Mentorship is one of those words that everyone agrees is important, yet its true impact is often underestimated until you experience it firsthand. In our industry, where relationships, strategy, confidence, and timing matter just as much as technical skill, mentorship can be the difference between feeling stuck and feeling empowered.

With the recent news that Christopher Nolan is bringing us a big budget adaptation of The Odyssey next year, it’s high time to pick up a copy of Homer’s masterpiece, especially if your last read was a forced slog back in high school.

And while there’s plenty to recommend The Odyssey to the general reader, what is there to recommend it to the AEC marketer?

A while back, I hit a wall. Not a dramatic, crash and burn type of burnout. It was quieter, more deceptive. I was still delivering, still showing up, still checking the boxes, but I had completely lost my spark. The creative energy, the strategic edge, the little “oomph” in my day, the part of me that loved this work.

So, I stepped back. I said “no” more often. I deleted apps and silenced notifications. I started doing less.

If you missed Part 1 of this series, visit the SMPS Colorado Blog.

Fostering Team Buy-In, Maintaining Motivation, and Finishing Strong 

As marketers, we face lots of challenges: inefficient proposal processes, difficulties engaging leadership time and attention, and fighting for department budgets, to name a few. I bet each of you has at least one thing you’d like to change within your department or company. Throughout my career, I’ve encountered my share of resistance to change across a variety of industries, including digital printing, advertising, and engineering. To understand more about why change is so difficult, I completed the Coursera series Removing Barriers to Change by University of Pennsylvania Marketing Professor Jonah Berger. This free online course discusses the barriers to change and how to become more effective in inspiring change with others and your organization. 

Congratulations on becoming a supervisor for the first time in your career! Or, if you’re not a supervisor yet (and would like to be), congratulations on being proactive! In our haste to create a comprehensive onboarding experience for our new “direct reports” (who will be referred to as team members moving forward), there’s often something lacking—onboarding for the first-time supervisor.