Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink

34 - Capitalizing on Mentorship Opportunities

• Leah Fink • Season 1 • Episode 34

Share episode

Do you know how to maximize your growth when mentored by someone with significantly more power? On this episode we dive into the complexities of mentorship amidst power differentials, as well as how to explore potentially poor advice. Learn how to stay self-aware, consciously choose your responses, and leverage your influence even when you feel outmatched.

Do you know how to approach relationships with large power differentials in a healthy and beneficial way?

If you would like to know how to get the most of out of leadership learning opportunities, join us for this episode!

To have your questions answered on the show, submit your story here: https://allthrive.ca/share-your-story

Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink is live every week at 12:00pm MST.  Please join us to get answers to your leadership questions! https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-fink-all-thrive/

Speaker 1:

Every action you take as a leader has a ripple effect, starting with your team, going out to the organization and even out into people's personal lives. Here we offer you the chance to learn from real-life stories of leadership so you can gain a deeper understanding and level up your own skills From communication to culture, to power and equity, to feedback, to resolving conflict and more. Join us and make sure you're creating the ripples you want. Welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink.

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to Leadership Ripples with Leah Fink. Today we're going to be talking about two topics. One is what to do with leaders when there's a large power differential, and the other is working with your own perception of leadership, and this is all within the framework of mentorship. Jf writes in with his story. I'm in a supervisor position at a very large company and, although I've been in the position for a while, I'm still fairly new to leadership. My company decided to start a mentorship program for leaders where senior leaders can volunteer to mentor newer leaders. I signed up, wanting to both improve my skills and because it looks good for future advancement. I just got my mentor pairing and I'm worried for two reasons. He is really high up in the company, which is very daunting. He also doesn't have the best reputation as a leader and I don't want to learn any negative leadership skills from him. Backing out of being a mentee or asking for someone else would look really, really bad. So how do I work with this? Thank you for sharing your story, jeff, and being honest about your concerns. I want to appreciate first, also that you are wanting to be intentional about your leadership and growth and, honestly, no matter what position you're in. I believe it is critical that leaders are constantly looking for and then taking advantage of any opportunities they get to learn and grow and keep working on their leadership. So kudos to you for that and, hopefully, everyone listening, because you're listening means that you are also hoping to learn and grow.

Speaker 2:

First let's dive into this piece about power differential that you mentioned, and 100% I agree. This can be very daunting. We talk a lot on this show about power dynamics and the vulnerability that a person with less power is in within their role, and that increases, of course, the bigger that power differential is. So from you being a supervisor to someone very high up in a large organization, that's a big power differential. Now, this isn't only influenced by the decisions this leader gets to make in their role. That's going to impact you.

Speaker 2:

But even on a physiological level, we actually operate out of a different part of our brain when we have less power. So our amygdala is the emotional processing center for the brain and it's responsible for things like the fight-flight-freeze response. So as you're entering interactions with your mentor and even thinking about them, your brain is sending cues that might influence your response that are a little bit around fear and worry and panic. Now, this is not to scare you or to say that automatically you should be scared in all relationship where there's a power differential. But it's really helpful to be aware that because of this vulnerability, because of the way your brain's working, there's a good possibility you're going to react in a way that you might not want to and that you might not in other situations where there isn't that differential.

Speaker 2:

So cultivating that awareness allows you to choose how you're going to respond instead, and that's a more conscious choice, because when we're not aware, when we're more reactive in these relationships with people that have more power, we often find ourselves falling into patterns that we're not conscious of and they may or may not serve us, because we all have these strategies we got from interacting with our parents, from our teachers, from previous bosses, in order to protect ourselves and to get our needs met and not to say that, once again, you were scared of these people or they were bad relationships, but they did create some patterns and some of them might not serve us in our current situation. So, for example, you may have a habit of people pleasing. It's very common, so that might work very well for, say, keeping your boss happy, but it may also mean that you're not asking questions that could be really important for your learning and growth because you're afraid of rocking the boat. Maybe, alternatively, you have a bit of a habit of questioning authority, and that one's really great for your learning and to advocate for yourself, but maybe it has your leader taking on a kind of defensive attitude when talking to you. Those are just a couple examples.

