Mentors Matter

In this episode, we discuss mentorship in its various forms. We discuss such questions as how we choose both our mentors and mentees. We explore how organizations can develop mentoring programs and what mentorship looks like in the gig economy. 

Transcript

Rachel 0:07

Hey, there beautiful people. Welcome to NOVL Takes, the podcast where we lift the veil on business as usual. Join us for our novel takes on business, culture, and the art of getting things done. I'm partner and principal Rachel Gans-Boriskin.

Sarah 0:22

And I'm founder and principal Sarah Patrick. It's time for a new NOVL Take.

Rachel 0:26

Yoda tells Luke, do or do not. There is no try. Morpheus tells Neo, There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. And of course, Mr. Miyagi was teaching far more than karate as Daniel Laruso chanted, wax on, wax off. Movies are full of mentors. They guide protagonists on their journey to victory. But for those of us not fighting the evil empire, attempting to unplug from the Matrix, or battle a 1980s karate bully mentors, are also important. On today's show, we're gonna be talking about mentors, their importance, how to find one, and perhaps how to become one.

Sarah 1:09

I guess a good starting question might be how do we define mentorship? I think there's a couple different ways, right? There's of course the obvious one, a career mentor. There's also some ones that I'm thinking of, like a life mentor, someone who stands on the sidelines outside of your career and is still a champion of your career. There's a peer mentor. How would you define a peer mentor.

Rachel 1:29

Somebody who's at the same level of an organization but maybe has been there a little longer. So you're kind of at the same place hierarchically, but you're learning from them. I like this sort of distinction of the different parts of our lives and where mentors are. Can you think of mentors in your life?

Sarah 1:48

Yeah, I think for me I've had probably more of those life mentors than anything else The people that come to mind first are actually folks who are members of my family or members of my community who have really supported my trajectory, whether that's my academic trajectory or my career trajectory. Really offering me sage wisdom and advice on how to navigate the ins and outs of my path. Whether that's making a career jump or kind of helping me while on those kind of tricky moments in my career. I'm also thinking about those academic mentors who I might have had. So an advisor. My advisor was somebody who was offering a lot of that wraparound support. So those are the people that really come to mind for me.

Rachel 2:32

It's interesting you mentioned that because last week I actually had lunch with a mentor from college.

Sarah 2:39

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 2:39

And, he and I regularly have these lunches. He's been there as a mentor. But I was actually thinking about this the other day in preparation for this podcast of who have my mentors been.

Sarah 2:52

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 2:52

I have a, gratitude practice and every night I write one page of what I'm grateful for. And so I was thinking about my mentors to whom I am grateful, and I realized they came in all of these different spaces.

Sarah 3:06

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 3:06

Like you, those family mentors, my grandparents were these guiding lights in different ways of being good people. My parents similarly as professionals and as parents, how do you balance those? For my mother, to be a working lawyer and a mother, what's that model she showed me? My father, how to be this person who listens and is a good partner. I think, looking for my own partner, I was looking for something in that way. But then also, I have religious mentors. I have of course professional mentors. I'm thinking about, who our mentors are, do we see ourselves represented? And, clearly gender, race come into that. And I think for me, one of the interesting aspects of professional mentorship is finding somebody who you can model your career after. And often what I found was the women who were further along in their careers weren't necessarily the best mentors for me.

Sarah 4:19

Hmm.

Rachel 4:19

I think they were significantly older. And to get there, one of the ways they did that was to be really hard as nails. So they were attracted to mentor women who followed a similar mold.

Sarah 4:35

Okay.

Rachel 4:36

And, you know, they had been told you can't bring your full self into this space. Do not mention that you have children, that you know their names, that, God forbid, you like them.

Sarah 4:49

Yeah.

Rachel 4:50

And for me, a lot of my learning about the world as an academic, I also was applying to my family. I Teaching media, I was learning from how my children interacted with media. So it seemed so strange to me- not to be able to bring that in. And so I didn't have from women that kind of mentorship and in fact they were looking at me and saying, Don't do that, and you are really not one of us for doing that.

Sarah 5:21

Interesting.

Rachel 5:22

And so I think that there can be that tension We assume that somebody who is the same gender is going to come in and be the perfect mentor.

Sarah 5:32

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 5:33

Sort of discounting, maybe generational shifts and attitudes about what you have to do in a space.

Sarah 5:41

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 5:41

And I think that for some women who came up before me, there was a reluctance to mentor because mentoring can have a nurturing capacity and to be a female in a professional space where you had been the groundbreaking person there to show any nurturing,

Sarah 6:04

mm-hmm

Rachel 6:05

was dangerous.

