CHAPTER FOUR
THE MIND OF THE MENTOR
You had what it takes to get into my office. Now do you
have what it takes to stay? ... You are either inside the
game or out. Money never sleeps.... I‘ve showed you how
the game works. Now astonish me.... I am going to make
you rich.... Greed captures our evolutionary spirit.
Greed is good.
—AS TOLD TO BUD FOX BY GORDON GECCO IN
THE FILM WALL STREET
 
 
 
Twenty years ago, Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street provided a telling commentary on life in corporate America during an era of get-rich quick schemes, hostile takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions. Although the characters’ clothing and hairstyles might be a bit dated, Wall Street as a morality tale is timeless. Moreover, the depiction of the young stockbroker, Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen), pursuing the billionaire businessman, Gordon Gecco (Michael Douglas), is a terrific example of how a protégé can win a mentor, get inside the mind of the mentor, and then learn valuable lessons about himself through the mentor’s betrayal.
In 1985, Hollywood provided us with a fictional example of an unethical mentor. In 2005, Hollywood has provided us with a real-life example of Gecco’s polar opposite—the enormously respected and well-liked Ron Meyer, president and chief operating officer (COO) of NBC/Universal. In that role he is responsible for Universal Pictures, Focus Features, and Universal Parks and Resorts. Everything Meyer touches seems to turn to gold. Prior to his reign at Universal, Meyer was one of the original founders of the Creative Artists Agency (CAA); along with Michael Ovitz, he built CAA into one of Hollywood’s most successful talent agencies. Ron is well known not only for his business acumen but also for being a developer of talent. Richard Lovett, president of CAA, Stacy Snider, Universal Pictures chair, and Nikki Rocco, Universal Pictures distribution chief, all credit Meyer with being an important mentor in their career journeys. So, what’s in it for someone like Ron to be a mentor, or for their organizations?
Many mentors see mentoring as just part of their jobs. Often supervisors or managers make it a priority on their own to develop their employees’ skills and abilities, while sometimes they are formally tasked with that responsibility. Although most organizations recognize mentoring as a valuable method of informal and formal development for high-potential employees, effective mentoring can increase the total number of qualified employees by providing direct contact with more experienced employees. Not only do these mentors help enhance their protégés’ technical or management skills in their current positions, they also expose the protégés to the values, skill requirements, and strategies of upper management. While it is no secret that mentors in traditional mentoring relationships are expected to devote a great deal of time and expertise to the development of competent employees for the organization, many, as they reach the upper levels of their careers, are in fact very eager to share their knowledge with the next generation of up-and-coming employees. The practice of giving talented people room and resources to develop, a strategy employed by Universal’s Ron Meyer at the top, is contagious and, if practiced well, becomes part of the culture of the entire organization.
