to help themselves,
to release and realise more of their potential
Dennis Martin Consultants
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Leadership and Mentoring:
A Friend and/or A Foe relationship?
Page Key Points
On this Leadership and Mentoring page you will find:
* what's the difference between the two?
* A Friend and/or A Foe relationship, which make sense? which is best?
* why they are natural 'bedfellows'?
* the benefits of them developing a symbiotic relationship and the synergy and creativity this generates
* do the 'best' leaders make great mentors and vice versa?
Leadership and Mentoring, Where to Start?
How about some definitions of leadership and mentoring if that's alright with you?
Tony Robbins has described leadership as:
It’s usually discussed in the context of business, but leadership is also how you, as an individual, choose to lead your life.
The definition of leadership is to influence, inspire and help others become their best selves, building their skills and achieving goals along the way.
Mentoring and Mentorship are more traditionally defined as:
Mentoring:
the act or process of helping and giving advice to a younger or less experienced person, especially in a job or at school
Mentorship:
the activity of giving a younger or less experienced person help and advice over a period of time, especially at work or school
Definitions: taken from Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press
The definitions we use in practice are:
a leader is someone to whom others turn for help, advice and guidance
and we define mentoring and mentorship as follows:
a shared learning process to help others, to help themselves, to release and realise more of their potential (ref. Dennis Martin)
The definitions aren't all as helpful as I thought they would have been.
We can take some points from them, however. Ones that occur to me are;
* there are more similarities and commonalities than negative differences (e.g. the emphasis put on helping others - the word 'help' is in all the definitions)
* also, 'inspire and help others become their best selves' sounds to be in the same 'spirit' as 'release and realise more of their potential' to me, what do you think?
* the more traditional definitions of mentoring and mentorship imply, I think, that the mentor is 'in charge', a view not shared by the other definitions? (or by me!)
For me, the main conclusion I would take from the definitions is that there is a considerable 'overlap' between leadership and mentoring.
Both of them are aiming for the same purpose, helping people to progress and achieve more of their talents, skills and potential.
From my 30 years experience helping individuals, teams and companies implement mentoring in organisations / businesses, it seems to me that although leadership and mentoring share the same aims, the methods they use to achieve those aims can differ significantly in practice depending on, for example, the conditioning effects their culture has had on them in the past.
A 'classic' illustration of this would be in larger global organisations where the success criteria may have become dominated by, for example, the need to achieve ever increasing shareholder value.
In some companies this is measured meticulously and reported every quarter creating a strong short-termism view of how the business and its culture must be organised and driven 'from the top'.
Leadership in those circumstances tends to be distorted into what used to be called a 'command and control' management style with a 'minimum' tolerance for 'helping people to progress and release and realise more of their potential'.
Instead, the emphasis would be on 'leaders' directing, instructing and controlling others, holding short-term accountability for results, and using detailed metrics in creating top-down communications and in driving the business and its people.
Such 'command and control' 'leadership' would most often sub-optimise potential and people asset growth coming from a management mindset that perceived the two aims of shareholder value and employee development as a zero-sum.
And, when under 'pressure', managers could feel that mentors in the organisation were not synchronised with their priorities and were, therefore, something of 'a foe' rather than 'a friend'. They were not in alignment.
And mentors could find that leaders (managers?) were less cooperative when it came to, for example, allowing mentees to spend time with their mentors.
In some situations, I have seen mentoring 'wither on the vine' for lack of management commitment which would communicate to mentors that they were indeed 'a foe' and that feeling would gradually become mutual as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Does This Mean That Leadership and Mentoring are Incompatible?
No, not at all.
In fact their common purpose of releasing and realising more of their employees' potential makes them 'common bedfellows' because it is so foundational, strong and valuable in moving from short-termism 'survival' to the future security of 'survive and thrive'.
As we learned from our outstanding work with Pfizer Ireland Tablet Plant:
'the cultural initiative requires absolute commitment from the site leadership staff, and visible, felt sponsorship from Senior Leaders.
If this commitment is not forthcoming, then the initiative will not be successful.
This will require constant reiteration of the cultural purpose, values, behaviours and characteristics, as when under pressure individuals and organizations will tend to revert to what they know best (e.g. command and control management; centralized decision making; consistency, certainty and conformity; task dominated short-termism)'.
This extract was taken from The Pfizer Ireland Tablet Plant Story evaluation report (click the link above to see it) by a Senior Leader, edited by Dennis.
If we want to avoid 'a foe' relationship between leadership and mentoring in your business, it needs a clear visible and sustainable commitment from senior leadership that BOTH of them are essential to the future of the business and will receive the appropriate priority from leaders.
If Leaders and mentors are both held accountable to the CEO or small business owner. their 'natural bedfellows' purpose and relationship can be supported to yield major benefits for mentees, mentors, leaders and the business as a whole.
