What Drag Queens Taught Me About Mentorship (And Why Corporate Got It Wrong)

In this episode, Edan unpacks what happened when he was matched with a mentee through Movember’s MoMentor program - and why it made him question everything we think we know about mentoring.

Drawing on a past conversation exploring Mother/Daughter relationships in the Drag world, he challenges the corporate model of mentoring as too safe, too polite, and too low impact.

This episode explores a different lens - one built on identity, accountability, belonging, and legacy - and asks a bold question:

Have we completely misunderstood what real mentorship is supposed to be?

Join the Edan Haddock - Total Talent community (formerly Rubberband)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent. I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember. This week at Movember, we launched our Momentor program. And I got matched with a mentee, which is so great. And I'm so excited. Genuinely, I absolutely love that we're doing it. And I love that we're investing in people like this. Because everyone talks about development and everyone talks about growth. But very few organizations actually put structure, time, and intent behind it. So this matters. And being matched today, it made me pause. And to be honest, I didn't expect that. Because I really believe in mentoring. I've benefited from it. I've done it informally for years. But something about it this time, it felt different. And I started asking myself a question that I don't think we ask enough. And that question is what are we both actually signing up for? When we reach out for a mentor or when we say yes to mentoring? And I'm not talking about what the program says, and I'm also not talking about what the framework says. But what does it actually mean? If I'm honest, a lot of what we call mentoring in the corporate world, it doesn't always land the way we think it does. And that thought, well, it took me somewhere I wasn't expecting. It took me back to a conversation I had a couple of years ago with Penny Clifford and Lisa Mann. I'm talking about a mother and daughter relationship in the drag queen world. And I remember walking away from that conversation and thinking, that's intense, that's real, and that's something else entirely. And so today it clicked. Because the more I thought about mentoring, the more I realized we might have been looking in completely the wrong place for what great mentorship actually looks like. Let's really sit in this for a minute. Corporate mentoring. We've all seen it, and most of us have been part of it. And on paper, it really looks great. It can be structured, intentional, people focused. You get matched, you get guidelines, you get cadence. Tick tick tick. And then reality kicks in. The first session happens, it's good. There's energy, there's curiosity. You both show up prepared. The second session, still good. Then often the third session, life starts creeping in. Workload picks up, priorities shift. By session four, you're rescheduling. By session five, it's a let's catch up soon. And then it disappears. No big ending, no defined outcome. Just drift. And here's the thing: no one did anything wrong. And that's the uncomfortable part. Because often the model itself, it isn't designed for depth, it's actually designed for participation. There is a politeness problem. There really is something else going on as well. Corporate mentoring is too polite. We don't want to offend. We don't want to push too hard. We don't want to overstep. So what do we do? We say we we stay in safe territory. Advice, suggestions, light coaching. But we rarely go here. For example, you're not showing up the way you think you are. Or this is the thing that's holding you back. Or even if you don't change this, nothing else will change. Because that requires trust and honesty and a level of investment. And that level of investment, it's really what corporate mentoring relationships never actually reach. Now go back. Before corporate, before HR frameworks, before development programs. Mentorship came from apprenticeship, blacksmiths, carpenters, tradespeople. You didn't sit down and talk about growth. You worked side by side. You watched, you tried, you failed. And someone corrected you in real time. And sometimes not gently, but effectively. Because the goal itself wasn't to make you feel good. The goal was to make you better. And there was something else baked into that model. Your success. Your success reflected on them. There was pride in it, ownership, responsibility. Now compare that to a corporate mentoring program where if it works great. And if it doesn't, no one really notices. The drag model. Now, let's go back to that conversation. Penny Clifford, Lisa Mann. Again, I'm talking about the mother-daughter relationship in drag. Now I remember thinking at that time, this is mentoring. But it's not mentoring as we know it. Because in drag, this is identity, this is survival, this is belonging. A drag mother doesn't just guide, she brings you in. She gives you a name, a space, a platform. She teaches you how to perform, but also how to carry yourself. How to deal with criticism. How to handle the room. How to own who you are. And the daughter isn't passive in this. She shows up. She learns. She earns it. There's pride in being part of a house. There's expectation. There's standards. And it's not hidden. It's visible. Public. Connected. This is the bit I keep coming back to. Corporate mentoring focuses on skills. Drag mentorship focuses on identity. And those are not the same thing. Skills say, here's how you do the job. Identity says, this is who you are and when you do it. And that's the difference. That difference is everything. Because careers don't accelerate on skill alone, they accelerate on presence, confidence, clarity. And someone seeing something in you before you fully see it yourself. Let's talk about houses. Because something corporate, this is something corporate just doesn't replicate well. In drag, you belong to something bigger than yourself. You're part of a group. There's shared identity, shared energy, and shared pride. And then that creates momentum. Because you're not just growing for yourself, you're representing something. Now, looking at corporate, we say things like community and networks, but mentoring is still mostly one-to-one, isolated, no shared identity, no collective energy. And because of that, it can lack weight. This is where it gets uncomfortable again. Because drag mentorship isn't soft. It's supportive, but it's not soft. Feedback is direct, expectation is clear, and standards are high. Because again, there's pride attached. Now compare that to corporate, where feedback in mentoring often sounds like you might want to consider, or have you thought about that? It's optional language, it's passive, non-committal, low risk, but also at the end of the day, low impact. And then there's this legacy. In drag, your daughter is a reflection of you. Their success, their presence, their reputation. It ties back to you. Now imagine if that was true in corporate. Imagine if every person you mentored was visibly connected to you. If their growth was part of your story, your reputation, your leadership. Would you show up differently? Of course you would. So coming back to this week, Momentor, being matched with someone, it made me think. I don't want it to be polite or surface level or safe. I want it to matter. And if that means I've got to show up differently, more invested, more honest, more accountable, and I've got to create space for them to do the same. So what do we do with this? Because we're not going to turn corporate mentoring into drag houses overnight. That'd be fun. But we can shift the mindset. From advice to investment, from sessions to relationships, from guidance to identity, from optional to meaningful. And maybe most importantly, from low stakes to shared accountability. So here's where I've landed. Maybe mentoring isn't broken. Maybe we've just diluted it. Made it too safe, too structured, too disconnected from identity. And maybe the best version of mentoring was never meant to live inside a program. Because the most powerful version of it is human, raw, visible, accountable. And honestly, the drag world figured that out years ago. So if you're mentoring someone right now, ask yourself, are you just giving advice or are you shaping someone? And if you're being mentored, ask yourself, are you just listening or are you becoming something? Because that's the difference. And maybe, just maybe, the future of mentoring, it looks a little less like a framework and a little more like a house. This is Eden Haddock. This is Total Talent. Thank you so much for tuning in again. And as always, stay on the tools.