May – Share a story month
Get inspired by Krzysztof Łuka, who shares his story of Mentorship from the Mentor’s perspective and Michał Ibrom, who has been Krzysztof’s admirer and Mentee for over a year now.
All our Int4 integration experts like Michał Michalski, Michał Jakubowicz, Michał Rohnka, Mateusz Adamus, Mateusz Nowak, Krzysztof Łuka and many more are for sure role models to our Int4 team and tremendous business partners to our customers.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Krzysztof Łuka
If you are reading this piece, I suppose you may be interested in Int4, SAP integration, mentoring, what brought me to the place where I am, and how this can all be beneficial to your colleagues, your business partners and yourself. Hopefully, I will cover it all 🙂
I have been in the IT sector for 21 years, out of which I have spent 15 years in the SAP world. My adventure with SAP started for me when I was a Junior SD Consultant working on ERP and SD related projects. During that year, I dived into SAP so profoundly that I smoothly moved on to the ABAP developer role. Do not get me wrong; it means taking time to study hard and broaden your skill set. 😉
As I am a curious type of person, I saw my faults and lack of knowledge on the business side. So with that awareness, I could not pass by MM, FI and WM modules without understanding the concepts of it for me to be able to serve my Clients better and support functional teams as much as I could.
That is how my Senior ABAP Consultant role started my career with Int4 in 2014. Wojciech Lukowski, Michał Krawczyk, and Michał Kowalczewski had at that time been running Int4 for three years and they asked me to join the Int4 Team and grow with them.
The three board members were the Mentors to me, each in a different way.
Michał Krawczyk aka “Krawiec” – I’ve known him since high school. Seeing your friend achieving such great things and becoming a worldwide known expert was a true inspiration to me. He showed me that the sky’s the limit.
Michał Kowalczewski aka “Kowal” – He has always impressed me with the ability to combine his technical expertise with a customer and business oriented approach – something very unique but essential in our business, which I try to follow in my work.
Wojciech Lukowski aka “Wojtek” – Wojtek is one of the most hard working people I’ve known. Thanks to that and his extraordinary analytical skills he has always amazed me with the way he would find answers to any topics/challenges anyone could struggle with.
And hey 😉 you do not have to call someone a Mentor officially to be in this kind of relationship. As long as you are curious and ask the famous Simon Sinek’s question Why?, you will find yourself in a pool of knowledge daily, especially in the Int4 environment.
It’s beneficial without a doubt to have such outstanding experts by your side like Michał Jakubowicz, Michal Rohnka and others. They were the ones who drove me every step of the way further in my development and thanks to whom I am a three time SAP Press author as well.
The Mentorship culture at Int4 encourages you to develop yourself and others constantly. We are a team of people who do not like to stop growing. We continuously learn via one-on-one mentoring, group mentoring, training based mentoring, executive mentoring, and you would be surprised by reverse mentoring.
Michał Ibrom
Yes, reverse mentoring means that you may learn something from your Mentee. And that is where Michał Ibrom, my Mentee, played a crucial role in making our Int4 IFTT tool more user friendly, e.g. For those who are curious what the Int4 IFTT tool does, well, it’s the best tool to automate integration in the market. (you will find more info here).
Coming back to Michał and our mentorship relationship. My first advice to myself and you would be to stay open; the mentorship relationship is a two-way ticket; you may learn from each other, create better products and services, and constantly grow and develop your skills. Second, challenge yourself, do not be afraid to pass tasks to your Mentees or team members; they have worked with you, learnt from you and are ready to make some effort. Give them the grounds and let them be free to support you, and you will be surprised with the outcome.
I have learned at Int4, through all those years from the excellent team that I am a part of, that following our values: competences, relationships, and balance makes us better at every angle in our lives.