Speaker 2:

You could see how these might roll out in positive or negative ways depending on the person in the situation, and I believe that we should all be doing this work to really understand how we best interact with others. But especially in this case, because of how large the power differential is, I would be very, very conscious and aware of how these patterns might show up and how they may help or hinder you as a mentee. So the other thing I would practice, or the next thing I would practice, is how to be skillful in using the influence you do have. Now, that is a whole other topic, and I'd actually recommend that you go back to our 19th episode of the podcast, where we look at how, when you have less power, you can actually still use that influence in an empathetic and collaborative way to get your needs met, because we do not have time to go into that today. So I think that would be a good one for you to listen your needs met, because we do not have time to go into that today, so I think that would be a good one for you to listen to JF.

Speaker 2:

And finally, we also want to consider just some basic things that help mentees get the most out of their time with a mentor, because that can also help decrease a little bit of worry about the situation. The first thing which is really critical is have an idea of what you would like to get out of your time with this person. Have some questions prepared, not just at the beginning, but that you're bringing them consistently to all of your meetings together, of course, as you're between sessions. Try out, practice some of the things that you've learned, so then you can come back with your thoughts with more questions to the next session, so that growth continues and you keep working on those things.

Speaker 2:

If you just show up and say mentor me, that puts the whole burden on your mentor to decide what to teach you, which means you may get things that you're not really looking for or they might feel like you don't really care about this and are less engaged, which is certainly not the impression you want to give. Even if you have some ideas and you're not totally clear, you don't feel like you have a complete plan of what you'd like. Start with that, start with some curiosities, maybe about a situation you're facing, and ask your mentor how they might work with that situation. Once they start talking about that, maybe ask questions about what other skills could you learn that they think would help you in the future in those kinds of situations. So you're getting your thoughts out there, you're engaging with these questions and then that still gives you skills that you can work on to support your learning. Now there is the potential that you come with these ideas and questions and your mentor maybe does have a plan of something very specific that might feel very in line with what you're hoping for or very out of line with what you're hoping for, or very out of line with what you're hoping for. And with this power differential, you might feel more comfortable going along with their plan and that's totally understandable. And whenever possible, you can contribute your own questions. You can try to think of how this would relate back to some of your goals or ask questions that might drive it back. Not to create a tug of war where you're trying to get your questions answered and move them away from their plan, but really looking at how these different pieces could relate to each other and how that growth could happen together. All of that being said, some ideas around mentorship and how you can feel more comfortable in that.

Speaker 2:

Let's move on to the second point that you brought up, that your mentor might not be the best leader themselves and you don't want to develop any skills or habits that are going to be negative in terms of how you're going to impact your leadership. Leadership skills already are varied and there's a lot of different opinions on the very best way to be a leader. Who makes the best leaders? Generally, there are going to be underlying skills and thoughts that are going to help you, but there's so many different ways to apply them and approach them. So, if you look at the skills your mentor is teaching you, some of them and this is with any teacher, really any place you're learning from some of the things you learn are going to make sense and they're going to feel aligned and you're going to want to take them on and some you might want to discard. So the first thing to remember is this this is an opportunity to learn and with all learning, you're always able to decide what you're going to apply. You're not going to be forced to apply it or don't feel trapped in how you're going to use this. Going forward, still listen and to every skill that they teach you or every idea that they bring forward, engage with the learning, ask questions and, at the end of the day, if something is really not in alignment, don't apply it to your leadership or try it out and then decide if you are actually going to use it or not, and hopefully, just having that knowledge may decrease some of this concern of I'm going to become a worse leader from learning these things.

