Mentoring Matters

The hit 1961 musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying features an ambitious window washer who rises to become a CEO—as he sings a tribute to his prospects before a mirror in an executive bathroom. The play, which showcased the satirical ballad “I Believe in You” by Frank Loesser, lampooned simplistic career recipes and self-improvement manuals.

Despite such mocking, self-confidence is a vital component of career success, as is the confidence of others. Recognition of your career potential from accomplished mentors is saluted in a important new book by U.S. Senator Dave McCormick and his wife, renowned financial executive and former deputy national security director Dina Powell, entitled Who Believed in You? How Purposeful Mentorship Changes the World.

Critical Influence

Their book identifies the ways people’s lives were transformed by mentors who provided four core pillars of support: mutual trust, shared values, meaningful commitments and instilling confidence to dream and to reach beyond the status quo. Powell, an Egyptian immigrant to the U.S., rose to the top ranks of government service and at Goldman Sachs, while McCormick, an Army ranger, became CEO of Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund. Their journeys reveal the importance of others believing in them and inspiring them at critical moments—a coach for McCormick and a senator for Powell. They demonstrate the critical influence of mentors in the largely untold missing moments in the lives of leaders, including prominent CEOs ranging from the worlds of finance and pharma to fashion and entertainment, as well as government leadership across political parties.

The word “mentor” is derived from the name of the advisor Mentor in Homer’s “Odyssey.” When Odysseus went off on his journey, he left his son Telemachus in the trusted care of Mentor to guide his son’s development intellectually, physically and morally. Mentor’s good intentions were key to the successful tutoring.

Mentor Missteps

Even well-intentioned mentoring, however, can fail, as shown in studies by researchers Terri Scandura and Lillian Eby that identified such problems as mismatched work styles and personalities; insufficient attention; relationship abuse, such as coercion, idea theft or harassment or limited expertise. Powell and McCormick, whose mentorship profiles shine a light on what makes mentoring succeed, called on a team of us from Yale to survey 2,200 people, including top executives and the general U.S. population, for more insight.

We found C-Suite executives are far more likely to have had a significant mentor. The mentors who helped executives reach the C-Suite spent more time on career path choices and less time with protégés on personal, political, health or emotional guidance. Mentors tended to have been a generation older than their protégés, roughly 17–18 years apart. Fully 36 percent benefited from at least one mentor, and 65 percent had multiple mentors in their career. To our surprise, it did not seem to matter if the protégé or the mentor launched the relationship as long as there was a shared willingness to engage in a mentoring relationship and a commitment to build and develop that relationship. We also discovered men were more likely to cite “power” and “prominence” as a quality that drew them to their mentor, with women citing “authenticity” and “good listener” at higher rates.

Success also means that both the mentor and protégé benefit from the relationship, but most powerful of all, in our surveys and in the Powell/McCormick profiles of highly accomplished leaders, was a determination to pay back those who invested in them by investing in others.