Diversity within SMEs is an area that I have been lucky enough to support in different ways.

I say lucky as it has meant that I have met people I would not have otherwise got to know. These entrepreneurs were from completely different backgrounds to myself and some are now my very good friends.

Diversity covers all areas such as female owned businesses, ethnicity diversity as well as disability. The critical part I have learned from my work in all three areas is that confidence is the biggest restriction on their ability and mentoring has proven the most effective tool to help diverse entrepreneurs overcome this.

Ethnic minority businesses are estimated to contribute £25-£32 billion to the UK economy per year, and women-led enterprises contribute around £70 billion so by supporting these entrepreneurs we have a fantastic opportunity to further help the UK overall.

Three of the areas that I have supported have just created resources on this and in these they explore the issues, the economic benefits and the solutions - and I am delighted that my recommendations on mentoring have been taken forward as examples of International best practice.

UK Diversity & Inclusion Council
I have been a member of the Council for 4 years and it includes all the major banks, SME support organisations and diversity groups. The report here highlights the main stats and work of the Council. 

European Commission
I contributed to this research paper alongside 20 other SME and diversity experts and again Mentoring was highlighted as a best practice solution. This is an academic paper covering the Evaluation and Analysis of Good Practices in Promoting and Supporting Migrant Entrepreneurship. It includes a Guide book and self-assessment tools.

Enterprise Diversity Alliance
This organisation is part of CREME the Centre for Research Ethnic Diversity Minority Entrepreneurship based at Birmingham University Business School and led by Professor Monder Ram OBE and Professor Kiran Trehan. I have been part of the main council for 5 years and again Mentoring has been a brilliant practical outcome here. The 20th annual conference report is now available.

​As official partners we have been helping and were involved at all the stages over the last few months so I already knew the level of interest the day had created. However, it was still simply brilliant to see the level of engagement from all areas of the UK and all types of mentoring.
 
The day started for me with the support of the social media coverage and #nationalmentoringday ended up trending at the number 2 slot which was great. The tag is still being used for events and news.
 
I had been invited along with one of my mentees Ian Harris, a Director at ID security systems, to the BBC to talk about our mentoring experiences. Ian is also a mentor himself so we were able to discuss lots of areas. The BBC team were brilliant and it was a great chance to share the mentoring celebrations more widely. Ian and I developed some skills in alternative communication with scrap notes & hand gestures trying to ‘talk’ to each other whilst the headphones were on! 

I then went into a lunch meeting at a very historic establishment to discuss with the charitable foundation there my potential work to set up and train mentors for a combined personal & enterprise mentoring programme to help its members. An interesting opportunity to make a difference and it goes to show the flexibility of mentoring as a solution to help.
 
Several mentoring phone calls later whilst trying to walk across London and continue the social media – not recommended as a combination as several mistypes later proved, I reached my next meeting. I was discussing the next stages of an existing mentoring programme with one of the banks. I am the ambassador for Mentorsme, the UK’s enterprise mentoring hub, and I know from my talks at SME events many people don't realise that the main banks sponsor their staff to give time to the scheme to share mentoring free of charge.
 
Then on to a café at Westminster to quickly have a catch up with Ian and Adam Shaw to discuss wider mentoring projects and down lots of green tea as I was by this point slightly losing my voice – not helpful with the main event to come.
 
On to the House of Lords. A brilliant opening by Lord Young and Chelsey Baker, then onto the panel discussions on personal mentoring. A great buzz around the room and the stories were having real impact. I had arranged for the School of Hard Knocks to attend to share their experiences of mentoring to help people who needed a fresh start in life and they were joined by Mosaic and the Careers and Enterprise Company.
 
Then the enterprise panel with myself, Rockstar and Lawbite. We discussed the power of mentoring, why it was needed and I also was asked to speak about the importance of training and standards. I explained the key points of the national mentoring code set up by SFEDI and how Mentorsme meant mentees could find help. The audience were really great and I met lots of interesting people who wanted a chat afterwards and who I am looking forward to staying in touch with.
 
