Last year, I took on a new role working as a case coordinator for business owner clients. For the first couple of months, I suffered from imposter syndrome. I spent many days and nights worrying I’d made the wrong choice.
When the global mentoring program came along that fall, I decided I needed expert guidance for my career and signed up.
An opportunity for professional development
The Principal® global mentoring program is a way for employees to develop the skills they need for the future—and/or help others develop their skills—while cultivating relationships and promoting a more inclusive culture.
I was excited to see I was matched with Denise Mayne, director of engineering in Retirement and Income Solutions. That excitement turned to nervousness about my first mentor session—should I even be doing this at my age or career stage? How should I share the things that worry me about my new role?
Denise was great at making me feel at ease by reminding me that my knowledge and skills got me where I am today. We spent our first few meetings getting to know each other; I shared about my life and career experiences. During one of our sessions, we discussed my skills in Excel and all the things you can do with it.
Uncovering value through automation
As I was learning my new role, people were still doing certain tasks manually. Denise encouraged me to seek a more modern solution, so I built a new tool in Excel to automate elements of our work and shared it with my leader. My leader was thrilled.
At my next mentor session with Denise, I shared what had happened and she celebrated the win with me! Building this tool instilled confidence that I was adding value in my new role. Denise leads a team of IT engineers and is also an advocate for citizen development, so it was natural that she then encouraged me to embrace additional use of technology. She pointed out how becoming a citizen developer could benefit me, my team, and Principal. In many ways, Denise was exactly the person I needed during this transition.
I didn’t realize at the time that her encouragement would ultimately direct me to a whole new world of robotics and automation.
Late last year, during a one-on-one meeting with my leader, we talked about robotic process automation (RPA) following a discussion I had with Denise. My leader said she felt I was the right person for our area to build another automated process and worked to get me added to citizen development training.
Like the last time I’d left my comfort zone, I was both immediately excited about the opportunity and a little scared. I wanted to see what I could build, but I was also nervous that I wouldn’t be able to learn the new software or I’d fail to save my team any time. After a fast-paced six weeks of training, I somehow managed to build a simple yet effective bot to streamline a consistent process, freeing up my team for more important work that helps our customers.
Development happens when you’re uncomfortable
I just celebrated my one-year anniversary in this role and several things have changed for the department, my team, and even me. The whirlwind of emotions from this past year still leaves a bit of imposter syndrome hanging around, but I’m looking forward to what the future has in store for me. And I have plenty more ideas.
