Q. What would you tell
others about mentoring?
Look for somebody who has
the ability to stand on their
own, somebody who is willing
to take a little bit of a chance
and stand behind their decisions. Somebody who has
vision, who understands how
to look forward. And somebody who understands that
once you have a vision, it’s like
your child.
You have to believe in it, nurture it, stay with it all the time
and never give up. Once
you’ve identified what you
want in the future, you never
give up. You reach for that
vision 100 percent of the time.
Q. How do you help young
employees to develop their
skills?
One of the things you need
to do when you’re working
with young employees is to
position your people with
other successful companies, to
learn from other successful
companies as they grow with
your company. So we align our
people with other professional
people, and we’re teaching
people how to be successful
within our company. Once
we’ve identified someone’s
strengths, we put them in a
position where we can capitalize on their strengths, and then
we get out of their way and let
them do what they do best.
We give them a basic knowledge of our industry. We work
closely with the local electric
companies; they put on very
good training programs. We
send them to their classes so
they get a very good basic
knowledge of the industry.
After that, we work with
them to partner with other
companies that are in the same
industry as we are, and then
we create strategic alliances
within their personnel. We
believe that every department
here is a profit center, so we do
that with our people.
We teach them that, no matter
where they are, their position is
really a profit center. Their
income is really based on the
amount of profit that can be
generated from their area.
So we teach people the
industry, and we put them in a
situation that best serves their
talents, then we have to get
out of their way and watch
them as they grow.
HOW TO REACH: Progressive Lighting & Energy Solutions Inc., (714) 542-5490 or
www.proglighting.com