Sarah 6:06

Right

Rachel 6:06

you know, you didn't get there

Sarah 6:07

Right

Rachel 6:08

by showing that part of yourself.

Sarah 6:09

Right. Right. But I think you're bringing up an important point too, is that it sounds like some of the people that you're referring to aren't necessarily dispositionally positioned to want to be mentors. Right? That to want for the success of other people to welcome other people into that space. So it's not so much about the similarity piece with regard to gender or race or likeness in any sort of way, but really the interest in cultivating other people's careers and cultivating other people's success. And so when I think about, my experience, I've had mentors of all types. Some- we have had many similarities, right? Like we have both been women, we have been both people of color. And that has, contributed to certain types of understanding of how to navigate certain types of work challenges, certain types of work environments. And sometimes we've been incredibly different in who we are. And that hasn't made much of a difference because what we are doing is what matters in that environment. And when I bring up something that is, potentially charged by, race or charged by my gender I can bring that to that person. I think that is what really matters. And they have some insight about how to, again, navigate that challenge or they know the next best person to speak to. One thing that stands out for me is that I had in that Life Mentor Stack, right, separate from my career an incredible model of mentorship. My mom in particular made it a point of her career to be a mentor for me and for everybody, right? This was like a, cornerstone of her career. she in her, law firm, made sure to pursue mentorship for all the attorneys that would come through And so, I had a real role model in what it means to show up as a mentor for somebody else And I think, she gave me some real, modeling or insight into what the opportunities in mentorship could look like, that even though I may not have gotten that directly from her from a career perspective because I am not an attorney and was not going into that space I was going to seek that wherever I was in my career. And I knew what I was looking for in a mentor.

Rachel 8:35

As you're talking, I'm thinking also about who we mentor and that question of who do we feel a connection with. Because I think that's part of what mentorship is on both sides. There was a study about success of college students and one of the greatest indicator of success was whether or not a student found a professor who was a mentor.

Sarah 8:58

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 9:00

And that by and large students of color were less likely to say that they had found that mentor. Part of that had to do with looking for a mentor who had a similar background and there just aren't as many

Sarah 9:15

Right

Rachel 9:15

academics of color because of systemic racism in all sorts of things.

Sarah 9:20

Right.

Rachel 9:20

But also that extra burden that then is placed on faculty of color, that they are supposed to be the ones

Sarah 9:27

Right

Rachel 9:27

who do that. But thinking back over my academic career the students I mentored, the connection was often one of intellectual curiosity.

Sarah 9:40

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 9:41

Is how we connected or even an experience rooted deeply in any identity. So whether that was a Black student or an Asian student, or a Muslim student or, a, Born Again Christian, whoever it was, who came from a space of feeling deeply who they were,

Sarah 10:03

mm-hmm

Rachel 10:04

to me that was a, a connection point. But I don't know how common that is and how much we make an effort when we're mentoring to go across those comfort spaces.

Sarah 10:17

You bring up a good point that resonates with me. My aunt used to say when you get into a new space, go find your person. For me what that always meant was that person who's gonna anchor you, who you can go to with your challenges, who is gonna, tell you that real, that real, real and who's gonna hold you down.

Rachel 10:34

Mm-hmm.

Sarah 10:34

Now, there have been some moments in my life where that person has also been my mentor, but I wasn't thinking about that person as my mentor. I'm thinking about a mentor in that same way that you just defined it, right? That person where we can bridge a divide if we have it, but often we are connected for some sort of intellectual reason. But then I also, in spaces where there is a divide between us, I have my person too, and that person and I are usually a little bit more aligned in our identities.

Rachel 11:06

Mm-hmm.

Sarah 11:06

I've had mentors of all types. If I'm having a challenge that may be kind of expressly to do with my career, that may have something to do along gender or racial lines or whatever, I'm gonna talk to my mentor about it because it's, impacting my career, but I'm going to my person too, and we're gonna talk about it differently. Right. And we're gonna, that person's gonna hold me down in a different kind of way than I think my mentor's gonna help me navigate it from a career perspective.

Rachel 11:31

When I think of mentor, in that professional space I think in particular of someone that I worked with, who I came in, he had been at the institution for like 30 years and he knew the ins and outs. He was very well established and he understood the way it worked, gave me guidance on how to navigate it and gave me suggestions of where it didn't make sense to. You know, there wasn't gonna be support for me institutionally, and I should be careful, but I should bring to him my concerns and he would raise them- to protect me. I, I felt like he understood where the barriers were and he was lifting me up And that was, that was very powerful. And, we had very little in common in terms of our backgrounds, but both, sort of passionate interest what we were doing. Mm-hmm. And the work. And that's what connected us.