For example, when we are working with a client we include mentors, mentees and local leaders in group learning and training sessions to build teamwork, synergy and 'a friend' cultural climate.
We also include 'continuous improvement' techniques as part of our self-managing approach and in most situations, with local leaders and mentees and mentors working together the financial returns from implementing creative ideas exceed the costs, making mentoring self-financing.
When we take stock of teamwork relations, communications, morale and other social skills aspects, leadership and mentoring when integrated and supported appropriately yield impressive synergistic (i.e. 2 + 2 = 5) results including culture change and create a role model in the business for others to follow.
The answer to the question, 'do the best leaders make great mentors and vice versa?' is more difficult to answer than you might think at first glance.
WHY IS THAT?
Because people and change and culture and motivation and a lot of other things that might impact the situation are all complex adaptive systems.
WHAT ARE THEY?, you may well ask.
For detailed explanation, please go to our Complex Adaptive Systems page by clicking the link. It is well worth a visit.
Our learning experiences when training mentors, mentees and leaders, help them develop an understanding that the best laid plans, systems, procedures, programmes etc. may work great with linear systems but may often go 'wrong' with complex adaptive systems.
And that's because the complex interactions of the variables involved makes it unpredictable and unknowable WHAT MAY EMERGE FROM A COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM BEFORE IT HAPPENS.
We have evolved and learned a far more effective approach to help the mentee help himself or herself deal appropriately with complex adaptive systems.
And that is to enable the mentee and mentor (and their Leader(s) to take full ownership of the mentoring process and to self-manage it as the complex adaptive system that it is.
Our bespoke and different Mentoring training will help them learn not to self-manage a complex adaptive system as if it were a linear system and vice versa.
Learning that your business is a complex adaptive system will enable you and your people to see it in a different light, respect the complexities involved, feel in alignment with the business' goals and feel motivated to help improve all aspects of it as a means of thriving rather than just surviving.
So, in many cases the above is effective but not in all cases because what emerges when someone gets into the role is often quite different to what they and others were expecting.
Leadership and Mentoring Symbiosis: the best kept 'secret of success'
Sorry for the 'jargon' above but it accurately describes what I regard as the 'natural bedfellows' relationship between the two that when encouraged and nurtured leads to creative synergy and very impressive ROI (returns on mentoring investment).
But, it mustn't be taken for granted if you are 'serious' about either or both and the results they will achieve.
Put another way, leadership and mentoring cohesion has amazing and deep potential (i.e. unrealised possibilities) just waiting to be released and realised by mentors, leaders, mentees and others and which, when they do so, will unlock the greater potential of your business.
Finally, from my experience, having seen what I've described in action, this is probably one of the best kept 'secrets of success' in effective leadership and effective mentoring.
Which is interesting, as everyone is a leader (either formal or informal) and everyone is a mentor and mentee (either formal or informal) in their life and they bring those life skills to their workplace free. Hmm!!!
Maybe Deming was right when he reportedly said, 'our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people'.
But it is not inevitable or outside our control. It is the result of the choices we make.
I know for sure that we can make different choices and gain much improved success - if we really want it !!!
Contact me via the Contact Help Form below to discuss How? (no obligation, no cost)
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If you would like more information, please visit any or all of the pages listed below by clicking the appropriate links:
* The Lubrizol Story and PART TWO (not to be missed)
* The Pfizer Ireland Tablet Plant Story
* business mentoring and mentorship
Page Summary
On this Leadership and Mentoring page we have described:
* what's the difference between the two?
* A Friend and/or A Foe relationship, which make sense? which is best?
* why they are natural 'bedfellows'?
* the benefits of them developing a symbiotic relationship and the synergy and creativity this generates
* do the 'best' leaders make great mentors and vice versa?
We've covered a lot of ground on this page and I just want to THANK YOU for visiting my web site and reading this page. Your attention is much appreciated.
I hope you found the page as worthwhile and interesting reading it as I did writing it.
Kindest regards,
Dennis
I am Dennis Martin, born and bred in Yorkshire in the U.K., and in the last 30 years I have worked with clients in the U.K., Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, France, and with projects in U.S.A., Israel and Turkey.
I am proud of the fact that with many of our clients we have worked with them for a long time...
One employee commented: “I am sure in my mind that the training and new skills that we learned from Dennis made the transition in changing the organization to the way we work in multi-tasked, self-managed teams possible in a relatively short time.”
Taken from The Lubrizol Story independent report
Thank you Dennis for your help, positivity, support and mentoring during the very successful turnaround of our Lubrizol business. Our situation was dire and after a 40% downsizing so was morale.
Tony Strong, CEO,
Adare SEC,
Leicester, England
Another said: “For the first time ever, the entire workforce was assembled in one room and given the opportunity to understand the business, where it was heading and how each person could make a valued contribution to its ongoing success.”
Taken from The Lubrizol Story independent report