Does She Need a Role Model, a Mentor, or a Sponsor?
It was about time to get the word ‘women’ into ‘mentor’. So, I did. Just launched my new company twomentor (t-women-tor), LLC to get the words ‘women’ and ‘men’ into STEM mentoring. It will take a unified approach. Today we celebrate twomentor’s one month anniversary with this blog and luckily not Pampers and Medella equipment at this stage of raising her.
So do girls and young women need a role model, a mentor or a sponsor? Likely all three along their professional paths.
If we want to recruit, develop, retain great girls & women in the STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math) workforce we need to look at the whole pipeline and what women most need at different phases.
Reflecting back, I realize I needed three things personally and professionally:
1] A Role Model
2] A Mentor
3] A Sponsor
A role model was needed to show examples of great women: in science, in Senate, as leaders, board members, in tech, as business owners, and perhaps soon as President of the USA. The women in my family also served as key role models of women who found professional fulfillment, have families, and hung out with great loyalty with their girl friends (Mom and Ina just celebrated 55 years ‘together’ as BFFs). My father who came to America as a refugee from Hungary served also as a powerful example of resiliency and perseverance. He also taught me gratitude.
A mentor took on the role in a socratic way of helping me find answers within myself. In middle school a mentor (Karen C.) gave me an internship and taught me that I love small business. She let me work at her store for three years and helped me build some skills such as: inventory management, running the cash register, making marketing signs with Mr. Sketch pens, customer service and more. Mostly, she taught me to love work. I haven’t stopped working since, a dozen jobs and a few degrees later. A college mentor taught me how to get my work published and how to see others in their plights. A peer mentor got me into an interview for my first job at the company she worked at. Another mentor more recently taught me how to use a 3D printer. One of my mentors is a 72 year old dynamo and one is a 19 year old tech whiz.
Mentors came into my life as welcomed guides and were both male and female. One common ingredient was they all reflected that I had to have faith in myself, believing in me often before I believed in myself.
While a Mentor encourages one to climb the work ‘tree’ to new heights, a sponsor takes on the role of going out on a limb for others. In other words, a mentor speaks to you and a sponsor speaks about you and advocates for you behind closed doors. Mike Caslin was such a sponsor in my life and I wrote about him HERE. Mike mentored me when I ran Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship in a few markets and then he championed me to take his national VP job after serving the company 20 extraordinary years. Other people wanted the job and he was the one to say ‘Let’s choose Julie.’ At several conferences recently, women would approach me and ask how to get such a sponsor. From all these discussions & research, I am becoming more convinced that we lose professional women mid-career because they do not have a sponsor.
I reflect back and clearly understand I needed three things from girl to career woman: a Role Model (s), a Mentor (s), a Sponsor (s). I think my start-up needs all three, and gratefully, they are all swirling around twomentor, llc as key advisors.
But I need to acknowledge something else here.
I am also now needed more than ever to be a Role Model, a Mentor and/or a Sponsor and I suspect you are too. It’s time to start. Start simple (invite her/him for coffee chat). Start soon. Invest in her. Pay it forward.
Julie Kantor is a global speaker on women in STEM, President & CEO of Twomentor, LLC offering mentor training and strategy to America’s top corporations. She is also Senior Advisor to Million Women Mentors and STEMconnector.
Why I Loved Yoga With Goats: And What I Learned About Us
As I got some of my best stretches in (ever) on the yoga mats, I watched the goat circus around me. Eating, headbutting, communicating, collaborating. My heart felt light, I took each new stretch in with joy and shared smiles with the people participating around me.
Why did Yoga with Goats make so much sense to me psychologically? A bucket list item, that was never on my list? Was it that I stretched better than I ever thought I could? That I felt more connected and plugged in with people I didn’t know very well? That I felt more refreshed and relaxed than I had been in weeks? That I (gulp) really enjoyed exercising? Or maybe it was something else.
But let me start at the base of the Santa Cruz mountains. As I started my drive up the winding hills the day before a speaking engagement at the San Jose Marriott, I marveled at the views and vistas. The winding road was idyllic and I pulled over to snap some pictures of the breathtaking ride.
Making a strong right then left in between these mini mountains, a bicyclist appeared in my sights and I slowed down. “This doesn’t seem safe,” I thought to myself and appreciated that there was no cell phone reception to distract drivers. There are a lot of blind spots and curves on this road. A mile later a few motorcycles passed me. “Share the Road,” said a big yellow sign and then another, and then another.
