Why you should have a mentor who doesn’t work with you?
A mentor helps you reach your potential and a sponsor flies political cover while you are at it. It’s as simple as that and as complicated. Your sponsor champions you, has your back and makes sure that you have space to grow. Your mentor on the other hand is the one that gets to see you in all your vulnerable glory, your moments of self doubt, your struggle with achieving mastery and your silent commitment to becoming great at what you already do well.
A sponsor is invested in your career success, a mentor gives you the tools to work with and tells you how to work them. Did you know that more women than men have been assigned mentors yet 15% more men won promotions (1)? This is simply because women don’t have the navigational support that they need as sponsors. Both are equally important, only then can a mentee become a protege and then a successful careerist.
Have you wondered why despite having in- house mentoring programs, mentees don’t seem to grow much?
As the program lead, you have the best intention and great expectations when you initiate a mentoring program, and yet you remain disappointed? I had the privilege to introduce mentoring programs in a variety of organizations in different industries and countries, and the success was limited. And that’s when I started wondering if this could be the case because all the mentors were in- company? I started wondering if in-company mentors kill the objectivity that is of paramount importance when it comes to the concept of mentoring.
A mentor who’s also a leader in the organization where the mentee works, consciously or less consciously follows organizational imperatives and is unable to see the mentee as different from the organization’s system.
Mentors support mentees through formal or informal discussions about how to build skills, offer them advice and confidence for career advancement, but these discussions are much more meaningful when the mentee can trust that they are not getting ‘nudged’ into what the “organization wants out of them”. Now I am not denying that there are some in-company mentors, who are still able to take a completely unbiased view – but that’s a tall order.
Organizations see mentoring as matching experience with progress. But outside-in mentors bring in that much needed dose of objectivity and have the capability of helping the mentee visualize themselves outside of the organization’s context and that’s helpful for both the mentee and the organization.
Here’s one scenario – which seems to be occurring all too frequently in organizations – restructuring.
An external mentor is of great support in times of organizational transitions, because they are unaffected personally by that turmoil and bring along a degree of “as- is”, that lets the mentee shed their “euphemism” of how bad/ worse/ ugly or even how good things are. Have a ‘safe place’ to shed the perception we have built of ourselves in the work culture we operate in, and allows us to just look at ourselves and how we are.
Abner Mikva was one of Barack Obama’s political mentors. When Obama was graduating law school, Mikva was the one who encouraged him to get into public service. Like the ex-president reminiscently said of him “He saw something in me that I didn't yet see in myself, but I know why he did it — Ab represented the best of public service himself and he believed in empowering the next generation of young people to shape our country”. (2) Mentors see things in you that you don’t see in yourself, and ones removed from your immediate context, see it better as they have a clearer vision which is untainted by organizational reality.
Interestingly an external mentor can also be very biased about you. And that’s a great thing, and it should remain so. Their sole job is to ensure that “you” do better, irrespective of the context. Internal mentors can sometimes suffer from “hoping winter will pass and the flowers will begin to grow eventually”; external mentors make sure that you have the tools to make your own garden. Internal mentors can sometimes also be in a position where they may inadvertently start competing with you. A case that comes to mind is that of Angela Merkel when she denounced her internal mentor, her then boss Helmut Kohl in 1999. She outgrew his thought process and couldn’t make peace with his tactics. She called him out; it was an act of political patricide. She became Germany’s 1st woman chancellor 6 years later. Now, almost 19 years later, Merkel’s mentee Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (AKK), the new leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats is far more popular than Merkel herself. She is in a great position to succeed Merkel as Chancellor. Whilst I don’t see AKK and Merkel as competitors, I have seen this happen too often in organizations that the mentee ‘outgrows’ a mentor’s skill set and is in the uncomfortable position of competing with a former mentor – a lose-lose situation for all involved, including the organization itself.
External mentors help you bias correct yourself. They are outside of your context, may be even your industry and hence unaffected by your experience in that company till date. They are a fresh pair of eyes that can help you see the stereotypes or stories that you are telling yourself, which are holding you back. Marissa Mayer (YAHOO CEO) was mentored by Larry Page (Google CEO), Maya Angelou was a mentor to Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet is a mentor to Bill Gates.
Mentors play a huge role in the leadership development process. They are key in bridging the gap between the mentee having the ability and actually realizing their potential. This can work in both ways – either to help you temper down your ambitious intentions into a plan that’s achievable for or nudging you to ‘achieve bigger and better’ than what you ever imagined.
Oprah Winfrey famously said ‘ A mentor is someone who allows you to see the hope inside yourself’ – and for that it really helps if the mentor is seeing you from a distance and free of the organizational noise
