There is a point in most careers where the question shifts. Early on the question is: what can I achieve? Later, if you are paying attention, it becomes: what can I help others achieve?

That shift is not just a philosophical one. It is a practical one. At senior leadership level, your ability to deliver at scale depends entirely on the quality of the people around you and below you. No Director, no matter how capable, can personally execute everything a complex programme or consultancy practice requires. What they can do is build, develop, and lead a team that collectively can.

Mentoring and developing future leaders is not a soft skill sitting at the edge of the job. It is a core leadership responsibility. And the organisations and leaders who take it seriously consistently outperform those who do not.

What mentoring actually is

Mentoring is one of those words that gets used loosely. It can mean anything from a formal structured programme with monthly check-ins to an informal relationship where a more experienced professional shares perspective and challenge as opportunities arise.

What the best mentoring relationships have in common, in my observation, is not the format. It is the quality of the conversation. A mentor who asks good questions is more valuable than one who has all the answers. The goal is not to tell someone what to do. It is to help them think more clearly about their situation, their options, and their development. To offer a perspective they might not have considered. To challenge assumptions that are holding them back. And to provide honest feedback when it is needed, delivered with enough care that it lands rather than stings.

The difference between managing and developing

Managing someone means ensuring they deliver their current responsibilities effectively. Developing someone means investing in what they are capable of beyond their current role.

These are not the same thing and they require different conversations. A management conversation focuses on the work. A development conversation focuses on the person. What are they learning? Where are they stretching? What are the gaps between where they are now and where they want to get to? What experiences, challenges, or feedback would help them close those gaps?

Senior leaders who only have management conversations with their teams are leaving significant value on the table. The people who grow fastest are the ones whose leaders take a genuine interest in their development, not just their output.

Creating an environment where people grow

Individual mentoring relationships matter. But the most powerful development happens in environments where growth is the norm rather than the exception. Where it is expected that people will be stretched. Where mistakes made in good faith are treated as learning rather than failure. Where feedback flows freely in both directions and where people feel safe enough to say what they actually think.

Creating that environment is a leadership responsibility that sits above any individual mentoring relationship. It is about the culture you build and the behaviours you model. If the senior leader in the room never admits uncertainty, never asks for feedback, and never acknowledges what they are still learning, the team will mirror that. If they do the opposite, the team tends to follow.

What I have experienced on both sides

I have been fortunate to have people in my career who invested in my development. The conversations that have stayed with me are not the ones where someone told me what to do. They are the ones where someone asked me a question I had not thought to ask myself. Where someone offered a perspective that reframed how I was seeing a situation. Where someone was honest with me about something I needed to hear even though it would have been easier to stay quiet.

That experience has shaped how I try to show up for the people I work with and lead. I am not a perfect mentor. But I am a deliberate one. I try to create space for honest conversation. I try to ask more than I tell. I try to be genuinely interested in where people are heading, not just in what they are delivering today.

What I am continuing to develop is how to do this at scale. Mentoring one or two people well is one thing. Building a practice or a team where development is genuinely embedded in how things work is a more complex and more rewarding challenge.

My view on developing the next generation of PMO leaders

The PMO and project controls profession has a pipeline challenge. There are strong practitioners at delivery level and experienced leaders at the top. The middle, the people who could step into senior PMO and programme leadership roles in the next five to ten years, is where the investment needs to go.

Developing those people requires more than training courses and qualifications. It requires exposure to complex situations, honest feedback, and senior leaders who are willing to bring them into rooms and conversations that stretch them. It requires someone taking a bet on them before they are fully ready.

That is the kind of leader I want to be. And it is one of the reasons I find the mentoring and development dimension of senior leadership genuinely motivating.

Who has had the most significant impact on your professional development, and what did they do that made the difference? I would love to hear your stories. Drop a comment below.