creative leaders need mentors

Creative Leaders Need Mentors

Michael Shenkman

© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ert.20308

For HR professionals, the most importantcontribution to the success of their orga-

nizations is assuring the development of theirleaders. HR professionals are inundated withall kinds of advertisements and offers forprograms that promise to make their organi-zations more productive, effective, aligned,and motivated. They have to make recom-mendations for investing in development andother programs, despite how difficult it is toknow whether such investments will beworth the price. Yet there is one investmentin leadership development that is a surething, but it often escapes HR’s attention ordoes not get a great deal of attention: men-toring programs for leaders.

Mentors certainly aren’t the only teachersthat leaders have through their careers.There are exemplars that leaders keep intheir minds as standards to emulate; coacheswho offered valuable lessons in how to per-form better; and training programs and MBAprograms galore to glean the latest in think-ing about effective leading. But in the end,no mentors, no leaders.

One of the people I have mentored overthe years put it this way:

I did not experience a meaningful mentoringprocess until late in my career—only a few yearsago, and that’s in a 23-year career to date! I con-sider that to be a lost opportunity. I think I canbe considered a classic example of people who enter a career, work hard to get the next

promotion, change companies periodically, andthen hit a wall. Suddenly, after sailing along, Iam forced to ask myself: What am I really try-ing to accomplish in my professional career?For some of us, it’s crystal-clear. But for me itwas not.

For sure, during my career I have had wonder-ful managers—though not necessarily wonderfulleaders—who were great exemplars. At variouspoints you pick up skills you want to emulateand adopt. In addition I have had a lot of coach-ing. However, I really had no vision of what Iwanted to accomplish on a grander scale; I hadno sense of how much I could actually influencedecisions in my company; I was unaware ofhow my work and approach to work influencedothers; and, most importantly, I did not knowhow much my personal life (good and bad) wascontributing and detracting from my profes-sional growth. I was working very hard, but Iwas unconscious to how much “bigger” workcould be for me personally and professionally.

My mentee continued:

In a sentence: mentoring put my heart and soulback into everything in my life, including work.I stopped being unconscious about how every-thing is interrelated. I fixed my challenges inmy personal life first. I stopped “pretending” tohave it all—a great career and yet my life athome was challenging. I wanted it all to worktogether. This is much bigger than work-life

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Employment Relations Today

balance—which now seems like such an over-stated and undervalued paradigm.

Now I honor my strengths and capitalize onthem in a very aggressive and provocative man-ner. I put them out there. Leader mentoring lit-erally released me from what felt like being ona hamster wheel. It led me to the starting gateand propelled me into a life that could be muchbigger than the one in the little box that I haddefined for myself.

She concluded her reflections on mentor-ing by remarking that “normal” was not agoal any longer for her and further stated,“Mentoring helped me realize that all myexperiences and decisions were the right ones

for my path—not anyone else’s. I now em-brace my path—past, present, and future.”

To sum up this eloquent description ofwhat mentoring offers, I would add this:mentoring puts a leader’s life under the lensof the demands of leading. By concentratingone’s gaze on what it takes to lead, providingthe role of leading as a focal point and stan-dard, one can fully commit to that life, towhat it will demand, and what rewards itoffers—despite its inevitable hardships.

FROM COACH TO LEADER MENTOR

As someone who coached executives formore than a decade as a private practitioner,I have seen an evolution in executive educa-tion services. My transition to leader mentoring

Michael ShenkmanEmployment Relations Today DOI 10.1002/ert

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occurred mostly by accident, when an execu-tive coaching contract came to an end afterthe CEO had successfully guided a turn-around. As I sat across the table from him, I thought about how intensely I had beeninvolved with the CEO and his staff over thecourse of the two-year coaching engagement,fully expecting to draw the relationship to a conclusion. However, this executive hadsomething else in mind—he envisioned a next step.

