Forging future leaders
Why mentoring matters in minerals and mining.
'Mentor, how will I stand before the king, how will I greet him? I am not good at sophisticated conversation: a young man like me might get nervous asking an older man questions.' – Homer, The Odyssey.
Across cultures and centuries, humans have consistently valued the transfer of knowledge from experienced practitioners to newcomers. The word ‘mentor’ comes from Homer’s Odyssey, where the goddess Athena disguises herself as a mentor, an old family friend, to guide young Telemachus while his father Odysseus is away fighting.
Not unlike Telemachus setting off to find his father, moving from university to industry is daunting. You’re leaving a safe space of lectures and exams for an environment where the rules are unspoken, problems are ambiguous, true power is often not obvious and success depends on things they never teach in thermodynamics.
One of the biggest changes in this transition is learning about all the things that are never explained at university.
Say you’ve just graduated and know how to calculate a polymetallic deposit’s economic cut-off in your sleep, and then you arrive at your first mine site and someone asks: 'So, what would you do about the grade gap that we have?' Suddenly, all those lectures and ensuring that your paper was correctly referenced feel unhelpful.
What kinds of things will you be exposed to at work?
- Technical breadth and financial literacy – industry demands you understand everything, from geology to recovery to environmental, social and governance principles, and how it all impacts the bottom line. The level of responsibility depends on the size of the company.
- Regulatory complexity – The PERC Standard for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserve, the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources, the EU Critical Raw Materials Act sustainability requirements – welcome to the world of standards and acronyms.
- Market volatility – that project that made sense at US$80,000/t is very different at US$12,000/t.Stakeholder management – try explaining cut-off grades to investors who think mining is just digging stuff up, and why everyone can’t be millionaires overnight.
- Ethical pressures – when the deadline is tomorrow and the CEO wants to tell everyone about the next big thing – what can you report?
The difference between book learning and the experience gained through long nights and lots of mistakes is where mentoring comes in – it forms the foundation for becoming a competent professional.
In my opinion, this is very much a two-stage process. First, there’s the onsite training (orientation) that gets you into the harness – how does the system work? Formal training is part of the process and having a decent team goes a long way to help you get established.
Mentoring is the next stage. It helps you put all the pieces together. A mentor is like the cement, or the catalyst if you will, who helps you assemble the jigsaw puzzle that is work.
A good mentor knows exactly what they can and cannot help you with. They can’t (and won’t) solve your problems, but they’ll help you think them through in ways textbooks and professors cannot.
The mining industry is currently undergoing significant transformation. The pool of experienced mining engineers, geologists and metallurgists in the Global North is rapidly diminishing. Meanwhile, demand for minerals and metals is increasing – driven by the green energy transition and the realisation that any country wanting supply chain independence had better be able to source, mine, beneficiate and process the metals and minerals deemed critical and strategic for survival.
The extractives industry needs professionals who can understand and solve complex problems, make sound judgements under pressure, and uphold ethical standards.
From campus to mine site
People often use mentoring, coaching and teaching interchangeably, however, they are different things.
Teaching is formal and structured. Information is delivered and understanding is examined and assessed. There’s a curriculum and the relationship is hierarchical.
Coaching is goal-oriented and directive. A coach – often an experienced practitioner who has moved on from active practice – provides specific training to achieve defined outcomes. Think athletic trainers or someone to help you prepare for Chartered-status interviews.
Mentoring is informal and exploratory. This includes wide-ranging discussions, counsel when needed, censure when appropriate and a relationship built on mutual respect.
It’s less 'here’s how to do it' and more 'here’s how to think about it'. It can also be a learning experience for the mentor.
A mentor does far more than just review your technical work. They can guide you to progress from:
- Student to practitioner – university teaches you to find correct answers, industry requires you to find responsible ones.
- Technique to interpretation – software is ubiquitous, wisdom isn’t. A good mentor asks probing questions and shares stories from their own career (mistakes included).
- Isolation to integration – mineral projects aren’t just geology. Your mentor helps you see how the trees form the forest.
- Practitioner to professional – they demystify the jargon and will assist you in your journey to IOM3 Chartered status and prepare you for the competency interview.
A good mentor helps you eat the elephant – breaking the overwhelming into manageable chunks and then putting them all back together. This does mean you will be criticised and challenged, but mentoring is a two-way process – the mentor must also be open to critical feedback and commentary.
Ultimately, the best mentoring relationships feel more like good conversations than formal instruction. Throughout the process, a good mentor will conduct themselves in a professional manner and, critically, because they want to give something back – there should be no hidden (or overt) obligations.
Crucially, good mentoring is usually free. Be wary of anyone charging for it – when money enters the equation, the power dynamic shifts in unhelpful ways.
A practical guide
Finding the right mentor may be harder than you think. The most technically brilliant person in your field might not be the ideal mentor. Consider their reputation, communication style, whether you can take criticism from them, whether they are available, and do they have the time and commitment.
There’s no rule against having multiple mentors – for example, one for technical skills, another for career strategy, communication skills and personal branding.
A great way to meet potential mentors and expand your network is to get involved with your local mining community. If you’re in London or the South East, the IOM3 local society MinSouth is exactly that kind of place – a friendly hub for technical consultants, financial specialists and academics. With 800+ members, regular events and a clear focus on supporting the next generation of professionals, it’s an easy way to start the kind of conversations that could turn into mentoring relationships.