The closing talk was from Helen Walby and she shared her passion and energy for how and why mentoring makes a difference.
 
The networking and buzz in the room continued until the very last moment. The House of Lords event closed so the after party gathering continued nearby where the mentoring stories continued.
 
National Mentoring Day helped more people understand how mentoring can help them as either mentor or mentee. Let's now make mentoring matter 365 days of the year - please just contact me if you would like to know more about training or setting/extending your own programme.

The summit event will bring together over 200 of the most influential people in the mentoring world to help profile the amazing impact that mentoring has for education, enterprise, the economy and our society.

I am delighted to be on the panel again alongside Helen Walbey - FSB, Clive Rich - Lawbite, Jonathan Pfahl - Rockstar Group, Amrita Das - Careers & Enterprise Company, Jonathan Freeman, Varinder Dhaliwal - Mosaic Princes Trust and Ken Cowen - School of Hard Knocks.

​This year Panel Topics will include 'The real value of mentoring and how we can further advance mentoring for the benefit of all involved.' 
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Last year we supported the first day of this event created by Chelsey Baker.
 That first event was a great success and it was reported across all the national press as well as being on both Sky and the BBC. I enjoyed being on the panel of the National Mentoring Day discussing the benefits of mentoring along with Ruth Lowbridge MBE, Jonathan Pfahl and Kerrie Dorman. The questions from the floor really showed the interest and the appetite for everyone to understand and get involved more in mentoring.
 
This National Mentoring Day has been created to celebrate all types of mentoring with the intention of helping to raise awareness of the importance of mentoring and to get more people and more organisations involved. The mentoring showcased ranges from youth to enterprise mentoring. It includes all sectors and educational bodies including organisations such as the prison service.
 
I think this is a great chance for the UK to really show what it is special at by understanding the value mentoring brings to everyone involved – the mentor, the mentee and any organisation involved. Mentoring shows the true spirit of collaboration whether it be paid for or voluntary mentoring as it helps everyone to see different points of view and learn from each other.
 
As the ambassador for Mentorsme, the Govt recognised enterprise mentoring portal, I know first hand how many people are interested in mentoring and they simply don’t realise the level of support that is out there or how they can get involved. I hope the National Mentoring Day 2016 will help with this.
 
The organisations we work with that train their staff to mentor externally as well as internally, I feel, gain the most benefits as it leads to an upskilled and engaged team who also understand issues outside their own workplace. It also gives that organisation a flexible opportunity to make a difference and to engage with people important to them externally.
 
This year the summit event for National Mentoring Day is being kindly hosted by Lord Young at the House of Lords. It's great that we have the central event and the aim is to replicate that by encouraging and recognising all types of mentoring across all of the UK.
 
The National Mentoring Day Website has numerous resources to help individuals or mentoring programmes to celebrate in their area or within their organisation. The most popular ways to get involved that I have seen so far with our clients and partners are by using these resources:
 
Social media – Getting involved with the overall National Mentoring Day campaign to raise the awareness of mentoring. See Leapfrog Mountains Twitter Feed @Leapfrog_M or Mentoring Rocks @mentoringrocks. Use #nationalmentoringday for your tweets.
 
Events – Running your own event to celebrate mentoring and letting us know so that we can help profile the event
 
Thank you cards – Downloading the thank you cards to acknowledge the support a mentor has given you.  
 
Case studies – Sharing great examples of how mentoring has worked for you in practice to inspire and encourage others to get involved.
 
Champion mentors – Training skilled experienced mentors to help less experienced mentors on their journey. We are currently working with Scottish Chambers of Commerce to create a new champion mentor team there that are fully qualified.
 
We would love you to get involved too in any way that helps you so that we can all really celebrate National Mentoring Day 2016 and raise the awareness of mentoring everywhere!
 
Thanks,
 Jackie
 

No – not a misprint or me having one too many wines for those of you who have not come across this brilliant skill as yet…. and yes the giraffes are relevant too!