As I am in the mentoring space, I thought of leaders in their cars trying to get to from point B to point C and others joining the workplace on bikes and motorcycles. Five generations in the workforce. Who owns the road? How do we coexist on the journey in a really positive, safe way?
As I arrived at the base of the farm and home of Original Goat Yoga, I had a long walk alone up to the top. You see I arrived an hour early. Being a city dweller, I was a little glad I had mace in my purse in case there was an unexpected visit from a mountain lion. I joined 20 other people including my brother Andrew and sister- in- law Rachael who organized the event with gluten-free Cake Boss cupcakes and. pink grapefruit Polar Springs. They were celebrating her birthday and their 7th year wedding anniversary.
“I don’t see them as separate,” said the owner and yoga teacher Lucy when I asked her which was her favorite goat. “They are always together, like a single unit in my mind,” she shared.
Andrew and I sat next to each other on light blue and grass green yoga mats. I was in from Boca Raton, Florida and admiring him as a grown man, husband, and top executive at a very successful high-tech growth company that delivers eco-friendly products to your doorstep. Twelve goats roamed around us as we took on new yoga poses led by Lucy. They ate grass, looked at us with curiosity, occasionally used our mats to do their goatly-business, nibbled on our clothes, kissed us, and every once in a while a ruckus would break out with some healthy head-butting. Lucy, the owner, and her husband Roman were masterful at keeping everything flowing with fun, frolic, co-existence. They also shared with us their life ‘off the grid’ a few miles away from the heart of Silicon Valley.
I reflected on the isolation I am seeing in the workforce (and have written about extensively). America’s Loneliness epidemic, corporate burnout. People struggling with new leadership (and feeling valued), need for more transparency, living in silos, fear of change, growth in their companies, toxic cultures, not wanting to disturb each other. The goats represented to me COLLABORATION. We welcomed and even reveled in their disturbing ways. Clumbsy, charming, huggable, feedable, we were happy to be in their presence. They were present and we became more present to the immense benefits of yoga and their charming antics. Disclaimer: If you are a true Yogi, this might be sacrosanct. I hope that I have not offended in sharing my perspective of this experience.
They weren’t lonely and that made us more plugged into the world around us. More plugged into each other, and the fresh crisp air flowing with children’s laughter and glee. We felt a kinship with their community and became part of it for that 60–70 minutes.
I laid down on the mat for some final stretches and thought about signing up for yoga courses back home. My body felt great. Just then a two-inch hoof slammed down an inch under my right eye. It surprised me more than it hurt. I knew I would have to share a part of this story in my speech the next day, a story of connectedness, in part to explain the black-and-blue shiner on my face. We closed the day with a shared “NAAAAAAAmaste” and a bow to each other. The goat was being a goat being his/her authentic self, and a little makeup covered it all up just fine but the experiential imprint stays with me to ponder.
Julie Kantor is CEO of Twomentor LLC. When not attending Yoga with Goats classes, she and her team help corporations, associations, and Universities build mentoring initiatives. She can be reached at julie@twomentor.com
#OriginalGoatYoga
Mentoring is the Down Payment on Our Future
“Service is the Rent We Pay for Living,” said our high school graduation speaker Marian Wright Edelman in 1987.
I agree. And reflecting add, Mentoring is the Down payment on our Future.
For the busy working woman, service & mentoring can be tough. We are increasing the hours at the office, online at home, squeezing in quality time for our kids, our partners, trying to be decent daughters and daughters in law. We have less time with our girlfriends which we know is a key linkage to our sanity. And its not just working mothers, fathers want more time with their kids too and millenials have worlds of interests outside of the office with a distinct entrepreneurial mindset to their careers.
… But they need us.
We are needed to be mentors and champion others. Especially as we grow in influence and have more sophisticated decision-making networks. A few words of wisdom, a listening ear, some concrete guidance, can make a world of difference to someone in job transition or trying to find their way post-college.
… And we need us.
As we start realizing that the workforce is not the diverse, merit based system we thought it was and that there are political nuances we need to understand. The stats are dismal when it comes to women on boards, in leadership roles, in STEM. We learn we need to lift each other up and consider applying a two-candle perspective (when a candle lights another candle, they can both light others and all shine equally bright. ) We need to not compete for single digit spots, but push to create and open up more seats at the table.