Speaker 2:

Now, this all being said, I think it's really important that we're careful when we decide to discard things, as you're learning from your mentor and you're considering all the things he's teaching you. I'd really focus on two things in particular and, honestly, these, I believe, are really the core of what makes the best leadership. That's my opinion on the best leadership. The first is how can I use this thing that I'm learning to respond to specific people or situations? I truly believe that the very best leadership is responsive. It's not just the same across the board. It says what is happening at this specific time or with this specific person that I could address in the specific way that would be most effective for that, because the opposite is saying here's the best way to do things, I'm going to do it, and then all my employees, in all situations, will have to fit within this framework that I've made for that.

Speaker 2:

So, for example, let's say your mentor suggests that you work on stopping employees when they start to ask you questions or when they're trying to ask you questions. You might think, well, this is not a good skill. Of course I want my employees to engage with me and be able to ask questions. You can still consider to yourself when might this be a useful skill? Maybe, down the road, you're going to get an employee who comes to you every five minutes with a question. Every five minutes they're going to be there in your office, they're going to be constantly asking these questions, interrupting your flow of work, and how is that going to impact how you do your work, how you support other employees? Those are all things to consider. So always answering those questions might not be useful.

Speaker 2:

So maybe, with this in mind, now that you've learned a little bit about how to do this, you make a plan with this employee that you're asking them not to do those five minute check-ins, but you're going to plan a time where they can come in with all of their questions from a set time and ask them all at the same time, and maybe you're going to have to still work that, that they're going to still come in once in a while and you're going to have to gently close that conversation and say, hey, remember, we have this planned time. So this isn't something, maybe a skill, that you want to apply in every situation. If you apply it in every situation with every employee, they're just going to think that you're a jerk who doesn't want to answer their questions. That's not good leadership either. So really start thinking about that kernel of usefulness for that skill, and ideally you can ask your mentor how they've used this skill that they're teaching you. What situations have they found it helpful for? What situations have they not found it helpful for? And maybe, if this is a skill that they're very attached to, maybe they are quite rigid in their leadership. Maybe this will even start to get them to question and learn from this of hmm, I wonder if this is or isn't being effective at that time.

Speaker 2:

The second thing I really think is so important for leadership is how am I going to track if the thing I'm trying now is having a positive impact or a detrimental one? And ultimately this is really the most important thing of being a leader what's the actual impact I'm having, not just what were my good intentions around what I'm doing? So, as you're trying out these new skills you're learning with your mentor, be in contact with your staff, be constantly checking in on this. You can let them know that you're trying out something new and you would love their feedback on if it worked better than the previous way. Or maybe the previous way worked better, or maybe they have a completely different way that they would like to see things done. You're now opening the door for more feedback because you're specifically asking about do you like process A or process B better? Do you like it when I do this better or that better? It's a lot easier for them to answer and you can get a pretty clear idea of what's working and what's not working, and you can even bring that back to your mentor to discuss the kind of feedback you got from that.

Speaker 2:

Ultimately, all the skills that you learn are going to impact your staff team and therefore impact your outcomes. So, really taking that time to prioritize understanding that impact, making sure you're constantly aligning it, constantly checking in about it. That means you're being responsive to what's needed, and if you heard from the other staff that your mentor is not the best leader, this is one of the best ways to make sure that you are also not getting labeled that same way. Because you are being responsive, you're helping your staff with what they need and that is ultimately what will make a good leader. That makes people feel heard and supported and respected. And, at the end of the day, there's always something to learn and grow from from an opportunity like this to be mentored, and I hope you're able to take that mindset in as you go into this new relationship.

Speaker 2:

So, jf, I hope that gave you some ideas. I hope you're excited now a little bit more about embracing this opportunity and what you could take from it. As a reminder to all our listeners, if you have a great story or question that you would like to share with us, I would love to have it and you can find the link for doing that in the description below. And then, as a thank you for doing that, I follow up with a complimentary session to make sure your question is answered and that we've gotten all those details correct and can help you out with that. So, jf, I look forward to following up on this conversation. I want to thank you so much for listening and learning with me, for considering the best ways that you can always be learning and growing as a leader and what kinds of ways you can embrace that, and remember to ask yourself what ripples am I going to create this week?

Speaker 1:

We hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure to subscribe, comment and connect with Leah at meetleahca.