Nahid Iqbal has worked for Lloyds Banking Group for 27 years in a wide variety of roles, from cashier and supervisor to branch advisor. Most recently she has performed the job of local business manager, working closely with SMEs from the East London community in which she’s based to ensure their finances are running smoothly and offering guidance on everything from cash flow to invoicing. It is this experience of the world of small enterprise that meant Nahid was well-placed to become a dedicated mentor for the mentoring programme, which is led by Lloyds Banking Group in collaboration with Sfedi.
Someone who loves to be busy and a self-confessed ‘people person,’ Nahid received an email from Jackie Jenks, mentoring manager at Lloyds Banking Group, who was looking for enthusiastic individuals to pick up the mentoring baton:
“The email appealed to me straight away because, for me, the best part of my job is dealing with people. Paperwork is OK but I have to see people! So I wrote myself a bio and Jackie said ‘yep, looks good.’ After that I was soon training for a Sfedi mentoring qualification to allow me to mentor local businesses.”
Armed with her Sfedi certification, Nahid was paired up with Teodor Hilhor, a 22-year-old digital entrepreneur and recent law graduate who had a very interesting idea for the leisure and tourism industry but just required a little support to establish his business. Nahid explains the concept:
“When someone goes to stay in a nice hotel, if they didn’t like it, the first thing they do is go on Trip Advisor and write something negative. To prevent that, and for the managers of the hotel to get feedback, Teodor had designed an app that works as you check out of your hotel. It asks for quick feedback on your stay and, if a negative opinion is expressed the hotel manager receives an email alert right away. The product gives the hotel a chance to rectify the situation, to see what went wrong and prevent it going wrong again, intercepting a bad review before it reaches Trip Advisor.”
Having seen hundreds of businesses start-up over the years through her job, Nahid was familiar with the types of problems they faced and the questions they needed answered: “When you help someone open a business account you hear about what they’ve found hard. For example, lots of people find it difficult to know how much to spend on things like marketing. I say spend very little because there’s so much out there that’s free. There are ways of working that I could share with Teodor, like skills swaps to save money. So, if you’re a builder you might need someone to do your books and there may be an accountant locally who needs some building work done. Getting together with other local businesses to swap skills is a good, money-saving idea. Then there’s networking – real networking where people genuinely want to help each other.”
However, like many others, Nahid has found that mentoring is no one-way street. She herself has gained great personal satisfaction through supporting Teodor, as well as developing valuable life skills through the programme. The mother of three adult children, Nahid says mentoring has improved her family life:
“Through mentoring I became a better listener. My kids used to say I was the worst listener ever so I wanted to be able to listen to my kids more effectively, which sounds very selfish! I thought that if I could become a better listener for Teodor, that skill would stay within me and slowly seep into my family life. And I do listen more. I find I step back more now and let them speak, which means mentoring has been a great thing for us all.”