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Nothing for Something
Mentoring means investing in staff and getting nothing back—at least initially.
Long term? It could increase your firm’s value and make your work life a breeze.
Fast Focus
- Mentoring takes a commitment but pays big dividends.
- The ultimate reward of mentoring: an easier life as you surround yourself with future leaders.
- The best mentors let their mentees shadow their moves until they can fly solo.
Like the guy in the Mac Davis song who looks forward to leaving Lubbock, Texas, behind, I don’t think anyone will be sorry to see 2009 in the rearview mirror. The road ahead has to look better. The rough economy has made it a very difficult slog for everyone in the insurance industry, not to mention our clients.
Leaders are often aware of how the image they project and their actions affect their staff—from morale to customer service to sales. During tough times, I imagine many business leaders have had a hard time putting on their game face every day.
Even when times are tough, you need to keep people in the right mindset to help you run a successful business. Beyond that, you need to think about developing the best of your staff, turning them into true professionals as they gain experience. Rather than just lead by example, you could go the extra mile and become their mentor.
We all know that people are our most valuable asset. We are in a relationship business, and it takes a skilled professional to create and nurture a long-term business relationship. Your people—especially the ones who demonstrate the most potential—can benefit greatly from your experience and knowing how you think, act and operate the business. They will grow more confident, become better decision-makers, and develop into greater assets to your team.
Of course, there are many more human resource techniques that are important, including employee recruitment, training and sales management. But when I look back on my career in corporate America with KPMG, I realize that what truly made me successful was that I always had a mentor—someone I could consult for advice, assistance and guidance. Whether professional or personal, there was always someone I could turn to.
Today, however, when I look at most firms in the insurance industry, even those firms with good training and sales management practices, mentoring is often overlooked. This could be the missing link that can drive success for employees and firms.
GUIDING A TYPE A
If you are the typical Type A personality, you are passionate about your own professional growth and the success of your firm. I consistently tell my employees that they need a roadmap of their own future to control their destiny. It’s pure strategic planning, on a personal level. When you’re traveling somewhere new, it’s a good idea to consult a map or one of those fancy GPS systems we now have to guide us around. However, some Type A personalities would rather toss the map in the backseat and think they can handle it all themselves. It’s a trait of the Type A to be confident, focused on themselves, sporting a pretty good ego and not necessarily eager to share success strategies with others. Sound like any producers you know?
The go-it-alone instinct is not the ideal way to build a successful firm. However, you can serve as the navigation system that gives even the most self-directed staff members a boost in the right direction. Maybe they’ll even get a little bit used to the convenience of your advice and come looking for it, giving you more opportunities for mentoring.
So why are so few people good at mentoring? For one thing, it is hard work. Sometimes a leader’s insecurities and ego-driven attitudes can inhibit a mentoring situation. Finally, some people have no understanding of what mentoring is all about and how it drives success.
John C. Maxwell, a New York Times bestselling author, has written a number of great business books, among them The 21 Indispensable Qualities of Leader and Mentoring 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know. I’d like to share some of his insights and how they can apply to your business.
TRAITS OF A MENTOR
Maxwell says to succeed you need a certain mindset. The characteristics of a true mentor include the following:
Make people development your top priority. This sounds simple, yet we all know that it is easier to ignore people than to develop them. I look at it this way: If I surround myself with people who are better than I am, my life will be easier. My mentor at KPMG used to tell me the same thing but in a different way: “The better I can make you, the less work I need to do!”
Limit who you take along. You can’t mentor everyone. I see it as similar to the 80-20 rule in sales: Spend 80% of your mentoring time on the top 20% of your staff—the ones with the most promise. This is very challenging because you are placing your bet on a person or a select group of employees.
Consider these traits when evaluating people to mentor. A good candidate:
- Makes things happen
- Sees opportunities and runs with them (as opposed to being reactionary)
- Can influence others (trust, respect, integrity and ethics are key ingredients)
- Adds value or possesses a unique skill
- Attracts other leaders, not just followers
- Inspires ideas
- Possesses uncommonly positive attitudes
- Lives up to commitments
- Shows loyalty to the culture, mission and vision of the firm.