The CEO wasn’t satisfied that good, youngexecutives were now in the right jobs, withthe right level of responsibilities, and werenow doing the right things. He wanted thesepeople to get the kind of guidance theyneeded so that they could lead the companyin the future. He felt that these younger tal-ents needed no more help in terms of doingtheir jobs, but they needed to have a newlevel of awareness about themselves as peo-ple who inspire others. They were all welleducated at the best business schools andthey were all smart and really good and car-ing people. But these same people weren’tshowing a level of strength when it came togenerating excitement or commitment or abigger vision. That’s not a criticism: it iswhat one would expect from upper-level,younger executives.

This CEO wanted to help these high-potential people succeed in that differentdimension of leading. He wanted them to beable to not only get good results, but also feelstrong and secure in their visions and havethe confidence to communicate, convey, andpersonify those visions. To that end, he sim-ply said to me, “Now, I want you to workwith my stars, not the ones we had to ‘fix.’”That simple charge set me on the journeythat resulted in creating our leader-mentoringpractice. Subsequent client engagements have

By concentrating one’s gaze on what it takes tolead, providing the role of leading as a focalpoint and standard, one can fully commit to thatlife, to what it will demand, and what rewardsit offers—despite its inevitable hardships.

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been motivated by the same need—to turnorganizations’ star performers into futureleaders.

WHEN DOES LEADER MENTORING FIT?

When a company hires us, there is always aCEO who wants a vibrant culture where peo-ple are valued, ideas are important, and col-laboration is prized. Generally, many peoplethroughout the organizations can take onresponsibilities for innovation and meetingsudden and new competitive challenges. Inone case, the HR department at a facilityremote from headquarters contacted us andhad us work with all the members of thelocal executive team; in another case, adepartment director hired us to work withhis managers and with other managers fromother departments, all of whom depended onone another. In our community-based pro-gram, individuals who want to develop theabilities we described come to us on theirown.

Leader-mentoring services are most pro-ductive when a company needs leading andnot just execution of the plan. What do wemean by that? Leaders are disruptive. Theychange the way things are done; bring a newvision, mission, and strategy to an organiza-tion; and set out to change the organization’sculture. Not every organization needs lead-ing. For instance, there are times when anorganization needs to settle down and estab-lish patterns and processes that work overtime. These are times when managers of highcompetence and insight are most needed.When an organization enjoys stable marketconditions and settled competitive situations,and thus, when execution, efficiency, andpredictability are prized, someone who pro-vides a sense of security and continuity—a

Creative Leaders Need MentorsEmployment Relations Today DOI 10.1002/ert

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patriarch or matriarch, for instance—wouldbe valued in an organization. Leader mentor-ing works best in situations where technolo-gies change frequently, markets shift, andcompetitors are unpredictable.

But the idea of using professional leadermentors arises only when the CEO or thosewho carry out his or her policies exhibit aremarkable quality of humility. To bring inpeople from the outside, to promote a newlevel of personal awareness, aspiration, andinitiative means that the CEO knows that no one person, not even he or she, can haveall the answers and that the answers thatworked yesterday may be outmoded tomor-row. Thus, the CEO recognizes that he or sheneeds leaders in every nook and cranny of

the organization to move and respond,change things, and inspire people to gear upyet one more time for a new and uncertainadventure.

Then, this CEO knows something else, andis quite remarkable for knowing it: while thisleader knows that mentoring is critical fordeveloping young talent into mature leaders,he or she has neither the time nor the abilityto do it for all the people who need it. TheCEO has metrics to meet; a board and thepublic to deal with; and managerial issues,personnel considerations, and communityresponsibilities that have to command his orher attention. A professional mentor, then,acts on behalf of this person, doing what heor she knows is vital to the health and suc-cess of the organization. A professional men-tor then becomes the link by which, for

Leader-mentoring services are most productivewhen a company needs leading and not justexecution of the plan.


instance, an HR department becomes tieddirectly to one of the CEO’s most importantjobs: providing for the future well-being andsuccess of the organization.

