Steve Gill received the Gold Stevie Award for the Cool Mentoring Scheme at a Gala Banquet in Tokyo on Friday 2 June. 

The pioneering mentoring scheme started in 2015 won the award for ‘Innovative Use of Technology in Human Resources’

He used his acceptance speech to thank all the volunteer mentors for their hard work to make this possible. “They (the mentors) are people that genuinely want to make a difference.  They are successful people ‘paying it forward’.

He went on to tell the audience that “When our enjoyment comes from the tangible difference we make to the success of others, mentoring becomes a living definition of the term win-win.”

During the visit to Japan, Steve took the opportunity to meet with local mentors and mentees, and was also interviewed by the highly regarded trade publication JARN. He said: “There is a huge amount of enthusiasm for the scheme here. We work in a truly global industry, where knowledge sharing knows no boundaries.

“For the mentees, the opportunity to connect with senior people and experts from both within their countries and around the world is opening exciting possibilities.  Here in Asia for example, for a whole variety of reasons, including cultural ones, it was considered impossible to have access to potential mentors outside of their own organisation. Elsewhere in the world, there are often simply no experts available in the mentee’s location or sphere of connections.” 

Thermentor.Org - Cool Mentoring is an innovative scheme to help match mentors to mentees across the global refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat-pump (RACHP) industry. It is a ‘not for profit’ scheme started and run by volunteers with a genuine desire to help their industry. Unlike conventional mentoring which is typically in-house and face-to-face, in this scheme the mentor and mentee don’t meet. The whole mentoring process is carried out by hybrid e-mentoring employing an intelligent use of technologies available, such as email, SMS, and video-conferencing.  

The aim of the scheme is to supply the international RACHP industry with short-term periods of quality mentoring at a distance. Since its initial pilot scheme in 2015, a total of 110 pairs from 12 countries across four continents have taken part in the scheme.

Steve concluded: “Receiving this award on behalf of the mentors is a great honour, but the real reward for all of us involved is the difference we are making to the careers of the mentees. Having said that, speaking with other mentors, they also feel that they have personally benefitted themselves in other ways, because to be an effective mentor requires us to stay as in engaged in our own development and learning just as we hope those we mentor will.”