So I have an action item for us all (male and female). Bring on an intern this Summer. Run an ad at your local University, on Craigslist, get your HR office to help. Give her a project where she works with you on something big. Set goals. Invite her to meetings with you. Interview her on her aspirations. Have her meet with two other executives you admire. Have her represent you at an event or listen in to important calls. Teach her to use technology in a work setting, software, have her teach you (reverse mentoring). Be open about your successes and failures.
If you are looking for more diversity in your workplace, consider this part of an on-boarding strategy.
BTW – you can count your intern mentee as part of the Million Women Mentors as can your colleagues who do the same.
Light her candle, let in some additional light and life to your workplace … as she is a daughter, a sister, potentially a future mother, scientist, IT leader and she needs you to help her light up her path.
Is Corporate Mentoring Nice to Have or Have to Have?
In this weeks’ NYTimes, there was a great article “Executive Mentors Wanted: Only Millennials Need Apply,” by Kevin Roose. The topic is seasoned leaders getting mentored by our younger workforce (reverse mentoring). Jack Welch coined the phrase and we are fans of it. We actually highlighted two months ago an interview on a great initiative at Pershing (BNY Mellon Co.) where 96% of Millennial mentors stayed at their jobs four years out. It’s empowering for all parties as we grow and strengthen ties in our multi-generational workforce.
What troubles us is each day we speak to companies who are shying away from mentoring their new hires and building sponsorship initiatives to elevate women and high potential diverse employees. Companies hope mentoring is happening informally, have trouble selling it up, but each time we survey large rooms of executives and grad students, less than 40% report they have a professional mentor. Roose’s article articulated the issue and the need well, that we can no longer shirk our responsibility (and as we like to say in training, the building of our Living Legacies):
“As reverse mentoring programs grow in popularity, some young workers still lack the traditional, top-down mentorship meant to help them rise in their careers. According to a 2016 report by Deloitte, the consulting firm, more than half of young workers said their leadership skills were not being fully developed in the workplace.”… “It really is the opposite of the mentorship offer that firms have historically made to young people,” Mr. Harris said [Malcolm Harris, the author of new book “Kids These Days”]. “Now it’s just, ‘We want you to come work for us, and teach us how to do our jobs.’ ”
I guess the point is reverse mentoring, diverse mentoring, peer mentoring, traditional mentoring… we need to be much more deliberate in engineering the opportunities to drive employee engagement and retention. We’ve decided to extend our 2018 offer to help you get started. We want to see your multi-generational workforce thrive in 2018! We can help you think this through. Let’s talk!
Julie
You can learn more about Twomentor with our latest Overview Prezi here: https://prezi.com/p/mtpvhyrq5_op/
Learn more about the issues: Video on Elevating Women and Millennials in the Workforce http://bit.ly/1SZ8wrq
Time to Mentor 2.0 (Mentor+Sponsor)
I was on cloud 91/2 last week at the Diversity Women’s Leadership Conference put on Diversity Woman Magazine at the Grand Floridian (heaven, two thumbs up!). It had heart, some of America’s top Diversity Leaders, 1:1 coaching, and great content. A common theme was how to recruit and retain top STEM talent, especially women and minorities. There was also a new recognition with many leaders that STEM is a new perspective on Diversity and we need more Diversity in STEM.
We will see global diversity in who possesses next generation capabilities (employability skills, digital fluency, and innovation excellence) for tomorrow’s global STEM jobs? This demand side approach (what companies need- the jobs) + new capabilities (employability skills) = STEM 2.0
I have written a lot on this topic HERE, and in partnership with Tata Consultancy Services we put out White Papers: Women in STEM Realizing the Potential.
Mentoring has a key role to play on moving the needle for girls & young women professionally and we need to much more to recruit, onboard and retain diverse STEM talent. Most of the companies at the conference advocated heavily for formal and informal mentoring within their corporations. One challenge in the informal space was an inability to put metrics and outcomes behind it. Remember, you get what you measure. Mentoring increases employee satisfaction and retention. TheBusiness Case for Mentoring by our friends at Chronus shares a lot of good datapoints. For example, note the huge increase in mentor and mentee retention at Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle) 2006 case study as well as who got salary increases and promotions
To take a step back…
Mentor 1.0 over the past several decades was:
– How is your home life?
– Let’s discuss thoughts on career life balance
– College and application help
– Let’s work together on your resume
– Let’s go to a movie or shoot some hoops
There is much value in Mentoring 1.0 and the care and support behind it.
