What Does It Mean To Be a Mentor?

I wrote in an earlier post about my experience entering the working world in the 1960s, at a time when I was often the only woman in the room. It was not an easy environment in which to advance. Throughout my career, though, I had several mentors – all of them men – who were huge influences on me and who, in various ways, helped me develop and progress. Later, when I was a senior executive and did a lot of hiring, I became a mentor to a number of young women; in fact it is one of the parts of my career that I cherish the most.

What does mentoring someone mean?

We often use the word “mentor” without really thinking about what it means, so I went back to the dictionary before writing this post.

Mentor (n.)

1) a wise, trusted counselor or teacher
2) an influential, senior sponsor or supporter

Everyone has their own definition of the word and their own idea of what a mentor relationship means to them; the point I want to make is that mentoring consists of many different pieces – help in day-to-day career questions, life choices, and workplace endorsement/nurturing are some of the most common.

Sometimes these aren’t workplace relationships. For example, I had a huge mentor in my husband. He was experienced in the corporate world, including the company where I worked, and that meant I could talk to him about various issues I was facing, from how to manage up or how to handle a tense situation, to who to cc- or bcc- on an email. He was a huge supporter. At one time I was the only female in senior management and the company I was working for held a retreat. They flew people’s spouses down to where it was happening and organized a day of “interesting” activities for them such as shopping and pampering, assuming they would all be women. My husband, Art, was the only guy in the group, but he had a great sense of humor about it.  He made everyone comfortable with a situation that could have been awkward. Rather than feeling self-conscious, I felt quite special.

I also had mentors in the workplace, people a little further along in their careers than I was who treated me differently and in doing so passed advice on to me. One of those was a boss from my early years at a pharmaceutical company. We had been talking about how to complete a project and he had suggested a specific way to do it, to which I responded “Yes, but…” He looked at me and said, ‘Barbara, sometimes just say yes, don’t say yes, but…” That feedback helped me understand the male corporate world. He was teaching me to be attuned to the dynamics. In other words: there’s a time when you give your advice to the president, and there’s a time when you say, “I’ll get it done.” Rules apply. Knowing how and when to communicate is part of that. I really felt he was rooting for me with his advice because I was a woman in a man’s world, and smart. That helped my self-confidence.

Another mentor I remember was a senior executive, not that much older than I was, who was very bright and quite high in the organization. He took a liking to me, I could tell; he would twinkle and light up when I saw him and say, “Stop in and tell me what you’re working on!” The fact that I felt that he thought the world of me, and let me know it, boosted my confidence and I know it affected how I behaved. It also affected how other people thought of me, and it elevated me above where I might have been otherwise. I knew he was looking out for me. To this day I can’t guess how many opportunities may have crossed my path because he said, “You know, I think Barbara would be good for that…”

Much later in my career, as a marketing executive at a women’s apparel company, I was very close to the president because we’d started working together long before the company became big and successful. He wasn’t what you would call a mentoring, nurturing person, but because I had his implicit trust and support, there was nothing to prove to my colleagues or the people I managed. The mentoring came in the complete confidence that he had in me, which encouraged me to believe that I was good at my job and knew what I was doing.

When I became a mentor, I tried to take all the lessons I had learned over my career and apply them. I wanted to teach people “the code” – the day to day way of the business world. All the things you may intuitively know or learn, I attempted to make explicit. My mentoring philosophy is a direct offshoot of a general belief I have that everyone’s issues – whether it’s meeting a romantic partner who is good for them or being successful in their careers – usually stems from lack of self-confidence. Therefore, my approach to is fundamentally about helping people build their confidence in themselves.

Here are some of my recommendations for successfully mentoring someone:

Ask them questions

This is an essential step to gently challenge thinking and get people accustomed to anticipating the objections they are likely to hear – and prepare for how to respond to them.  Over time, they will learn that anticipating questions is an important part of their work.

Stretch their abilities

When they are completely comfortable handling their workload, delegate additional work in incremental amounts, encouraging them to take on higher level as well as broader responsibilities.

Get them to take ownership of a project

Brainstorm with them possible projects that could be useful to the company but that are not being done; identify a challenge they might be interested in taking on.  This becomes something that is completely their own, built by them from scratch.

Encourage new creative thinking

Hold department brainstorming sessions, encouraging everyone to throw out their craziest thoughts; try to manage the conversation to foster group cooperation and mutual respect, building one idea on top of another, emphasizing that there is always opportunity to improve what’s currently being done.

Become politically savvy

Educate on how to “manage up,” how to identify with upper management and address management level concerns. How to communicate within a corporation, i.e. when to cc and when to bcc. Give them the experience of writing a project proposal as well as an Executive presentation.

I also tried very hard to be empowering. Empowering means both supporting and advising them, and also pushing them to stretch and do things without your help. You don’t empower someone when you give them so much advice that they feel they can’t do something without you. Sometimes this means giving them constructive feedback on their performance. If, for example, I supervise someone whose job it is to proofread copy and they continue to miss a lot of errors despite my best guidance, I might say, “Is there anything else I can do or do differently to ensure that accuracy is not an issue?” A lot of people, women especially, feel uncomfortable with this. As the manager, you have the power, so open yourself up a bit. Encourage them to talk, let them tell you about what’s difficult for them. Don’t get your back up and become defensive. Maybe you can learn something.

I’m retired now, but still in touch with one person who worked for me and to whom I was a real mentor. I hope she’ll be a friend for a long time. She recently wrote me a letter telling me how much my support had meant to her and her career. I started and progressed in my career, over forty years ago, on my own merits – but with the help and support of people who believed in my abilities. Now I have someone who told me I’ve done the same thing for her. I was so grateful she took the time to tell me that.

Barbara was a senior executive of a women’s apparel company in New York City. She retired in 2012.

Image: My Parents (David Hockney, 1977)