Sarah 12:32

Do you think it would've been different if you had more in common?

Rachel 12:36

That's a good question. It might have been different. I'm not sure it would have been as valuable.

Sarah 12:43

Okay.

Rachel 12:44

Actually I think there is a value in both kinds of mentorship. The mentor who has navigated a space in a similar body in a similar way

Sarah 12:56

mm-hmm

Rachel 12:56

is really important. But the mentor who has a different experience

Sarah 13:01

mm-hmm

Rachel 13:01

of it, they can give you a vision of things that you might not get from someone else. In some ways, what I wanted in a professional space, was to be as whole a human as some of my older male colleagues were allowed to be.

Sarah 13:19

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 13:20

And so I could kind of envision that in a different way.

Sarah 13:25

I see.

Rachel 13:26

So, I think that's particular to where you are, the particular mix. But I often think about this along gender lines. There is in the discourse around#MeToo this backlash of men saying, well now I can't be alone with a female colleague.

Sarah 13:47

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 13:47

And there's also some men particularly in like evangelical communities who will say, as a married man, I will not have dinner with a single woman

Sarah 14:01

okay

Rachel 14:02

without my wife present.

Sarah 14:04

Okay.

Rachel 14:05

And what that does is it excludes women from important spaces. It means that we are not getting the mentorship that comes from a casual meal.

Sarah 14:18

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 14:19

Those kinds of interactions that happen outside of the office. And if men are in positions of power saying, I'm gonna protect myself from a#MeToo allegation by not having women in this space.

Sarah 14:35

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 14:36

I mean, there's a terrible thing that happens to women as a result. So you're kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Sarah 14:44

Hmm.

Rachel 14:45

And I worry about that. As we pay attention to these things, what spaces are women being frozen out of, what mentorships aren't happening because of fear on either side, really. That has real consequences for the advancement of women in professional spaces and for business as well. Cuz, businesses do better when more voices are included in leadership.

Sarah 15:11

The thing that's coming to mind for me is whether these, more informal mentorship spaces are becoming more complicated. Whether there is space to push for more formal mentorship programs. There was a Cornell University study that suggested that mentoring programs actually boost minority representation at the management level by nine to 24%. Mentoring programs also, improve retention rates for minorities and women. The study also showed that the retention rates were boosted something like 15 to 38% for those who were mentored compared to non- mentored employees. So mentorship programs when they are done correctly work. And so, formalizing mentorship programs, I think can be really impactful. especially if we are moving into a space where power structures and the dynamics of power structures are getting really complicated.

Rachel 16:06

Yeah. I think that when you are looking to set up one of these programs, it's so important to think about who is participating.

Sarah 16:15

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 16:15

Who are the people who are going to be selected as mentors? Not everybody is great at mentoring. Not everybody who thinks they are great at it, actually are, and some people who don't think of themselves as mentors maybe have that ability in them as well. And I think there's a way you can grow leadership at that level too. But then who are the people that you're identifying to be in the program? Is this a strictly, you know, Let's volunteer to do it. Or do you come in and you say, Hey, we have this program and we're identifying, new employees or employees who are showing promise you know, whatever that is. And being careful of how we define that and who we see as promising, et cetera. But is a way of bringing people in. So this can be, you know, executives mentoring people. But it can be managers. It can be somebody who's been in the institution a long time. This is the way professions used to work.

Sarah 17:21

Right.

Rachel 17:22

You had an apprenticeship.

Sarah 17:23

Right.

Rachel 17:24

And the goal was to, to learn that trade.

Sarah 17:26

Right.

Rachel 17:27

I think that that's the other thing that may play here as well as How much vulnerability do people feel in terms of whether they become a mentor?

Sarah 17:38

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 17:39

Do you see the people coming up behind you as individuals to be mentored, a talent force to grow for this organization, or do you see them as a potential threat?

Sarah 17:53

Right.

Rachel 17:54

You know, am I training them for my job? And they've been here less time, so they're going to be, much more affordable for the boss.

Sarah 18:04

Right.

Rachel 18:05

So I think that there's something as well about a culture of trust that you have to have writ large for mentorship to work.

Sarah 18:15

It's a question of a why, right? Why does the company invest in a mentorship program? And I would argue that a lot of that has to be formalized. Programs are successful when they are formalized in a lot of ways. And there's some scaffolding around what mentorship looks like for a certain organization, but the opportunity to be mentored is self-selecting.

Rachel 18:39

I wonder, so just wondering personality wise

Sarah 18:43

mm-hmm

Rachel 18:43

who says I wanna be mentored?

