The Mentor Partnership LLC
Mentoring at the Top in Large Organizations
Stephen C. Dumont
December 2010
1. CEO-level Mentoring
2. Benefits
3. Who can do it
4. Matchmaking
5. Engagement
6. Conclusions
About the author: Steve Dumont has been involved in senior level mentoring since 2006 and the development of people for a long time. He is a 1981 graduate of West Point and has found his calling in the development of top executives and the ensuing positive impact that has on larger organizations and thousands of people.
The Mentor Partnership LLC is a global CEO Mentoring firm.
1. Mentoring
Mentoring is beyond coaching. It is the passing along of knowledge, wisdom, and lessons, some learned the hard way. To mentor, one must have done the job and have the requisite experience. Without experience and the ensuing perspective, one is operating on conjecture.
With mentoring programs proliferating through a number of organizations, they are finding acceptance and interest. The larger mentoring programs have met with some level of success. These programs do not necessarily fit at the top where there are fewer qualified individuals to fill the role of mentor.
CEO level mentoring is not necessarily new, but given that it is a discreet relationship and activity, it is not widely discussed. CEO mentoring is peer-level mentoring where the Mentor has served in the position of CEO for a long period, and the Mentee is currently at the top of a large organization. This is the passing on of knowledge, management and leadership expertise, lessons learned, mistakes made and how to avoid them, behaviors, and expectations.
The role of CEO or business unit leader is a lonely position. In business, the higher you go, the more isolation you experience. Most everyone around the CEO wants something. The hours are long, and the pressures are great. The CEO must often act with limited information among scores of hidden agendas. Added to this, an Army leadership maxim states: you never complain down, you complain up. A CEO can turn to precious few places for clear, agenda-free advice.
That advice must be confidential. There is an absolute need for confidentiality in these relationships. Trust will not develop without it.
2. Benefits
The Mentor is one of those few, trusted people who can give a CEO the space to speak freely. The CEO often does not know what they do not know. The Mentor is a sounding board for the ideas surrounding the multitude of issues every CEO faces. The CEO can ask: “Am I thinking about this correctly?” “Are there other options?” “What can I do about…” “This might be a dumb question, but…” All of this is done in a highly confidential setting with a Mentor who has long experience. This is a full-spectrum level of support. We say the Mentor is a confidential, advisory, sounding board.
If you look at types of advice, they fall into the categories of Strategic, Operational, Political, and Personal. A Mentor is qualified to help with each quadrants of one’s life. Each area will impact the performance of the executive in his role. Therefore, they are all open and subject to discussion. Again, trust and confidentiality are needed to ensure a full discussion.
The Mentor is particularly effective because he is not emotionally attached to the business. He is not caught up in owning the work. Combine this mindset with experience. The division that must be divested is not one that he grew or acquired and to which he became attached. As such, clarity occurs along with dispassionate analysis. The Mentor will drill down into issues with no past baggage, and he has a keen sense of where to drill. There is no sense of we always do it this way or that has been tried before. The Mentor will revisit and guide in the formulation of new options. Having done it before gives him hindsight. He already has gone through a number of crises, so there is a steady approach to the latest crisis. He knows what will happen if something is done or ignored. The Mentor’s loyalty is to the Mentee and to his success, and that translates into success for the organization and employees.
The Mentor can garner 360 feedback at a very senior level through discussions held at a peer level. The questions and areas come from knowing what is important. There is a sense of nuance and immediate picking up of clues as three simple questions reveal: What is he doing that you like? What is he doing that you do not like? What is he not doing that you want to see him start doing? This reveals so much more than a web-based questionnaire.
Industry experience is not the only criteria for selecting a relevant mentor. Lack of specific industry experience does not disqualify a mentor. At this level, we are talking about the leadership of a large, complex organization where definite competencies must exist.
Working with expatriate leaders is an area of particular value. Organizations tend to send their own executives to run these groups, so we have the need to address cultural and local business sensitivities and norms. Preparation, study and language emersion will fill some gaps in knowledge of the new land. A Mentor knows the national economy along with how to navigate the waters successfully. We have seen the missteps and resulting lawsuits, bad press, loss of key employees, and stalled growth. The Mentor will guide the expat executive. Having global experience, the Mentor also knows how to communicate with the home office. Expats need time to get up to speed and be truly effective. A Mentor will tighten that timeframe dramatically.
Mentoring at the top means the Mentee is either the CEO or a direct report of the CEO. One is getting mentoring from a former CEO on the complexities of the role. This is vastly different from the issues facing a less senior executive. If a role is too junior, the Mentor can get a younger executive set up and squared away in a short period of time, and the Mentee might not appreciate how to use a CEO Mentor effectively.
High potential executives offer an exception. If they have internal potential to expand their boundaries and grooming is needed, this can work. A Mentor can give the high potential a peek around the corner to what is happening at the next level. This works well in succession planning for a larger role. In addition, seasoning of a younger executive can help those who came up the career path very quickly and missed some developmental steps.
Return on investment rules every business. In interviewing past and current clients, I have found that if the engagement lasts a year, 10 x ROI can be documented. This is in terms of new options discovered and executed properly, an option not taken that was identified to fail, smoother acquisitions and divestitures, review of a product launch, preventing competitive failure, the cultural sensitivity given to expatriates that results in less turmoil and lost business, restructuring and the value of seeing it through, settling politics, developing presence. Stability of the executive and their engagement is also a factor. When we start with new clients, about 30% vocalize a desire to leave. With mentoring and the subsequent reengagement of the executive, that number falls to less than 10%. The Mentor helps the executive see what they have and what can be accomplished. This is a reengagement of the executive, which avoids replacement and opportunity costs.