Develop relationships before starting out. You will find that the same mentoring approach doesn’t work for everyone. You need to understand what is important to others and their strengths and weaknesses. Building a personal relationship of mutual respect and trust will result in their desire to follow your direction, and their learning will increase. The importance of trust cannot be emphasized enough. Before a person can trust your motivation and leadership, they must trust you as a person.
Give help unconditionally. Mentoring is not about getting something in return. Your sole focus has to be on the development of others. Your return, if you are successful, is that your work life will be easier as you surround yourself with future leaders.
Let them fly with you for a while. A classroom approach of lecturing is not mentoring. Mentoring is about letting the person follow you and learn from you as you do your job. Eventually, they will be able to do it themselves.
Put fuel in their tank. Give the people the resources to make them be successful. For example, many successful mentoring programs assign certain books that the person must read throughout the year to enhance their on-the-job training. I had a program like that and found it invaluable.
Stay with them until they can solo successfully. Mentoring is a long-term process. You must consistently provide the guidance until the person is truly ready to set out on their own.
Clear the flight path. Don’t create obstacles to success. Give clear direction, eliminate distractions and, just like the air traffic controller, stay in frequent contact and communication. When the person is ready to go solo, make sure they have enough freedom to be creative. The way to do this is by making sure they operate by key tenets that all employees need to know and understand: responsibility, authority and accountability.
Help them repeat the process. Now we come to the key. You have successfully mentored an employee—great job. Your goal now is to make sure the person you mentored becomes a mentor to someone else. That closes the loop on a successful mentoring process.
MENTORING SECRETS
If mentoring were as simple as described above, I think many more leaders and firms would adopt a culture of mentoring. But it’s not easy. It takes a real dialogue and engagement between the mentor and mentee. Here are some other tips as described by Maxwell:
Share your dream and vision. All great leaders have a dream that they share with people who can make it a reality. Sharing your dream and vision for yourself, for your firm and for others will help clarify the motivation of your mentoring.
Ask for commitment from the individual. Commitment is the powerful mechanism that says you will perform regardless of any excuses. It’s very different than just having an interest. Interest is when one does something only when it is convenient to them. You want committed individuals, not interested individuals.
Set goals for success. People need clear objectives set before them if they are to achieve anything of value. As in any type of planning, make the goals appropriate, attainable and measurable. Goals should be in writing and agreed to. In addition, goals should require a “stretch.” If a person does not have to stretch to achieve a goal, they will not grow professionally.
MAKING IT CULTURAL
While these tips and strategies may seem very simple and straightforward, few firms have a true mentoring system in place. The key indicator that you have successfully created a mentoring culture is that the process can be reproduced.
General Electric offers a great example of successful mentoring. Leaders are trained every single day, week, month and year. It is why so many great leaders at GE are sought by other companies.
But why are so few firms like GE? Size is not the issue. Large and small firms alike can create a culture of mentoring. Generally, a failure to mentor can be traced directly to a culture that considers it enough to offer employees a job and paycheck. Mentoring takes more effort and a different attitude. Successful firms create an environment of encouragement that has the ability to transform people’s lives, both professionally and personally. This is not a simple task; we often are judged by our bottom-line results, and you cannot measure such transformation on the balance sheet. But these are foundational elements for your success.
Firms that understand the importance of foundational items like building a culture and focusing on high-quality recruitment will build a team of individuals who embody traits such as trust, support, encouragement and cooperation. These, in turn, are the building blocks that will turn your firm into one that has a culture of mentoring.
The ability to create a culture of mentoring is incredibly powerful. It takes desire and commitment to the process, but the rewards are many: not only successful individuals, but a very successful firm.
If there were only one effort you could take to build your firm, mentoring would be as close to a sure thing as there could be to help you develop a sales culture, grow organically, and increase your top line and profitability.
I firmly believe that the foundation of enhancing shareholder value begins with the tangible and intangible results that a culture of mentoring brings with it. Try it. You may find you work less, have less stress and have a better balance of work and life. And, by the way, you will also have a firm that is substantially more valuable than it is today.
Robert Lieblein is a contributing writer and managing partner of Hales & Co. |