Sarah 18:46

Yeah.

Rachel 18:46

And who kind of shrinks back Are you missing some people with that? The person who is interpersonally shy?

Sarah 18:54

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 18:54

The person who doesn't think of themselves as a person who's going to advance.

Sarah 19:00

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 19:00

I once had a student who said she never really cultivated her own opinions because she thought that was for smart people.

Sarah 19:08

Hmm.

Rachel 19:09

And it was, it was such a shocking statement to me. And you know, one of the things that we worked on was getting her to change how she thought of herself so that she could go on and graduate to have an impressive career.

Sarah 19:24

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 19:26

But if you had said to her, You know, do you want a career mentorship program? She would've said, well, no, I'm not really career material.

Sarah 19:36

Fair

Rachel 19:36

I'm gonna have a job. So I would say yes to letting people self select, but I'd wanna go that extra step.

Sarah 19:46

Yeah

Rachel 19:47

to be looking for who are the people who aren't stepping up who really could benefit from it.

Sarah 19:54

That's fair. What I think should be avoided in general though, and I think what I was kind of responding to without saying it, is those mentorship programs that tend to select a group of people who is already openly high achieving, right? These are the people who are probably gonna be successful without mentorship anyways. These are people that are going places. These are people who tend to be able to navigate systems successfully without a lot of support or guidance. This is like a high achieving group, That maybe gets like identified and then put into a mentorship program. I think, these are people who benefit from mentorship, but probably don't need mentorship. I'm wondering if there is an opportunity to offer a mentorship program that gives people a chance to come into that program on their own regard. Because I think if you decide to be a mentee, decide to invest your time in that thing, you're gonna go further because you, you made that investment. I think especially one that has some scaffolding and some structure around it. And so I think, you know, having some sort of interest coming from the people who are electing into the program is gonna be critical.

Rachel 21:02

I go back to systems and we're talking about something that is somewhat labor intensive.

Sarah 21:08

Right.

Rachel 21:08

Whether it's time or emotional labor or intellectual labor, and, as productivity is so important, where's the room for that? So I think again, you have to really set up systems that empower this. There has to be an investment in it. I also think there's a possibility here for really an investment in DEI. To say, I think that mentorship coupled with this sort of apprenticeship saying, we are going to help you build the skills.

Sarah 21:43

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 21:44

Oftentimes there is an education barrier to positions or a work experience

Sarah 21:51

mm-hmm

Rachel 21:51

barrier. And you hear uh, HR people say, well, there's nobody who's qualified of this race And I mean, there are questions about that anyway.

Sarah 22:00

Right.

Rachel 22:01

But even if you said, yeah, you know, in this particular industry, it's not particularly diverse industry. What's the investment we put earlier on,

Sarah 22:11

right

Rachel 22:11

to say we are gonna attract people who don't have all that experience, but we are going to train them in-house.

Sarah 22:18

Right.

Rachel 22:19

And we are going to have programs that grow the talent, which is an investment in those people. It's an investment in institutional memory.

Sarah 22:27

Right.

Rachel 22:28

From the, the perspective of an organization, right? And there has to be a, a commensurate commitment that says, when it's time to promote this person, which is the ultimate goal, we're going to pay them the way we would pay them if we had a candidate

Sarah 22:45

Absolutely.

Rachel 22:46

From, you know, outside.

Sarah 22:47

Absolutely. And I think the world that I'm envisioning in which mentorship in an organization is self-selecting, that organization has committed to a mentorship program to the degree that you're talking about where it's like, it's so organization-wide, it is so much a part of the organization that not committing to it, that not investing in it, you are in the minority mm-hmm.

Rachel 23:08

Going back to something we talked about in the beginning of those different levels of mentors, I've seen organizations that are really good about, here's an incoming group of people.

Sarah 23:18

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 23:18

Particularly places you know, there's sort of a hiring season. Here's a cohort coming in and we're gonna bring you in. We are giving you the opportunity to get to know each other even as you get to know the people who are already here. So you build those peer relationships. Then there's also the way this group is then welcomed in by, you know, the rest of the organization and really intentional moments of outreach.

Sarah 23:48

Right.

Rachel 23:49

And not only that, there's this cohort that came before you as well. They have connections. And so it's this sort of generational, approach. But then also, know, even as we, we talk about this in the back of my mind is this, changing nature of the workforce. That more and more people are gig employees.

Sarah 24:12

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 24:13

Are self-employed. What role does mentorship have in that entrepreneurial space?