In Chapter Two, we described the many forms that power mentoring relationships can take. Behind each of those types of mentors (mentors of the moment, boss mentors, reverse mentors, and so on), there lies a set of expectations about how the mentoring relationship will unfold and the particular role of the mentor and the protégé. Moreover, an important distinction between power mentoring and traditional relationships is that most power mentors feel that they get as much out of the relationship as they put in (reciprocity). As mentioned in Chapter Three, in power mentoring relationships, mentors recognize that mentoring benefits go beyond those of a typical employee development opportunity or merely a situation in which mentors feel proud of their good deeds.
In this chapter, we take these ideas further by exploring in depth the philosophies people hold about what it means to be a mentor. Why is it important to examine mentoring philosophies? Think about it this way. People have their own ideas about what makes a good parent. Should a parent provide structure and discipline for the children? Or rather act as a supportive friend? People also have different conceptions of the ideal marriage. Will the two individuals collaborate in a partnership with equal responsibilities and an equal division of labor? Or will one person take the job of running the household and the other be a breadwinner?
The parenting and marriage models each of us subscribes to affect the ways we interact with our children or our partners. Our ideas or philosophies about these relationships determine our expectations for the kind of behavior we hope to see. The idea of mental models captures this notion of conceptions that guide our actions: A mental model is a philosophy or set of attitudes we hold with respect to a particular issue; the model includes underlying assumptions about the way the world works, about how the issue affects other people, and about how society might respond to or be affected by the issue. We tend to accept information that confirms our mental models, and we disregard incongruous information. 1
Just as we do about parenting or marriage, many of us hold a general idea or mental model of what a mentor is supposed to do, whether the mentor is part of a formal or informal relationship. The same holds true for the nature of the mentoring relationship. Our ideas dictate who is expected to do what in the relationship, what happens as the relationship unfolds, and what kinds of support the mentor might provide to the protégé. Further, this notion affects whether we feel the mentoring relationship has been successful. For example, imagine a protégé who views a mentor as someone akin to a superhero—in other words, as a person who will rush in and save protégés who are making career mistakes. Now let’s think about what happens in that same relationship when the mentor thinks of herself as more of a hands-off teacher, who provides protégés with general lessons but lets them learn from their mistakes. The incompatibility in this relationship becomes readily apparent and most likely will lead to dissatisfaction with the relationship for both people involved.
The overall purpose of this chapter is to explore the inner workings of the mind of the mentor. After we delve into the mind of the mentor to uncover some common mental models from our study, we also look at
• The characteristics of a perfect protégé in the eyes of the mentor
• The purpose and nature of the possible tests and challenges that they might pose to protégés
• The ways the mentoring relationship can develop successfully
Getting inside the minds of our power mentors is likely to answer many questions about your existing or hoped-for mentoring relationships.

