Blog #22 Mentorship

Content

• LIA Response to Blog

Literal

A link of my recorded mentorship hours will be on the side.

Contact Name: Sara Timberlake

Area of Mentorship: Habitat for Humanity Pomona Valley ReStore

Contact Info: (909) 399-0202

Interpretive

During the duration of my mentorship, I have learned many store managerial aspects such as leadership with teammates, meeting deadlines, conflict resolution, customer service, and volunteer/employee training. The most important element is extremely hard to decide, due to the fact that all of these types of manager skills are important to have within a business setting. Personally, if I had to decide the most important, it would have to be leadership skills within a team setting because employees are the lifeblood of any type of operation that seeks to sell a service or product. Essentially, without leadership skills, there is no store. One person cannot do all of the tasks within the store on their own. It's all about collaboration and making sure that everyone is satisfied with their position and on the same page.

Applied

With the Pomona Valley ReStore being a place that's extremely unpredictable in terms of customer influx, I would say that environment helps to find efficient answers to my EQ: what is the most effective way to manage a store during the busiest hours of the day? There have been many times within the year, most notably the beginning, where customers always came into the store and needed to be serviced and aided, throwing the store into a bit of a panic because there were times where we at the ReStore were understaffed. Now, being in that environment, the management have made some changes to policy in order to counter-act certain issues that we would have. The management adapted based on certain circumstances, which is a fantastic lesson to be learned when working in a store setting. You have to know what your problems are and figure out how to address them. To add onto another lesson I learned, I've learned that it is paramount to ensure that all staff and volunteers are not losing interest in the cause. Losing staff and volunteers is not ideal in a setting where understaffment is the norm. As a manager, you must keep employees engaged and satisfied while at the same time setting standards and challenging your workforce to grow in both skill and aptitude for their service.