Sarah 24:20

Right, the more I hear you speak about the kind of the class of mentors coming through, I'm like Yes to all that. Yes. To the systems. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think I'm casting out from a space of kind of being the lone wolf in a certain space, right? I'm thinking of a lot of the, experiences where I've come in and I've been like the contract employee, in a group, for a institute or for an organization that hired out What are the opportunities for mentorship when you're not hired in with a class?

Rachel 24:49

Right, right.

Sarah 24:50

Or when you're, when you're only coming in, with the intent to be there for a sprint. For me, it goes back to, find your person, but how do you institutionalize something like that? How do you systematize something like that? And I wonder whether there is a way to pull from, an HR perspective, some of the tenants that you're talking about with that class. So like, at least the peer-to-peer mentorship. Can you be matched with a peer for the length of that sprint? Can there be somebody who's kind of your point person, who's intended to show you the ropes again, help you navigate the course of your time there. And I'm wondering whether we can kind of borrow from some of that more systematic approach to mentorship I'm wondering too, for those who are freelance and long-term gig workers, whether like a match system can be set up. Right? Whether something like a WeWork for mentorship could be born. Maybe it even exists and I just don't know about it.

Rachel 25:47

I think that there are some of these, networking organizations that function in this way, or, or that's the hope, I think we end up with some of these affinity groups, these networking groups. For entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs of color, for women. And the goal is not just the sharing of business, but the sharing of knowledge.

Sarah 26:10

Right. But I think still in, some of those situations, or at least this has been the case for me, the onus is still on the individual or the person who is desiring mentorship to go find that person, right?

Rachel 26:20

Mm-hmm.

Sarah 26:20

So you end up joining an affinity group or joining a business organization, and you still have to seek out the kind of mentorship wing of that group and then hope for a right fit. Right. Mm-hmm. And that's hard. It's possible. But it is certainly hard. I'm, again, I'm wondering whether those affinity groups or the arms of those organizational associations, can do just that work. And create a system around a thing.

Rachel 26:45

I think in an entrepreneurial space, it seems to me that those of us who are in that space are often the people who went out and sought

Sarah 26:57

fair.

Rachel 26:57

You know, mentors we're like, you know,

Sarah 26:59

fair.

Rachel 26:59

Like, sure, I'm gonna do that. Like, okay, I network, I do this. Right. So we have some of those abilities.

Sarah 27:05

Fair.

Rachel 27:06

I wonder though about, the gig workers. What happens to all of our Uber and Lyft drivers? People who are doing multiple jobs?

Sarah 27:17

Mm-hmm.

Rachel 27:17

What are the opportunities for them? What are those spaces culturally

Sarah 27:23

mm-hmm.

Rachel 27:24

where we could be creating these mentorship programs? I think of people who are working 2, 3, 4 gigs.

Sarah 27:32

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel 27:33

Right? Those are people with drive. Those are people

Sarah 27:36

yeah.

Rachel 27:36

With, with a work ethic.

Sarah 27:38

Yeah.

Rachel 27:39

How do we find ways of helping those people

Sarah 27:43

mm-hmm

Rachel 27:44

get mentors who help them get maybe a more stable income If they want it, obviously. If you wanna be working the gig economy, fantastic. But certainly in a world where your insurance is often still connected to your job, I think there are still a lot of people who would like, to have more steady work. And as employers, who could you be reaching out in the world in, these various places who wanna be mentored? Who are the future employees?

Sarah 28:16

I think that's a big question. I don't know that I have an answer for that off the top.

Rachel 28:21

Well, you know, I, that's what we're here, we're, these are our novl takes and, and sometimes, oftentimes, they're novel to us.

Sarah 28:28

That's right.

Rachel 28:29

I've walked away with a to-do list.

Sarah 28:31

Oh yeah.

Rachel 28:31

So I think maybe that's a good place

Sarah 28:34

to pause.

Rachel 28:34

to pause.

Sarah 28:35

Okay.

Rachel 28:35

We've got a whole bunch of things to do.

Sarah 28:38

Yeah. I have more questions than answers today. I think that's okay.

Rachel 28:41

I think that's great.

Sarah 28:42

Yeah.

Rachel 28:42

Okay. Well, if this conversation has piqued your curiosity and interest, And you wanna hear more about what we have to say, stay tuned for other episodes. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, please rate and review us. Give us some love.

Sarah 29:00

And if you're curious about what we do over at NOVL or think we could help you or your organization, check us out and send us an inquiry over at thinknovl.com. That's T H I N K N O V L.com.

Rachel 29:12

A quick programming note. We'll be off for the month of August, but we'll be back in September with more of our NOVL Takes.

Sarah 29:19

That's it for us. Shout out to everyone who helped us make this show. This is NOVL Takes.