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TONY BUCKLAND AND FARZANA MALIK AT THE EKTA ORGANISATION
“A TRUSTED ADVISOR”
Superficially, what would a retired, golf playing CEO from Deutsche Bank and a working mother with a disadvantaged background in East London get from each other apart from an interesting chat about their diverse lives?
The answer is a great deal. At the first meeting of their mentoring programme, Farzana Malik felt confident that Tony Buckland would be able to give her the support and guidance that she needed in her role as Awareness Co-ordinator for the Ekta Project, an organisation tackling elder abuse amongst Asian communities in Newham.
Having left school at 16 with no qualifications, Farzana, 37, had the first of her four children at 18. Eight years later, in an effort to advance herself, she enrolled at a training centre for women, hoping that any form of education would at least equip her to help her children with their education and homework. Several business courses later, and helped by the fact that she speaks three Asian languages, she started work at Ekta whose mission to educate the community about elder abuse is both challenging and sensitive.
Successful mentoring relies on the crucial matching process of mentor and mentee which PrimeTimers, who have a membership of over 120 highly skilled business people, spend a lot of time focussing on at the start of each mentoring assignment. This three year, Big Lottery Fund, mentoring project began in 2004 and aims to get a number of organisations to a point where they can successfully function as a social enterprise.
After careful consideration by PrimeTimers director, Mary Chadwick, it was decided that Tony would be able to bring a wealth of skills to this particular assignment. Having previously spent 22 years with Deutsche Bank subsidiary Deutsche Trustee Company Limited, he had also run other global groups for the Division. During this time he gained a broad spectrum of expertise including personnel development – he heard some of the bank's most difficult and sensitive HR cases. Legal skills were acquired from a stint as the senior arbiter of legal and transaction related problems within the group and mentoring - he acted as mentor for senior business people in London , New York and Hong Kong . Corporate governance, training, sales and marketing and volunteering were also in his remit and his close involvement with a number of Deutsche Bank's charities found him, amongst other things, cooking breakfasts at 7am at The Whitechapel Mission.
All well and good. But a productive mentoring relationship is also dependent on indefinable ‘chemistry', hence the initial ‘chemistry' meeting recommended by PrimeTimers at the start of any mentoring project. “I found our first meeting immensely helpful and reassuring as Tony made sure that we established exactly what mentoring could mean to me and what I could get out of it” explained Farzarna. “His manner was so relaxed and approachable that sometimes it almost bordered on a counselling session! Although the meetings were structured, there was also time to bring additional problems up, so between meetings I focussed on identifying areas for discussion, which in itself was a helpful procedure.”
Meetings were held every two weeks over a period of three months and during that time they addressed such key issues as funding. For the last three years, the majority of Ekta's income has come from charitable sources and this was clearly an area that could benefit from Tony's knowledge and experience. “My stint on Deutsche Bank's charity committees enabled me to pass on to Farzana information about how charities are selected for support by DB and other large companies, how much is given to individual organisations and how to apply for it” he explained. “She didn't know about the gift aid scheme - which has now been established - or who to approach for additional funds and I was able to give her links, names and numbers to contact.”
A pressing problem for Farzana was that her pending tray “was always pending” and she was feeling constantly overwhelmed by the workload. Tony helped her to realise that this was because she had a tendency to take other on people's work. The answer lay in managing her staff more efficiently, delegating work, following its progress and making sure that the desired quality was achieved. He taught her to prioritise her own work whilst leaving others responsible for their tasks.
Mentoring does not just benefit the mentee, it also has a direct effect on other employees and subsequently the organisation itself. It was clear to Tony on his visits to Ekta, that office management and branding was a neglected area that needed attention. “We now make sure that the phone is answered immediately and everyone who visits us – be it a funder, user or elderly member - is personally greeted, offered tea and coffee and walked back to the door on leaving” explained Farzana. “We need to know that every visitor leaves our office with a sense of well being.”
Tony concluded: “I would say in hindsight that my key achievements were to enable Farzana to get Ekta functioning more efficiently as an organisation, show her how the team could be more accountable and how her role could be clearly defined, therefore enabling her to become more professional.”
“As always with interesting mentoring assignments, the mentor probably gets as much satisfaction as the mentee. Watching Farzana grow in ability and stature because of the programme gave me a lot of pleasure. My knowledge of Asian culture has also been vastly improved and I've acquired a number of authentic Indian recipes!”
Background notes:
This three year Big Lottery Fund (BLF) mentoring programme began in 2004 and was delivered by Community Action Network (CAN) and Yorkshire and Humber Development Consortium (YHDC). For the last two years, CAN has worked with Prime Timers to match experienced mentors with organisations who have the potential to move towards a social enterprise model.