The difference is Mentor 2.0 includes a distinct skills-based focus and sponsorship component* ie.:
– Here are the specific skills you will need to make it in the 21st century economy
– Let’s discuss job opportunities in various geographies and what they pay (women in STEM make 92 cents on a dollar for example of what men make vs. other careers that pay 77 cents on a dollar)
– Let’s discuss what type of education and experience you will need to get a good job or advance in your career
– Let’s connect you with opportunity (FIRST robotics competition, Python coding class, Sit down with CEO of a IT firm and create an opportunity to shadow her, Visit a laboratory …)
– Let’s have lunch with the SVP at XYZ company and focus on three things we want to learn about his/her professional path and work.
– Let’s see if we can get you a summer internship ( Did you know according to Gallup only 4.5% of high school students were in Summer internships last year? )
– Have you set up a Linkedin page? Let’s take an online networking class, together
– Let’s discuss two key books for young women over Sushi and blue sparkly pedicures:The Confidence Code and Executive Presence
* Put simply, Mentor 2.0 will have a key role in on-boarding and retaining a diverse workforce as we combine skills-based Mentoring and most ideally Sponsorship.
A mentor talks to you, listens and guides you.
A sponsor talks about you. Your sponsor (who respects you highly and knows exactly what your capable of) champions you for opportunity (internships, jobs, promotions, university entrance).
Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s CTI research showed us that men are 46% more likely to have a sponsor. Women in STEM often also share they have male sponsors that truly helped them in their careers and opened doors.
Women will likely feel more comfortable starting as a mentor. Then with a growing good relationship and rapport, move it to a Mentor 2.0 relationship, and then to Sponsorship (or helping find a sponsor through advocacy of your mentee). This Mentor 2.0 strategy will dramatically expedite a diverse STEM workforce with both mentor and mentee high-fiving.
But don’t get all Geico- caddywhompus with concerns. Start with just 2 hours a month, 20 hours a year with your mentee and request your mentee pay-it-forward too.
Julie Kantor is President & CEO of Twomentor, LLC a management consulting firm that builds mentoring cultures & elevates women in STEM. She lives in Bethesda Maryland with her husband, middle school daughter and Havanese puppy, Naomi.
Going Through Big Corporate Changes? Time to Start Mentoring Initiative at Your Company
What happens when the leaders leave (or are replaced)? When the revenues are not resembling hockey stick performance? When a big company gobbles up a smaller company? When there is an 8% layoff of the workforce? People start feeling like their jobs might be on the line. They feel a new leader might not understand their contributions. They might feel someone is trying to steal their lunch. Culture changes. Isolation increases along with Indeed.com searches. Linkedin resumes get brushed up. Mistrust or toxicity coupled with insomnia can seep in.
I’ve heard it many times in my five years of building mentoring initiatives. “Julie, with all the change, shouldn’t we wait until after things calm down to get started with our mentoring initiative?” a top HR executive asked me.
In running both mentor and mentee training, often the rising-star mentee is looking for someone who can help them navigate the new environment. Someone who will sit down with an iced coffee (or Ben & Jerry’s pint) for a chat, a safe haven to reflect on, ‘How do I best position myself in the midst of change?’ ‘How do I get off to the right start with my new boss?’ ‘How can I be part of the solution, when I am worried about how things are going financially?’
The mentor, often with more experience, might not have all the answers, but likely has experienced more change in their tenure and will have new perspectives to offer up.
The mentor serves as a role model. They care about their mentees goals and objectives and can be instrumental in talking someone ‘off a ledge’ who is nervous. Encourager and challenger, the mentor often will help the mentee understand their role in better ‘owning’ their career trajectory and not being the victim in a who-moved-my-cheese environment that we are seeing more and more. Change = Today’s Reality.
I was watching Good Morning America a month ago and the words ‘America’s Loneliness Epidemic’ crawled across the bottom of the screen. Curious, I Googled the UCLA research and it was eye-opening. Almost 1:2 Americans (20,000 in the study) stated that they sometimes or always feel alone, lonely or left out. Particularly hard hit are our youngest generations. How does that manifest in a workplace which is often a key pillar in our lives and psychological/financial stability? Read more HERE on the study’s findings.
In building a pilot-to-sustainable and scalable mentoring initiative, we create an opportunity for our workforce to not isolate. A world where people are recognized for helping-each-other. We engineer and hold the space for people to connect with morale-boosting support from the top. Employees have the learning conversations with structure in place.