LEADER MENTORING IN PERSPECTIVE

Leader mentoring is a process that viewsleading as a creative enterprise. Therefore, itviews each leader as one whose talents andenergies need to be channeled and shaped tothe rigorous demands of leading. Mentoringis necessary because the pitfalls in leadingare many, the rewards few, and the demandsunending. The mentor helps the leader forgethe steeled level of commitment it takes tostep into that role and act boldly, creatively,and with courage. The leader cares about the

followers, and the mentor cares about theleader. In this great chain of care and atten-tion, great things can happen.

Mentoring differs from instruction, teach-ing, and coaching in that it emphasizes thequalities and values of life that are needed tosustain oneself in the creative endeavor, notthe talents and skills used for the purpose ofexecuting a project. Mentoring is a manner ofboth exemplifying a way of life and testingthe initiate as he or she embarks on this newway. As a result of a mentoring process, thementee herself decides whether or not thislife of leading is right for her. If managing is abetter fit, good, be an excellent manager. If amore independent role is how that person can


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step up with energy and constancy, then gothat route. We thus say that mentoring is a“decision” process, not knowledge production.Through mentoring, candidates decide, ontheir own initiative, what kind of role in theorganization enables them to be at their best.

The mentoring process has several criticalstages, each of which has to take place. First,a level of trust has to be established betweenthe mentor and the mentee. Sometimes thattrust is offered because the mentee trusts thatthe HR department brings in only good peo-ple. In fact, a notable quality of professionalmentoring is that the mentee is assured thatthe mentoring takes place completely free ofpolitical complications. Our mentors alsopledge 100 percent confidentiality (and theCEO accepts that provision, or we won’taccept the engagement). But the mentor stillhas to demonstrate competence, interest, andcommitment.

Second, there is a long period in which thementor probes the mentee’s personal life inorder to discover its main stories. There wefind how a mentee is limiting himself or her-self and what aspects of the mentee’s lifenow need more attention if leading is goingto be a priority. The object of this stage of theprocess is to give the mentee a basis to estab-lish self-trust and a deep, biographicallybased platform of commitment and resolve.

Then we help the mentee formulate justhow it is that those skills of character wehave now identified can be set to work inorder to create followers—that is, to do theleader’s real work. We help the mentee toarticulate how his or her aspirations caninspire others’ aspirations as they go about tomeet the organization’s most important chal-lenges, and do so collaboratively.

Finally, we help the mentee declare his orher vision, loud and clear, in a speech that

Mentoring differs from instruction, teaching, andcoaching in that it emphasizes the qualities andvalues of life that are needed to sustain oneself inthe creative endeavor, not the talents and skillsused for the purpose of executing a project.

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conveys the depth and constancy of his orher commitment to leading others in accom-plishing the organization’s mission and goals.

In one organization that used our servicesto work with its whole management group—over a period of six years—the entire execu-tive team had been mentored. They all hadheard each other’s speeches and felt fullyinformed of each team member’s aspirationsand commitment to moving the organizationforward. During the time that the executiveteam faced the most difficult and trying ofbusiness challenges, each came into workknowing that political games were not goingon and that each member was expected to dothe leading that he or she had declared. As aresult, after a few years, all the other com-petitors in this field were either bought orhad disappeared. The team’s organizationwas the last one standing, and this companystill exists today. During that time, while onemight expect the executives to move on, theturnover was minimal, promotions camefrom within, and challenges were met with-out a loss of a day of initiative, without asense of loss or confusion in the employeebase.

In another setting, after one year’s worthof mentoring, eight out of twenty of ourmentees were promoted, six moved to lateralbut more challenging roles, two retired, andfour renewed their commitment to the orga-nization rather than move on.