3. Who can Mentor at this level
The first is experience running a large organization for a very long period of time. In this day and age, we mean experience having run at least a billion-dollar turnover group with thousands of employees. Global experience is helpful. We need to see consistent performance, accomplishment, and competence over a period of at least ten years. Short periods offer one the chance to ride the wave or the trend. Long periods show ability to adapt.
A Mentor must have certain key qualities. A servant-leader attitude and spirit of giving back are essential. The ego must be in check. The Mentor is no longer the most important person in the room, as that role belongs to the Mentee. The Mentor must be able to work behind the scenes. There must be a sense of
intellectual curiosity and continued desire for learning. The Mentor must question relentlessly.
4. Matchmaking
This is the most important step. The pairing of a Mentor and a Mentee will determine the success of failure of this relationship. Chemistry between these two will make or break the engagement. The art of pairing takes into account all facets of each individual. One must learn what is important to the Mentee. One must take into account their roles, recent promotions, history, reporting relationships, education, gender, age, family obligations, work goals, predispositions, personality, aspirations, and other factors. With this information, one can start to find relevant matches in the experience of the Mentor and the needs of the Mentee. This is a complex process requiring thought and emotional intelligence. It is matchmaking, and when it works, it can last a lifetime.
A face-to-face chemistry meeting validates the selection process. Both parties must recognize the relevance and potential value. Then both parties must agree on going forward. The Mentor recognizes that he can help this person, but more importantly, he must want to help. The Mentee must recognize that the Mentor has credentials, credibility, and relevance, but he must also want to have an advisor watch his six. Those who recognize that they do not know what they do not know will get to this point. Not all will recognize this. Some feel they are fine and set. A sense of omnipotence, superiority, inflated ego, or an inability to be vulnerable will impede the Mentee.
The selection and acceptance of this matchmaking cannot be done over the internet. It is difficult to do over the phone. Checking a few boxes of interest and values is no substitute for the eye-to-eye meeting. A few characteristics or a personality profile do not make a matching or validate chemistry. Real thought should be put into what the Mentee needs and what the Mentor can deliver.
5. Engagement
The Mentor is the CEO’s advocate. The Mentor will not confide in anyone other than the Mentee unless given specific permission to talk outside of the relationship. Confidentiality is absolute. The Mentor is mum. When asked how the engagement is proceeding, there is but one answer: “Fine”. Nothing else is volunteered. In business cultures, signs of weakness affect individuals and organizations. A leader must project confidence and competence. As such, the
knowledge of the engagement should be kept with the Mentee’s boss and the Head of HR. There is no need to know beyond that circle.
Why such tight confidentiality? Trust. You would not confide in someone knowing the story will spread. We all know of those who can hold a confidence and those who spread the word. The deep reason is this. It is not the petty talk, although that can be destructive, it is the host of substantive issues that a top executive faces that must be resolved. One cannot talk freely or deeply without confidentiality. You also inhibit the ability to score options or create new options. This is a very serious issue in this work, as the Mentor is the only safe place where the executive can open up.
This work can go most anywhere. Other than learning, responding to garnered feedback, and prioritizing, there is not much process involved other than to continue to question.
Beginning the work requires a level of study and preparation for the Mentor. While the Mentor knows priorities and can judge importance of aspects of the business, it is helpful to have an intense period of discovery. This can be an off-site retreat of one or two days where the Mentor and Mentee review the business and the Mentee. Depending on schedules, it can also be an extended face-to-face meeting at the start of the engagement. You must have understanding to underpin trust. The Mentee has an intense schedule. The complexities are enormous and available information is incomplete. This is not something to be absorbed in a two-hour conversation.
The Mentor should know the role, responsibilities, revenues, costs, history, people, competitors, stability of workers, contemporaries, cultures, Mentee’s plans and hopes, family situation along with their level of support, strategy, operations, etc. Any assessment tools or surveys used by the company would be most helpful. A Hogan’s assessment helps to identify derailers. The Mentor can perform a high level 360 and interview those around the Mentee. Given the Mentor’s level of perspective and insight, these interviews would drill down into specific areas of interest from a peer level. The Mentor can employ a variety of tools to bring out information.
A typical engagement might have the Mentor focused on five to six major business issues at any given time. The Mentor acts as the Mentee’s conscience to ensure that goals are on track and that actions, no matter how uncomfortable, are taken. The frequency of meetings and contact will increase during periods of duress or before board meetings and other major events.
Advisory work may occur. Mentoring is not heavy-duty management consulting with teams of people running around the organization. It is behind the scenes.
Meetings or phone calls typically occur every two to three weeks. We are looking to question first rather than recommend. Only after questioning and a review of options would the Mentor proffer recommendations along with the formulation of action plans. If one were to discover a deep need with extended work, a working group could form around the issue by calling in resources from our networks.
Often, the Mentee will keep a Mentor for greater than two years. In those cases, we see promotions occur, changes in the organization and responsibilities, and new situations to face for the first time. We have two adults in the relationship, and as long as the Mentor feels that he is honestly delivering value and the Mentee feels they are getting value, the relationship can and should continue. Continued relevance to the Mentee is the key. Geographical considerations are less important.