New Alliances
In a corporate world where mergers, acquisitions and downsizing have added layers of anxiety to the art of safely navigating office politics, is it possible--or even wise--to hitch your career wagon to a single rising star?
No, is the short and emphatic answer from consultants who specialize in career counseling and mentoring programs.
“It would be a very outmoded assumption” to believe you can come into an organization and pick a single, powerful ally to help you succeed, says Robin Holt, one of the founders of Alumnae Resources. A San Francisco company formed to help professional women make career changes, Alumnae Resources now offers career coaching, counseling services and workshops for men and women.
The benefits and pitfalls of forming office alliances and finding mentors inside and outside the workplace is a frequent topic of discussion with clients, Holt says.
Ironically, she says, the fast-moving nature of today’s workplace makes it both more imperative and more risky to forge bonds with people who can help you.
Not so long ago, someone entering the work force could expect to stay with a single company until retirement. It made sense to focus on cultivating relationships with one or two mid-level or even senior managers who could be counted on to take you with them to the top.
“The traditional view of mentoring was someone who would take you under their wing and pass on all of their wisdom and experience,” said Margot Murray, author of “Beyond the Myth and Magic of Mentoring: How to Facilitate an Effective Mentoring Program.”
“What we are finding today, since there is no such thing as job security,” Murray said, “is that every individual must prepare himself or herself for career resiliency by being multiskilled, flexible and a fast learner.” To do that probably requires a variety of mentoring relationships over the span of a career, she said.
Holt agrees. She recalls one client who formed a close working relationship with a boss, then followed him when he left to join another company.
“Then his boss took early retirement and left him there with no real support,” Holt said. “He hadn’t had a chance to contribute to the bottom line yet . . . to prove himself. So when the new person came in to take his boss’ job, he was laid off.”
In fact, experts say, the rapidly changing demands of the workplace have turned the concept of mentoring on its head in recent years. What used to be an informal process, usually initiated by corporate veterans seeking to sponsor bright young employees, is becoming a more formal process, often designed by consultants.
Commonly, mentors and the people they have agreed to help enter into “contracts” that lay out the boundaries and expectations of the relationship. Often the person being mentored details what he or she is looking for with a consultant, then finds a mentor with skills and experience to match.
“In the past, the process was always mentor-driven,” said Gayle Holmes, president and chief executive of Menttium Corp., a Minneapolis-based firm that helps Fortune 500 companies design mentoring programs and match employees with mentors inside and outside their firms.
“It was a very hierarchical model. The senior people--usually white males--were always trying to create clones. They wanted someone to think like me, walk like me, become me,” Holmes said.
Now, “every company is grappling with what to do around coaching and mentoring,” she said. “It is a huge industry. Companies have significant challenges around recruitment, development and retention of employees, especially of women and people of color. We are able to show them that having mentors inside and outside the company helps you become more productive and successful and makes you feel more successful, more valued by your firm. It is a very effective retention strategy.”
A variety of factors are driving companies to build formal mentoring programs, including fierce global competition and a tight U.S. job market. Companies are putting a premium on training, retraining and holding onto their skilled workers.
“Mentoring is the most cost-effective and efficient way to gain skills and experiences, because the coaching and feedback are targeted to individual needs,” Murray said. “What a mentor does is coach, teach, tutor, give feedback and share experiences--both successes and mistakes.”
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And what if your company has no formal process and you’re looking for someone to help navigate the labyrinth of office politics, teach you to use new software or improve your chances for promotion?
Murray, who has worked with Sun Microsystems, the Royal Bank of Canada and Allstate Insurance, among others, offers this advice: Set long-range career goals and map out a development plan that includes a list of specific skills and experiences you think you will need to succeed in the career you’ve chosen. “Then you are ready to look for a mentor.”
If you choose to look for one inside your organization, “You need to look at people who seem to be highly visible, seem to be on the fast track and are willing to be helpful,” said Kirstine O’Kelley, managing director of Menttium’s San Francisco office.
“You identify people in the organization who have skills and capabilities you want to aspire to. Take a look at the top ranking 10 people on the executive staff and say: ‘I would like to be like this person,’ or ‘I respect this person for the way they handle their people.’ ”
Then, O’Kelley said, “you facilitate ways to create visibility by participating in committees, creating ways to create an awareness about yourself and who you are.”
Once noticed, approach a potential mentor informally and ask for feedback on a specific project you are involved in, O’Kelley suggests.
“But you always have to be careful about not creating an awareness that you are this person’s golden child,” she cautioned. “You have to be really politically correct about how you create these alliances. It is always best not to center yourself on one individual and not to flaunt your relationship. You want to make sure that your relationships are well-rounded, in case that individual does leave at some point and you want to stay.”
In fact, O’Kelley said, one of Menttium’s programs matches women whom companies identify as their best and brightest mid-level managers with senior executives of others companies--sometimes even rival firms--in an effort to create a mentoring relationship free of the baggage of office politics.
“Because of the merger activity, there is probably less of a desire to go up the channel for mentoring and business coaching,” O’Kelley said. “I came to Menttium after 15 years in managed health care. Because there were constant acquisitions and mergers, I never felt comfortable really and truly confiding in somebody in the organization unless it was a peer. I never felt comfortable asking for advice from a higher-level executive, because they were always trying to position themselves.”
Menttium has found it easy to find senior executives willing to mentor young people--particularly women and minorities--from other firms for the yearlong program, Holmes said.
“They tell us these young people bring a whole different perspective on business, life and marketing than most of these executives have been exposed to,” Holmes said. “Most of them say they feel they get twice the benefits back that they put into the effort.”