The Creative Aspect

What is it that produces such results? Ofcourse, the effect of the CEO on the culture,promoting and supporting personal commit-ments to leading, is the essential ingredient.But leader mentoring is an important part ofthat process. Leader mentoring focuses on


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the creative aspects of leading. We envisionleading as being on a continuum of creativeendeavors, rather than being a single promi-nent aspect of a managerial process. Leadingoften involves a lot of drudgery, and so wefully acknowledge how leading within a con-temporary organizational setting is embeddedwithin the culture of managerial expertiseand its exacting demands for productiveexcellence.

But leading came before managing. Lead-ing also came before art and before wordswere even spoken. Leading pulses in theheart and drives the rhythm of consciousorganized life. At its core, leading is a cre-ative force. To the extent that humans areable to turn visions into realities, leadersfacilitate the process. To the extent thathumans can develop more expansive,

encompassing, satisfying, and sustainingways for people to engage with each otherand their natural environments, leaders areorganizing the work.

If leading is considered solely within thehierarchical managerial framework, theascent from worker to manager to highermanager to leader provides a one-dimensionalview of what it took to get to the top. If,instead, leading is placed on a continuum of creative figures that includes artists, mys-tics, and prophets, it becomes clear that goodleaders go through the same process of beingdiscovered, being nurtured, and findingexemplars as artists and other creative figuresdo. Therefore, mentoring is as necessary forleaders as for other creative individuals.

We envision leading as being on a continuumof creative endeavors, rather than being a sin-gle prominent aspect of a managerial process.


Mentoring can help to produce the type ofleaders needed to create a community of fol-lowers who transform expansive and encom-passing possibilities into the kinds of concreteproducts, services, institutions, and relation-ships that refresh and revitalize our humanity.Leaders, in fact, arise only when it is recog-nized that some aspect of our living needs anew kind of attention, a fresh approach, and new vision in order to help us feel alive and thriving in our daily lives. Leaderstake action by creating organizations thatbring these new possibilities to fruition andmake them available to as many as possible.

WHAT CREATIVE LEADING AND MENTORINGDEMAND

Leaders undertake three intertwining transfor-mations in order to take on their creative role.

First, they transform themselves, and, second,they transform the situations around them sothat new and more encompassing possibilitiescan become realities. These transformationsaffect one another. As the effort grows,matures, and changes, the leader also mustundertake a third transformation to accommo-date the changing situation. As the leader pro-gresses in his or her life, his or her perspec-tive of and commitment to leading changes.Mentors help leaders to make their waythrough all those transformations by helpingnew leaders to fully accept, articulate, organize,


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and implement their new and large-scalevisions. During the process of such change,mentors will stay with the leaders and,through conversation and attention, help lead-ers crystallize their sense of commitment toand their vision for creating a productiveorganization. Finally, mentors help leadersdecide whether or not to allow their leadingrole to become fused with a larger part oftheir identities, to the point where the men-tored leaders acknowledge that they are infact leaders, that their lives are about leading,and that wherever they go, leading will bemost at stake for them.

Among the actions mentors take to achievethis are the following (and they all involve lis-tening):

❏ By providing a time and a situation specif-ically set aside for listening to the menteereflect on events and ideas that may seemremote and unrelated to the job at hand,mentors help mentees create a wider con-text for why leading is important in theirlives.

❏ By taking the time and making the effortto listen closely to the mentees’ stories,highlighting aspects of the stories theyhadn’t considered before, or asking prob-ing questions that explore the stories moredeeply, we help mentees see how leadinghas always been a part of their lives.

❏ By listening to accounts of when thementees felt most fulfilled, and when theyfelt alienated, mentors encourage thementee to reflect on whether or not lead-ing was a good role for them to take on intheir lives.

❏ We probe incidents and situations in thementees’ lives to help them see why it isthat people follow them, and then webuild on those character skills.

Mentoring can help to produce the type of lead-ers needed to create a community of followerswho transform expansive and encompassingpossibilities into the kinds of concrete products,services, institutions, and relationships thatrefresh and revitalize our humanity.

