CEO Mentorship: Open Call for Entrepreneurs

When people join Vega IT, they go through a very good onboarding process which includes getting a mentor and working with a mentor in the first few months. Our colleagues can also ask for a mentor at any time if they want to get help while working on their personal and professional development. There are numerous benefits of these mentoring programmes and some of them are: reduced time and cost of learning, decreased stress and anxiety, increased job satisfaction, etc.

These benefits are apparent and very common in most companies. But what about their CEOs? Can they get professional support like that?

Saša Popović, CEO at Vega IT

We, CEOs, are aware of the fact that we have to work on our personal and professional development if we want to follow the growth and development of our companies. We can read, attend trainings and work with coaches. But very rarely do we get a chance to learn from people with more experience in things we would benefit from at specific stages of our business development. Coaches, even though being extremely helpful in many cases, rarely have that kind of experience.

So, could CEOs be mentored as well?

I believe I would have benefited a lot from a fellow CEO mentor if I have had a chance to work with one throughout my twelve years of experience as the CEO of Vega IT. I believe that I could have solved many challenges with less stress and more effectively if I had had someone with the right experience to talk to from time to time. That’s why I’ve decided to offer my support to the CEOs who have less experience than I do and who might benefit from it.

APPLY FOR THE CEO MENTORSHIP PROGRAM HERE.

My idea is that we organise meetings regularly, but not very often. In essence, this would allow both the mentee and me not only to schedule the meetings for the days when we are not extremely busy, but also to better prepare for our sessions.

I would expect from my mentee to send me an agenda/topics for our meetings at least seven days in advance so that we can both prepare and have effective sessions.

As I have mentioned above, this would not replace self-learning and coaching. That’s why our sessions would not be organised in the form of talks/lectures nor as coaching sessions. Instead, I would go with storytelling and try to help my mentee learn from my real-world experience (if I have the right one for the specific challenge/topic).

And, last but not least, everything we would talk about would be strictly confidential, and we would sign an NDA before starting.

Why do I want to do this?

Except for helping someone, which I love doing anyway, I believe I can also learn throughout the process. And learn not only from the experience of my mentee and her/his questions, but also by reflecting on what I’ve gone through and what I could have done better at certain times.

I’ll accept applications for CEO mentoring until the 18th of May, 2020. Then I will choose one candidate to start working with and inform the others about my decision. If this proves to work well, I might get back to the others at a later date as well.

I believe that for such an initiative to succeed the mentee and I need to be a good match. Also, I should be at least five years ahead of my mentee in terms of their professional experience in the role of a CEO.

I’m looking forward to your applications and starting to work with and learn from one of you in the coming months.