environmental protection. He suggested the GMP students to “keep in touch with the mentor and more importantly, make relationship building with mentors as one of the key transferable skills".

Juncheng stressed that joining GMP was the starting point of his university life as a year 1 student. The experience he gained from GMP has taken him to a new horizon of thinking and sent him to a bigger global stage. Up till this day, Juncheng still keeps close contact with his mentor. He updates his mentor about major developments. He also talks to his mentor when he needs to make important decisions. Every time, Juncheng can get valuable career and life advice from his mentor. He mentioned that in life, we should always be prepared to learn and willing to take advice from experienced mentors.

The current GMP students also reflected on their core learning from the GMP. Xinyi Jin, a year 3 student major in International Business Management, pointed out an important lesson she learned from her mentor is to make dots. More particularly, what counts the most is not what one actually experiences but what one learns from that experience. Communicating with her mentor who has over 30 years of management experience also helped Xinyi reduce the anxiety before making major decisions. Zhongyuan Zhang, a year 2 student from the Finance, Accounting and Management programme, said “GMP is where we begin our personal development…I believe I am better prepared for my career as well as my life ahead. I have learnt to be more open to new things and be more positive.”

Warton Business School Professor Adam Grant said, “The best way to learn from mentors is not to absorb what they know, but to internalize how they think”. The learning never ends. 

Best wishes to all the GMP students from the 19-20 autumn semester!