You want to talk to me?

I recently received an email from a colleague at a similar Arts Organization; she wants to meet me over coffee to talk about ways to improve their membership program. I read the email twice, yep it says me, yep she says someone told her to contact me, yep she wants MY expertise.

I am having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that, someone possibly my age or only a few years younger than me, wants to get my expert advice, specially because I don't feel like an expert. I guess I am stuck in the word expertise, which is something difficult for me to associate with since I am new to the field. Really you want to talk to ME?

It is silly for me to feel inadequate and to wrongfully assume that peers can't provide mentorship to one another. In fact, this reminded of a panel I attended at the Emerging Arts Professionals, "Omni-Directional Mentorship: Going Beyond Yoda", which aimed conversation at redefining traditional concepts of mentorship and stressing the importance of of mentoring at every level: senior to junior, junior to senior and peer to peer.

I can do this....

Ok, I am feeling a bit more confident now "I can be a peer to peer mentor." But even the word mentor scares me. I guess part of me worries that the information I can provide is less than perfect; that when asked for solutions, for a path to creating a membership program I will choke. This fear stems in part due to the fact that I am a newbie, but mostlty because I have done all my work on a basis of trial and error. How do you teach that? How do you say - while sounding like a competent professional, there is no clear formula/ recipe I used on my job, I just tossed a bunch of stuff around and came out with this?

I know it seems silly to worry about not being helpful to someone who is asking for a favor and probably doesn't expect much in return; but I believe that thinking about my position in the field (definitely emerging), and my knowledge base is a good thing, and since receiving the email, I've been doing just that. I have been thinking more in depth about what I do and have done, and this has helped me tremendously, not only to prepare for the meeting, but also to, in spite of my age and position, feel good about myself.

I recommend this little internal exercise to everybody, regardless of industry and age. Analyze what you do, ask yourself why you do it, think about things you have done that made you proud, and things you have done that no one else in your position would have done. Asking myself these questions made me feel confident and happy, and I think these are important "pats in the back", celebrations that both emerging and established workers need to move forward.