If you saw a bloke at last month’s ITM Achievement Awards in London who you thought devilishly handsome yet also the very definition of the word “conflicted”, that individual was me.

Sitting at my table was my colleague, TripStax marketing magician Nikki Banks, who had been shortlisted as Mentee of the Year from the ITM’s Mentoring Programme. Also sitting at our table was Carine Morin, Regional Travel Manager for ServiceNow. She was up for Mentee of the Year too. And her mentor? Er, me! What a predicament.

It was Carine who took the award but – and please don’t reach for your sick bucket, because I really do mean this – everyone who took part in the programme ended up a winner: not just the mentees but the mentors too. I was really thrilled to see Nikki’s mentor, SAP Concur’s Paul Dear, take home Mentor of the Year. I heard he’d been an incredible support to her. You see, this is what the programme is all about.

What I’m hoping Carine got out of our partnership were some fresh ways to tackle the pain points in her travel programme. Issues we reviewed included online booking tools and how to source good quality data for off-programme bookings, which is a challenge common to many travel managers. Card spend is an obvious source but is tricky to reconcile with booking data, so we discussed ways to tackle that problem too.

But mentoring isn’t just about industry knowledge. Professional development is critical too. We spent time on transferable skills, for example. I set Carine the task of presenting on anything she was knowledgeable about, and she delivered a great talk about making small adjustments to attract more wildlife into your garden. It wasn’t about the topic. It was about building confidence, learning the skills and starting to believe in yourself. Practice makes perfect after all.

I shall soon introduce some of her wildlife tips around the extensive grounds of Wylie Towers, but they were far from the only superb insights I gained from Carine. While technically she was the mentee and I was the mentor, the relationship was a lot more balanced than that. The mentor has to listen as well as speak – and I learned plenty about issues Carine faces as a travel manager that really helped validate, and challenge my own knowledge.   

So a huge thank you to ITM membership manager Amy Brooks, truly one of business travel’s behind-the-scenes heroes, for organising the programme. She did a brilliant job of matchmaking Carine and I, and all the other mentorship pairs. I would urge everyone to consider joining the scheme next year, no matter how junior or senior you are.

But here’s another thought. ITM’s mentoring programme provides a safe space to ask questions about stuff you don’t know the answer to. No one should ever feel silly for admitting a gap in their knowledge about corporate travel, it’s a very complex industry. I’ve been in this space for 35 years and I’m still learning every day.

This is an industry where people are usually very generous with their time. So if you have an issue you want advice on, don’t be shy: reach out to fellow professionals you think can help you. I guarantee you’ll get a positive response. After all, “All the flowers of tomorrow are in the seeds of today”.

Scott Wylie is Chief Technology Officer of TripStax.