When I ask hundreds of mentors in trainings what do people most come to them for advice on, the response is usually:
1] To help them advance their career,
2] To learn how to network better,
3] To be better at people management, leadership and
4] To help them prioritize
With the fast-paced corporate growth and more predictable flux ahead, do you want to wait for another season or reason to show your people you are a stand for them as they take a stand for each other?
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Julie Kantor is CEO of Twomentor, LLC a high impact company that provides mentor strategy, training and execution for large companies and organizations. She can be reached at julie@twomentor.com
Developing & Mentoring Your Junior Sales Force
“The best players do not always make the best coaches or mentors,” said a Commercial Real Estate HR leader Stephen* on the phone recently.
“I am leaving the company because they just handed me a phone book, a quota and want me to sink or swim. There has been almost no training, they get irritated when I ask questions and don’t even let me attend the meetings I set up,” said Rachel* who is in the Insurance business.
“Our senior brokers, the ones who are making 700k, a million+ a year. They don’t mentor. They give a new associate $20 and say ‘buy yourself a cup of coffee too.’ That’s the extent of it, but they think they are mentoring,” says Mitchell* a veteran executive who manages operations. “They are entrepreneurs and we barely see them in the office.”
We know that baby boomer sales rockstars are close to retiring and that our younger workforce needs more training and development to feel they can be successful (or they leave).
The proverbial old boy’s network exists yet Linkedin and other networking platforms are reducing social interactions as people Link-off the golf course and isolate behind the blue screens.
It’s time to double down on mentoring to prepare, engage, retain, diversify our company’s future rainmakers but how do we do it?
“My associate gets 30% (commission) on my deals now,” says SVP Jared.* It used to be 20%, but he has doubled the number of sales calls we go on and does the big research. “I mentored him when he started and now that our financial success is linked, I guess I am his sponsor as well,” states Jared. (We discussed that a mentor speaks with you and a sponsor speaks about you, champions you to others).
Jared, a people person who is in his 40’s meets regularly with three junior associates that do not report to him directly and often discusses:
1] How he and his associates set up and manage their pipeline.
2] Moves management.
3] How to deal with the “death valley” (rejection and no sales for a period of time) and his many failures.
4] How and where to best network + cold call.
5] Closing-the-deal strategies and breakthroughs.
6] Financial projections.
7] Where the best Greek food is near the office and more.
Linda*, Adrian* and Sara* started coming to him more and more for mentoring over the past six months as he was one of the few senior salespeople who would stop the world for them. Jared is generous with his time and shares that he gets a lot out of supporting them as well. People mentored him early on and he wants to pay-it-forward.
So what do you do to boost the development of your junior executives?
Well, to get started, we recommend the following three steps:
1] If you are in HR/learning/diversity do some speed/flash mentoring at lunch or a happy hour to break down the barriers and help people better recognize the value proposition of both helping others and asking for help. If you are a sales rainmaker, reach out and schedule coffee/lunch today with 1 – 3 people you can help. Don’t wait. In fact, pause from reading this article, send three texts. Your time = money and your investment of time in them = 10x.
2] Have people from session #1 (senior execs and non-reporting junior execs) agree to meet with each other three times over the next 6-8 weeks (or 6x over 6 months) to discuss:
Sample topics: Best deal, worst deal, last deal, skill(s) that I need the most to be successful, how to close, where to network, sales funnel, overcoming challenges, use of Linkedin, volunteer/board service, falling and then getting back up, and more.
Extra credit if the junior exec can attend or observe the senior exec on a sales call or two. When we run these Flash sessions for clients, we love to give out lunch cards or Starbucks cards to boost these 1:1 connections and illustrate the company values mentoring.
3] Provide mentor + mentee training (we can help) via webinar or in person. We also recommend co-sponsor training for mid-level to senior executives (how do people from different industries champion each other for opportunities with a WIN/WIN mindset).
“My associate just found in his research that a transaction happened that we didn’t know about,” said Jared. “We need to send them an invoice right away.” When he told me the dollar amount, well, my eyes bugged out that his associate caught that one.
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Julie Kantor is CEO of Twomentor, LLC a high impact company that provides mentor strategy, execution, mentor and mentee trainings, flash mentoring, business case keynotes and more. We’d love to connect and discuss your needs. To schedule, contact, Sophia@twomentor.com