MENTAL MODELS: THE PHILOSOPHIES OF MENTORING

In our exploration of power mentoring relationships, we uncovered a set of mental models that describe how the mentors we studied conceptualized mentoring. We highlight four of these models in this section—those of the corporate citizen, pragmatic mentor, global citizen, and master mentor. These philosophies explain why the mentors chose to be involved in mentoring relationships in the first place, but go further in that they also shed light on the mentors’ expectations of the power mentoring experience. We summarize the various reasons for mentoring by giving specific examples of the various mentoring philosophies. Our discussion is not exhaustive; we’ve merely tried to capture key aspects of the mentoring relationships that were shared with us. Of course, you may encounter other types of mentoring models or even hybrid models (those combining features of two or more models). The important concept to remember is that uncovering what the mentor thinks he or she should be doing in the relationship makes a world of difference in affecting the shared expectations of mentor and protégé in the relationship.

CORPORATE CITIZEN

Individuals whose mentoring philosophy emphasizes the idea of the corporate citizen view mentoring as a way of ensuring that the corporation’s next generation of leadership is ready to take the reins of the organization, and as a method of informal training so that individuals can flourish in the organization. In some organizations, this type of mentoring for development or training is initiated by a mentor, whereas in others, the impetus comes from programmatic efforts initiated by human resource departments or upper management. The bottom line for the protégé, however, is the same in either case. Mentors with this philosophy consider mentoring as just part of what a person does to be a good corporate citizen.
As former president of Disney Channel Worldwide and now Disney Media Networks and president of Disney-ABC Television Group, Anne Sweeney has had an opportunity to be involved in mentoring relationships from both sides. She worked at Nickelodeon, the premiere children’s cable network for twelve years and was chairman and CEO of FX Networks, where she learned much from close collaborations with former boss mentors like Geraldine Laybourne, currently chair and CEO of Oxygen Network and Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO of News Corporation. Anne has also mentored a number of individuals herself. These interactions have given her considerable insight into the forms mentoring can take and have allowed her to develop her own set of expectations as to how she would interact with a protégé. At the time we spoke with her, she was involved in a formal mentoring relationship with Kathleen Von der Ahe from ABC Affiliate Relations. The relationship seemed shaped by the corporate-citizen model.
When we spoke, however, it was obvious that even though Sweeney was mentoring in the mode of a good corporate citizen, she took it much further than a typical relationship. She understood that even in the context of a formal mentoring relationship like this, mentoring works as a two-way street. Anne also explained why mentoring, as part of corporate citizenship, needs to become more personal. She emphasized that people give their advice and time for a reason, and that it’s important for protégés to listen to that advice. In the following example, she talked about the benefits she enjoyed by being mentored by Fred Silverman, the television programming guru:
I think you have to be very unselfish about the mentoring relationship. And if it doesn’t fit into 3:00 to 4:00 on Monday, once a month, it should grow into the kind of relationship which, if you don’t speak for months or a year or you speak every week, you still are able to maintain the same level of trust, the same level of communication. It is important that you recognize the value of the relationship in that regard.
I remember when we were launching a comedy network at MTV Networks in 1989, and Fred Silverman, who’s the legendary broadcast programmer, was a consultant. And Fred came in, and I was head of acquisitions. I was out there buying product—millions of dollars of product. And he sat down, and he said, “Okay. Well, it’s a comedy network.” And he pointed at me, and he said, “Okay, you’re going to go out, and you’re going to tell me where everything from the Beach Blanket movies are to the old black-and-white comedies. I want to know where you’re going to find Texaco Star Theater to M*A*S*H.” So I worked like a dog getting to know all this information. How could I not do this? I told myself, “How many times in your life do you get to work with Fred Silverman? This guy is the original triple threat. He led programming at all three networks. His programming taste was spectacular and smart. He was a risk taker. I could learn from this guy.” What is interesting is that it doesn’t matter if we don’t talk for six months or six days, the relationship is still there. Now when I’ve been in some of my toughest programming moments, really trying to think through the positioning of the network or, for example, should this show go in this direction, and if so why ... he’s always been a wonderful sounding board for me.
Therefore, while Anne realized that many of her mentoring relationships began as part of a corporate initiative, or as part of a boss-subordinate relationship, she transitioned those relationships into real relationships that were sustained over time. This is how power mentoring relationships of the corporate type seem to evolve, as opposed to ending once the individuals depart from the company. These are often lifelong mentoring relationships that develop from formal relationships into something bigger and selfsustaining.
In summary, the corporate-citizen philosophy dictates the general nature of mentoring relationships in which mentors are committed to mentoring for the good of their organizations. For some mentors, the relationship may stop at that point: fulfilling an organizational need. But in some cases, though not all, the mentor’s model of the relationship expands. We argue that even though Anne’s mentoring began as part of corporate citizenry, she deepened some of her mentoring relationships to include more personal connections, mutual benefits, and, in many cases, relationship longevity. Protégés may find some shortcomings in the corporate-citizen model of a mentoring relationship if they are looking for something deeper. The mentors may be reproducing the highly structured types of mentoring relationships they have been in previously, or they may not have received specific training to help guide the relationship.
This is not to say that a corporate-citizenship mental model is lacking. Mentors with this philosophy can provide valuable career advice, especially on how to get ahead in a particular organization. However, if the protégés make it clear that they hope for more, the relationship may turn into something even more mutually beneficial.

