One of the most effective mentors I have ever met and experienced is Shariq Rehman. He is the Software Group Lead of IBM Pakistan. Being an IBMer it was the biggest blessing for me to directly work under his mentorship from day one. He is strong headed and stylish and spoke with a solid voice. He never seemed to miss anything that I or the team under his command brought his way.
I’ll never forget his talk to me on our first day. We had been called by Kanwal (HR Specialist – IBMer) that we have our first meeting with our lead. All of us were from all over the country. There were college graduates, I was the only one who was coming with the experience of work in great companies like Microsoft and few others. No matter what your background, you knew on that first day that Shariq was our boss. The guy conducted himself with great grace, and he took the time to explain to us what he expected of us over the next few months. He didn’t smirk, and he didn’t yell at us like some of the other people did. He took his time to set out what we would deal with on a daily basis in dealing with great people but also explained in an extraordinarily powerful way how this experience we were about to carry out would help us when we got to our ways in future.
I have been lucky most of my life to have other great mentors. Mentors like Tahir Masood, Zulqarnain Hashmi, Imran Saeed, Syed Saqlain, Imran Khan and many others added great value in my life and put their great efforts on me so now I’m standing with the great set of skills. But there are some people who actually know the true value of a Diamond and know where and how to utilize it according to his value. So, Shariq is the guy who is actually adding that value and knows my exact use.
It was said he was the most enthusiastic mentor in IBM. During my day to day activities, Shariq actually showed me on how to take my work to a whole new level. Although he is not a dev guy. But in somehow he pushes me on my dev side, my dealing with people and every other task. He was always all over the place telling me about dealing with Pakistani Clients specifically. He was everything you could have wanted in a mentor, and he treated every member of his team with respect and dignity. He taught us that hard work, a positive attitude and good appearance were what being a good IBMer is all about. The lessons I learned from him made me a better leader in my career.
He is a brave mentor. He does fight for his guys no matter what happened. I wish I could tell some real examples of how he actually fights for me. So this is what you want from a solid mentor.
People do dream for such a mentor. So again I would say I’m blessed to have a mentor like Shariq who is pushing me so hard for something big.
There’re much more to tell about Shariq and I would control myself here and sum up my blog. : – )
