Meet a mentor
Paul Thandi, Chief Executive - The NEC Group
As Chief Executive of the NEC Group, Paul Thandi is leading the Executive Board team through the repositioning of the UK's largest and most high profile venue management company.
The iconic National Exhibition Centre, International Convention Centre, National Indoor Arena and the refurbished LG Arena together host a diverse range of over 900 events; from international touring artists and competitive sport to world leading trade exhibitions and consumer events. Over 4.1 million visitors visit the venues every year. In addition to the venues the Group also operates a national ticketing agency, The Ticket Factory, and an award winning catering division Amadeus.
Prior to becoming Chief Executive Paul Thandi spent 18 months as the NEC Group's Commercial Director and was responsible for delivering the largest haul of new business in any one year in the company's history.
He was previously Executive Director at CMP Information, a multimedia trading division in exhibitions, conferences, digital, information products and online communities. He spent the last three years at CMPi enabling the acquisition and merger strategy.
Paul represents the NEC Group on the boards of Marketing Birmingham, CBI West Midlands Council; is Chair of Birmingham & Solihull Employment & Skills and is President of Solihull Chamber of Commerce.
He is married with three children.
What difference has mentoring made to you?
Once you and your mentee/mentor find a way to work together after the first 1 or 2 meetings feeling a bit clumsy, it's of incredible value to the mentee and pretty rewarding for the mentor to see the developments and hopefully success being enjoyed. You get mentored in many aspects of your life everyday whether through sport , work , family, and friends . Sharing experience and knowledge is what drives real power. As they say, Knowledge is power.
What benefits have you found to be being a mentor/being mentored?
It brings with it a great deal of reward and challenge at the same time, if you are fortunate enough to be a mentor. The reward is fairly obvious in seeing someone develop, grow and achieve things they perhaps didn't think about or were possible for them before .
The flip side is that you must put in the effort into planning and thinking about your sessions and your mentee and not providing them with the answer on every occasion for an issue they may have brought to you . Also checking with the mentee if you are adding value although that may become apparent if they no longer show up to see you!
It also allows you to re-open some skills or approaches you may no longer use or have unlearnt which is always a good calibrator for your own improvement quest .
Would you recommend mentoring? Why?
I’d certainly recommend mentoring. No matter whether you are junior just starting out in your profession or a chief executive leading one of the country’s biggest companies everyone can benefit from having a mentor. Everyone needs a sounding board and someone to challenge them to think differently and see the world from a different perspective.
Having a mentor can help people think about their career in the medium and long term whilst also giving them a confidential source to discuss issues relevant to them at that moment in time.
From the mentor’s perspective it is a great way to start managing people. By helping people to talk about their goals and objectives you can develop as a listener and start to think about what input different individuals need.
Can you give a specific example of being a mentor has helped you? Has a junior person/mentee made you look differently at how you do things?
Sometimes by solving or talking about other people's issues and careers it suddenly strikes you about something you are tackling with or a parallel that you are involved with and the answer most importantly comes from that moment that without mentoring you may not have come too. Reflection is such an important part of being a leader, mentor and a manager, having a mentee provides that valuable opportunity and to put it to some other good too!
