“I wanted to break the glass ceiling – Moving Ahead helped me get my first leadership role”

Moving Ahead’s 30% Club cross-company mentoring programme changed my life, says former mentee Pushpita Mukherjee, now manager of business analysis and lead BA at NHS Professionals.

‘Grab the opportunity. Don’t hold back. Prepare.’ That’s what I told myself when I was applying to be a mentee on the Moving Ahead programme – and it worked. My goal was to get that first leadership position. And with help from my mentor and the programme, I made that jump up the ladder: I’m now mentoring my own team, using many of the skills I learned on the programme. To anyone thinking of being a Moving Ahead mentor, I’d say: go for it. You could transform somebody’s life.

Central to the programme is the mentoring relationship. I wanted to be paired with someone from a different industry – the Moving Ahead scheme works across companies and sectors – so I could get the lens of somebody who didn’t have my journey. I knew it would help me to be honest with my mentor and not be defined by where I was at that point. When I filled out the questionnaire, however, I wasn’t too hopeful of being matched to the sort of person I wanted. So I was taken aback when we met: the matching was spot on!

BLANK CANVAS

It’s a totally new relationship you can start on your own terms, and you’re not judged about where you come from. I’m hard-working and was quite demanding. So I’m so thankful to my mentor for being incredibly kind and supportive. She could see my excitement and passion and catered to all my requests. My attitude was, the more I give to this, the more I’ll get back. I always prepared and treated our conversations as professional meetings, with an agenda at the start and an action plan at the end. 

It was as if she led from behind, to give me the push. She didn’t tell me how I should do things but asked me to think through what I wanted and how I could get there. I was already resilient and confident, but she instilled in me the missing 0.1%. I worked with her to stop ‘caveating’ myself. The programme showed me confidence is not blowing my own trumpet, but propelling yourself forward.

That positivity, believing in yourself and not restricting your dreams, is something I want to instil in my own team at NHS Professionals. If you work towards getting what you want, believe you can achieve, and focus, you will find a way. My passion is working with people, understanding their needs, and giving them solutions. So climbing the career ladder means I can have a greater impact. My own big dream is to be on a company board of directors and I know I can get there – I love the thrill of a challenge.

But this isn’t just about individual people’s careers. It’s important that everyone reaches their potential in this way because all organisations need diversity of thought. I see this in my job, where we’re working on projects to get skilled people into the right place quickly, to help the NHS. Inclusion is crucial to this because it allows everyone to be themselves – that’s when everyone gels, and you get the best out of your team.

INSPIRING TALKS

The programme also includes a series of inspiring talks to fire you up and think about the soft skills you need. They covered things like being assertive, developing relationships, managing stakeholders and connecting through storytelling. I was almost in tears listening to one of the speakers. She was so inspirational and connected to the audience to the extent you felt really charged up and inspired. She left me feeling like I could achieve what I wanted and not be limited by anything.

My message to any companies thinking of joining the programme is that it’s a brilliant way to give back and get back. You’ll win loyalty and gain expertise from people who are part of the programme. Mentors have told me it’s been as valuable for them as it is for the mentees. Don’t wait – sign up today. You won't regret your decision.

For more information click here or contact Maria.May@moving-ahead.org