What is intrapreneurship?
Intrapreneurship simply means having entrepreneurial attitudes and showing entrepreneurial behaviours whilst working within an organisation. This can be any type of organisation – third sector, education, corporate or government. It is also sometimes described as a system entrepreneur.

The impact of intrapreneurship
The benefits mean that it adds huge value for the organisation itself, for the individual with that skill and for those stakeholders that are involved too. It increases confidence, engagement and business results. Many organisations and think tanks are now using it as a key business tool and in education it is becoming an especially critical skill for leaders to develop.

How can you develop intrapreneurship?
I have in previous careers been lucky enough to have had line managers who positively encouraged this skill development and set great role model examples. In my current work I am close to several successful intrapreneurs. From these experiences I feel it is very clear that this skill can be nurtured. Supported by mentoring and learnt for everyone's benefit we include intrapreneurship as part of our training offer.

Typical behaviours of Intrapreneurs
There are so many areas in this subject. I have focussed on the top 3 behaviours that all the successful intrapreneurs I know agree with me are critical:

1. Solutions not problems
Entrepreneurs look at any challenges they have and think how they can find a way round it. They ask themselves and others the right questions to get ideas and feedback to resolve it. They collaborate and facilitate to gain insight and answers.

Employees in the traditional sense often think and focus on the problem and analyse and get drawn into the problem itself. That is a negative experience for the employee and gets a negative outcome for the business. By using these entrepreneurial attitudes and questions instead this becomes a tool that starts a thought process that is both positive and creative.

The Zambian giraffes in the example photo here were trying to drink water at very low levels. They have worked out at this level they cannot just bend and drink so the exact angle of safety is used by flexing their legs in individual ways to sort it. Of course they may not have done this consciously and that is the core of intrapreneurship – once you start thinking how to find a solution rather than focus on the problem then this becomes the way that you think automatically. It feels good and it gets great results for everyone involved.

2. Resilience
As an entrepreneur you will have issues in some aspect of your business and it's accepted that it is ok to acknowledge these challenges. It is seen as valuable learning and feedback to yourself and your organisation. A traditional employee on the other hand is often scared of failure so will keep quiet over issues and problems until it creates for them or the company an even bigger issue. Failure takes many forms minor or major but learning from them and being confident enough to share that learning is always a relevant and critical skill to have.

As a personal example I was asked to speak at a large business event and was very focussed on the exact technical content brief from the event organisers. It turned out 80 percent of the audience were internationally based and English wasn't their first language.
I quickly realised from the panel questions afterwards that I hadn't been fully understood. That learning was key for me as I had in the process forgotten my core – I am a teacher and the audience needs come first.

The organisers were happy and I hesitated to comment. I then decided to share my learning and how I felt I could have made the event better. The organisers have now built in extra guidelines for other speakers and booked me again as they had confidence I cared about improving their results – everyone benefits.

3. Purpose
The last example links to purpose and in my view this is the most exciting and rewarding part of intrapreneurship. If you find and create ways to align your work with your core beliefs you will get results in the right way and add value to yourself and your organisation. It happens this way as your work becomes your business and all your work focus and purpose are aligned. 

Entrepreneurs are in their business because they have a passion for their business and totally believe in it. This gives them the tools to have what is known as a growth mindset which is proven to increase performance and happiness. People with a growth mindset intrinsically believe they can make something work if they focus and  place effort there so they are much better equipped to handle any issues positively.

Now that you know what intrapreneurship is, you can get started and try to develop an intrapreneurial attitude too.

Ask yourself what your core principles are to help you find your purpose. 

Some examples are:

• Delivering high quality service or product 
• Making a difference
• Working collaboratively with people
• Designing new solutions
• Helping others to learn 
  
  

Once you have done that ask yourself in what ways you can use and develop that purpose within your role to help your organisation and who can support you in achieving this – and then you are on the start of a great journey to become a successful intrapreneur.

I would love to hear your experiences and views.
Jackie

P.S. If you would like to know more about developing a sense of intrapreneurship in yourself or in your employees please get in touch!