Mentoring: Steve Allen Style

Before Jay Leno there was host Johnny Carson. And before Johnny’s long run, the host of The Tonight Show was Jack Paar. But before Jack, there was the very first host of the show in the mid-fifties—Steve Allen. Allen died in 2000 of an apparent heart attack at age 78 while napping at his son’s home in Encino, California. The author of more than fifty books and five thousand songs, Steve Allen was regarded as the founding father of the late-night talk show. The world knew him as an accomplished comedian, talented musician, and innovative talk show host. But to the countless entertainers privileged to have been understudies to Allen—the late singer Andy Williams, actor and comedian Steve Martin, actor Billy Crystal, and the late actor Don Knotts—he was the consummate mentor.

The night following his death Larry King did a CNN special segment on the great Steve Allen. Admirers like Tonight Show co-host Ed McMahon, movie director Carl Reiner, and actor Mike Douglas were on the show. Call-ins included comedian Don Rick-les and singer Andy Williams. Other interviews in print and on the air in the days that followed added to the epitaph crafted by King’s guests by revealing the reason for Allen’s huge fan club of entertainment greats. Allen had mentored them all with trust. All spoke of Allen’s focus on them, not on himself.

Trust is a crucial commodity throughout a mentoring relationship. In fact, research shows that even if the mentor has terrific interpersonal skills, they count for naught without a high level of trust. Conversely, a mentor with only modest mentoring skills can be successful if the protégé experiences a high level of trust. But what is the nature of trust? If trust were something you could reverse-engineer, what parts would you find inside? Trust is a blend of authenticity (genuineness), credibility (reliability), and communication.