You Are Cordially Invited To

FountainBlue's When She Speaks, Women in Leadership Series,

 

May 10, 2007

 

The Mentors in Our Lives

Since the launch of our When She Speaks Series, we have had monthly conversations in celebration of women in leadership positions. Invariably, our conversations touched on the mentors, leaders and role models upon whose shoulders we stood, and the support and guidance we are consciously and unconsciously providing for those who come after us.

We focused on The Mentors in Our Lives in our May session. Whether they are professional mentors or personal coaches and advocates, every successful woman and man we have come across will willingly share stories of the people who have touched their lives, and impacted their life direction. For this event, our esteemed panel of influential women shared their personal and professional stories about how the mentors in their lives have impacted their thinking and development, and how this has, in turn, stimulated her thoughts and actions in support of others. Our discussion will be led by:

• Moderator Catherine Ngo, General Partner, Startup Capital Ventures

• Panelist Joan Banich, Brand Identity Manager, Cisco

• Panelist Katy Dickinson, Director, Business Process Architecture, Sun Microsystems

• Panelist Shelli Hendricks,Education Consultant, EMC and Director Mentorship Program, ATW

• Panelist Carol Muller, Founder and CEO, MentorNet 

• Panelist Eileen Sullivan, Group Director of IT, Cadence

Below is a compilation of advice for your reference.

Mentors are important:

• Great people have become great with the support, encouragement, connections, advice, etc., of other great people.

• Great people are also willing to help others to develop, providing they prove worthy of the time investment, because great people are also busy people!

• Successful mentoring relationships have led to better promotion, better retention, better job satisfaction, better community etc., so there's a good business case to invest in corporate mentoring programs.

• Successful mentor-mentee relationships are very rewarding personally and professionally.

• See statistics at http://www.mentornet.net/documents/about/results/evaluation, 

  http://www.mentornet.net/documents/about/experiences/Contest/ and http://www.mentornet.net/documents/about/results/0506stats.aspx.

When you're seeking a mentor:

• Know what you're looking for: Be specific about your needs, Research who can address those needs, Investigate how to best approach that person.

• If there is a support infrastructure that supports your organization, use it. Examples include Cadence's Women's Forums or Cisco's Women's Action Network grassroots programs, Sun's mentor-mentee matching program which matches you with one of 15 mentors you identified yourself, or EMC's list of tools and resources to help support the mentor-mentee relationship.

• Gender of the mentor is not as important as the goal/strategy for the relationship.

• Stretch your comfort zone about who would be a good mentor for you. Maybe working with someone with a different gender, ethnicity, role etc., would be more beneficial.

• Remove the word 'mentor' when approaching someone you're not comfortable with.

• Consider making 'situational' instead of a long-term relationships.

Advice for people running informal or formal mentorship programs, within the workplace or outside of it:

• Encourage the type of mentor-mentee relationship and community which supports empowerment as empowering one is empowering all.

• Help those in your group connect with resources and people within the organization as well as external associations and organizations like FountainBlue, ATW, GWLN for additional connections and resources.

• Create tools and resources to help people participating in mentoring program identify mentors, manage the logistics of the relationship, establish and revisit goals, measure results, build the mentorship relationship, sunset the relationship etc.,

• Be flexible about developing the program - mentors and mentees vary in their needs, so the focus is on how to help them communicate objectives up front, continue to develop the relationship, etc., not on enforcing a specific program to cover specific topics over a specific period of time.

• Create a mentoring circle so you can leverage the perspectives of many.

• Connect with others running mentor-mentee programs, both formal and informal/grassroots ones. Share ideas and resources.

• It helps to have an executive sponsor.

• Help people ensure a good ongoing mentor-mentee match. Continually evaluate and communicate the value of the relationship, how to address conflict, how to move on when the relationship is no longer working, etc.,