A range of mentoring models exist, including traditional one-on-one, in person or remote. Reverse mentoring is where the mentee teaches the mentor about new tech or younger perspectives. There is also peer mentoring or group mentoring. What works best depends on your needs. Some mentoring is vastly better than none.
Most mentoring guidance focuses on mentors, however, mentees have obligations too. If you want mentoring to work for you – know what you want, come prepared, be open to challenge and criticism, don’t become dependent, maintain professional boundaries and listen.
Mentors should build trust, challenge the mentee rather than solve their problems, give actionable feedback and know when it is time to let their mentee fly.
Also, avoid conflicts of interest – ideally the mentor and mentee do not work for the same company – and formalise the basics, like respecting confidentiality, committing to the mentoring relationship and checking compatibility.
An important thing to bear in mind is your relationship with line management. They are not your mentor, but they can influence the mentoring relationship – either by needing to give approval, or by being a good source of finding appropriate mentors. Some managers will mentor, others won’t – such is the nature of the beast. Don’t try and play your mentor off against your line management – it will end in tears.
In action
Companies often consider mentoring as being a “nice to have, but a waste of time as the graduate needs to be productive. We have a business to run”. However, successful mentoring results in the graduate developing their confidence and competence faster and hopefully with fewer mistakes, assists with staff retention, limits corporate memory attrition and enhances the company’s reputation – happy staff are productive staff. Mentoring is an investment in human capital that pays dividends.
Consider Jamie, a recent metallurgy graduate working at a processing plant handling polymetallic concentrates. The flotation circuit keeps underperforming and management wants it shut for expensive repairs. Jamie suspects the issue is upstream – ore variability that proper blend control could handle – but lacks the confidence to challenge senior management.
Jamie’s mentor, Pat, a Chartered Engineer with 25 years in extractive metallurgy, doesn’t give Jamie direct instructions. Instead, Pat helps Jamie by asking the right questions.
- Quantify the problem – What data would convince you the issue is blending? How could you test this hypothesisExplore alternative possibilities – If you’re right about upstream variability, what would the difference in costs be between introducing blend control versus a circuit shutdown? How would you present this to management?
- Assess the ethical and trust aspects of the problem – You’re early-career and management wants the shutdown. What happens if you’re wrong? What happens if you’re right but stay silent?
- Manage and communicate – Who needs to support this for it to work? How do you use the data to frame the alternative?
Through these discussions, Jamie develops a solid technical approach – how to blend ore samples, how to model recoveries and what is the potential economic impact. She learns how to communicate with all stakeholders across the mining value chain – including the geologist, who may not be aware that clay is bad for flotation circuits. She also develops professional judgement of how to constructively engage with and challenge seniors, as well as other technical experts, and when to escalate and how to communicate uncertainty.
During this learning process, Pat shares stories of similar situations – times he got it right and times he didn’t – giving Jamie necessary context.
The outcome? Jamie proposes a two-week blend control trial with clear success metrics. It works, saving hundreds of thousands of pounds in unnecessary shutdown costs and lost revenue. But, more importantly, Jamie has learned a methodological approach that can be adapted for other situations.
Why should organisations care?
We face an unusual moment in the minerals and mining sector. The energy transition demands vast quantities of critical materials – lithium for batteries, rare-earth elements for wind turbines, copper for everything electrical, and so it goes. Conversely, the industry faces a real threat – an impending skills shortage. The current workforce is ageing and the intake of new talent is limited.
We need professionals capable of sustainable resource assessment, circular economy design, community engagement, and transparent reporting to standards like PERC (see box-out below). We need people who can hold complex technical, ethical and economic considerations in mind simultaneously.
Mentoring isn’t a magic solution. It won’t solve inadequate training, toxic cultures, or hard work. But it builds confidence, provides depth that formal education cannot and helps maintain standards when the pressure is on.
To quote American writer Richard Bach, 'You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.'
The question isn’t whether mentoring helps. It’s whether you’ll seek it, offer it, or support it.
Upholding standards
If you’re working in European mineral resources you will encounter the PERC Standard. The standard is unequivocal about what makes someone a ‘competent person’ qualified to sign off on public reporting:
- A university degree in relevant geoscience or engineering
- Five years of relevant postgraduate experience
- Membership of a recognised professional organisation like IOM3 Qualified for Minerals Reporting Register status
- Relevant experience in the specific deposit type, commodity and activity being reported
- Must be able to face peers and demonstrate competence in the commodity, type of mineral deposit and situation under consideration
It’s not just about serving five years in one trench, it’s about quality, variety and depth of experience. The question isn’t only whether those five years are the right commodity, the style of mineralisation is relevant – thermal coal is a very different beast to metallurgical coal.
If you don’t have the requisite experience and technical skills, your competency will be questioned by your peers. A PhD and enthusiasm won’t cut it.
Why the insistence on 'Relevant experience in the specific deposit type, commodity, and activity being reported'? In a word – money. The reports that you will (eventually) put your name to are the foundation for investment decisions potentially worth billions of dollars.
Make an ‘oops’ – a shrug and a sorry won’t make the consequences vanish. You’ve cost investors money, damaged communities, undermined confidence in the entire sector, and you may even end up in court and prison.
With thanks to Dr Edmund Sides, Dr Tania Marshall, Justin Glanvill, Mark Davis, Andy Birtles FIMMM and Owen Herod MIMMM for their support in developing this article.
