About Darren McFarlane
I'm an engineer who fell in love with mentoring. And never looked back.
For over 20 years I worked in the energy industry. I led teams across the UK, Asia and Australia. I helped build an office in Australia and grew it to 50 people where we helped deliver some of the largest engineering projects in the country. I was selected for a global leadership program at INSEAD in France and Singapore.
But the thing that shaped me most wasn't a project or a promotion. It was a mentor.
Why I started Next Level Mentoring
When I looked back at my career, I realised something. The periods where I grew the most, as a leader and as a person, were always connected to mentoring. Either having a mentor, being a mentor, or helping to run a mentoring program.
But I also realised how rare that experience was. Most organisations either don't have mentoring programs, or they have ones that don't really work. People get paired up, left to figure it out, and the whole thing quietly fizzles out after a few months.
And people struggle to get into mentoring. Either too scared to ask someone to be their mentor.
Or waiting to be asked by someone else.
So I applied the same thinking I had used as an engineer... structure, measurement, continuous improvement... to something that most organisations treat as soft and unstructured. I built a mentoring framework that actually works. One that produces results you can measure and a culture you can feel.
That's what NLM does. We build the human infrastructure that turns your experienced leaders into the mentors your next generation of leaders need.
"We build the human infrastructure that turns your experienced leaders into the mentors your next generation of leaders need."
20+ years in leadership
400+ people trained in mentoring
95+ people coached for goals
What I have learned along the way
I've now helped design and deliver mentoring programs for ASX20 companies and state government departments. I've trained over 400 professionals. I've coached more than 95 people one-on-one through goal-setting sessions. I've watched mentees get promoted, mentors rediscover their purpose, and entire departments shift their culture because they invested in their people.
The program I built with the Department of Water and Environmental Regulation is now into its 4th consecutive years, growing from 16 pairs to 30, with a 39% promotion rate among mentees and the Director General personally volunteering as a mentor. Every year it's been oversubscribed.
When you give mentoring the structure and support it deserves, extraordinary things happen.