Fall 2010

❏ We mirror back to them how that storyaffects us as listeners so that mentees canreframe their life stories and see how theytell about their growth and development,discoveries, and surprises at being leaders.

❏ We help mentees get over the idea of “per-fection” and instead fall back on the kindof resolve and ability to learn and adjustthat leading demands.

As one of our mentors says, much of ourwork is “subtractive.” That is, we helpmentees to clear away self-imposed barriersto being leaders. In one very serious case, amentee disclosed to her mentor that althoughher father’s sudden death when she wasyoung affected her profoundly, she nevermentioned it “at work.” But this person, nowan executive director of a major nonprofit,shouldered new responsibilities, managedfamily dynamics, and learned to overcomeadversity and be optimistic about herself andothers (at first in her family)—all because ofthis early tragedy. Her mentor asked her toexperiment with telling the stories thatstemmed from this situation. As she got usedto doing so, the mentee was able to shinethat light on all her work and see how theresolve she began to develop when she wasstill a child really inspires others to get overtheir own barriers. This woman has nowtransformed an organization that serves chil-dren who have lost one or both parents intoone of our most successful services.

WHEN IT COMES TO LEADERS, AIM HIGHAND OFFER THE BEST

Too often, leadership development is struc-tured solely to achieve profitable productionpractices. We send our potential leaders toschools to learn the mechanics of accounting,


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motivating, and strategizing; we coach themto embody the principles that vindicate thevalues and actions that are productive; andwe acclimate them to the benefits that accruefrom taking on more authority in the produc-tive enterprise. We then evaluate them on thebasis of their productivity and output, theirrelative success in marshaling the resourcesof people, machines, capital, and the organi-zation they are given. All of these are positivefor producing effective managers, and noorganization can succeed without the effortsof effective managers, so we need theschools, coaches, and evaluation systems thatproduce them.

That said, a distinction must be made.Although these kinds of processes produceand support a supply of managers who arenecessary for running and maintaining ourcommercial, political, and social institutions,true leading is not managing. Leading is acompletely different activity that stands apartfrom managing. Although managerial trainingand motivation techniques today have appro-priated some of the ideas about leading (e.g.,innovating, driving out of the box, and moti-vating with persuasion and passion ratherthan authoritarian coercion), those thingsalone do not transform managing into leading.

Of course, leaders must be capable of car-rying out all these managerial tasks, but lead-ers must also be able to modify managerialtechniques when necessary to create newindustries or new ways of doing business.

By listening to accounts of when the mentees feltmost fulfilled, and when they felt alienated,mentors encourage the mentee to reflect onwhether or not leading was a good role forthem to take on in their lives.


Google does not use the same managerialprocesses for its IT engineers that AndrewCarnegie used to produce steel in his facto-ries.

Today’s creative leaders must be willing torethink their organizations’ relationships toeverything that is involved with their compa-nies’ operations and break molds when nec-essary. Such leaders are critical componentsin every sphere of our lives, from the politi-cal and military to the industrial and commu-nity sectors to service and family groups. Anyand all resources that can be brought to bear


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on our leaders can benefit our communal andorganized lives. Leader mentoring assuresthat new leaders get the attention theyneed—the right attention, in the rightamount, directed to the right issues, in theright way, with trust offered freely and completely—so that they can take on thetransformative tasks for themselves first, andthen for others, to lead organizations to suc-cess in every business sector. Professionalleader mentoring offers HR a sure way tohelp the organization’s leaders rise to what-ever the occasion demands.

Michael Shenkman, PhD, is founder and president of the Arch of Leadership (www.leadermentoring.com), a leader-mentoring company. This article was adapted fromhis new book, Leader Mentoring: Find, Inspire and Cultivate Great Leaders (CareerPress, 2008). He may be contacted at [email protected].

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