PRAGMATIC MENTOR

A second group of mentors approached their mentoring relationships very pragmatically. When asked about the nature of mentoring, they focused on what they did for their protégés as a transaction—in other words, as an exchange for benefits they might receive. Because of this pragmatic outlook, these mentors tended to see their power mentoring relationships as egalitarian. Rather than taking a cold and calculating approach that asks, “What’s in it for me?” they thought in terms of the reciprocal benefits the two parties would receive.
Many involved in these pragmatic relationships understood that protégés and mentors give each other different things. For example, Ron Dellums, former U.S. Congressman from California, found that mentoring was a great way to preserve his own legacy, grooming the person who would take on his passions and issues and continue to move them forward. Through years of mentoring his protégé Charles Stevenson, in his role as his boss, Dellums was honing Stevenson’s skills, but at the same time ensuring that Dellums would have someone to keep his initiatives alive. As Dellums put it:
I think you should always prepare for your replacement. For example, when I retired in 1998, I talked Charles into leaving with me. “Come with me,” I told him, “and let’s take a chance. I think that there’s a whole other world out there, and we will continue to do well.” Well, I take Charles with me everywhere I go. If I’m meeting with the president of the United States, if I can get him in, he’s in. If I meet with the president of the World Bank, if I’m going to the WHO [World Health Organization], when I went to see Kofi Annan at the UN. ... I take Charles everywhere I go. And my point to him is, “When I’m talking, listen, observe, learn.” I want someone to know as much as I know. You know, there are a lot of people who are intimidated by other people having knowledge; I’m not intimidated by that. I think that is important. So I told Charles, “Look, you know, I’m in my sixties. I don’t know how long I’ll be around here, but you’ve got a lot longer to work, and when the time comes for me to walk away, or whatever happens, I want you to be a repository of all that knowledge and all that information. I want you to know what I know so that you can continue to go.”
While we would not characterize Dellums’s entire mentoring philosophy as pragmatic, when it came to talking about grooming his successor, the approach he described seemed very pragmatic. Dixie Garr, vice president of Customer Success Engineering at Cisco Systems, also presented some pragmatic views on mentoring relationships. She tends to make these views quite clear to protégés or potential protégés, as noted here:
I’ll often speak at a function, and people will come up and say, “Would you be my mentor?” My answer will be probably be no if they are talking about a, “Let’s just chat and have fun” type of relationship. To me, if you have a goal and you need help with that, and we have measures of success, whatever that is, I’m willing to help, but I don’t have time to just be friends. So my answer to those folks is always, “If you have a specific thing that you want to accomplish, and a specific goal and things that you want ... or need help with ... that I can be of value helping you think it through, I am happy to do that, but ‘Let’s sing Kum ba yah’ is not my thing.” There is a young man who used to work for me but has moved to another team. For example, he and I had a mentoring session two weeks ago, and he called up and said, “You know, Dixie, I need to talk to you.” He knows my style. He said, “Here’s the situation. Here’s what we need. What do you think?” I do that a lot. I am very results/target/goal oriented. And I like for the person to know what success looks like and what it is. If you can’t tell me what it is that we’re after and what the outcome is that we’re after, you probably haven’t thought it through enough for it to be a real goal.
As a very high-level African American woman in corporate America, Dixie has numerous people seeking her advice. Her pragmatic style allows her to help those who are strongly focused on their careers. Further, Dixie talked about the specific rewards she has received from mentoring, again showing her assessment of the pragmatic benefits in the relationship:
The reward is that you’re a better leader and perceived as a better leader, and you get to know what the heck is going on. Because, let’s face it, you get to know the feared tip of the iceberg, and by the time an issue or a situation bubbles up to you through official channels, it’s already gone through all the coffee bars, down the street, around the corner, and been camped outside your door for a week. So, when you spend this time, you get to know much earlier what’s going on, what needs your attention, and kind of the mood of the team. So from that perspective, I’m rewarded. And sometimes people come in and just say, “You know, I just really appreciate your coaching.” And that’s a reward. None of us gets enough appreciation. Thank your mentor.
Pragmatic mentors are those who are very upfront about what they want to give, and gain, from a mentoring relationship. That level of clarity is good for protégés who know what they want.

GLOBAL CITIZEN

A number of our mentors saw mentoring as a duty to society or the world in general, as opposed to simply their own organization or industry. We mentioned generativity (the concern for the next generation) as an important reason for mentoring in Chapter Two. How does this model of mentoring affect the way someone mentors? We found that mentors with this mental model or philosophy of mentoring aimed to provide a broad set of life lessons to their protégés, rather than concentrating on what needs to be done to get ahead in any particular job. These mentors focused on the long term, the big picture, and on how they could give of themselves across many different contexts to impart to others the lessons they have learned in life.
In some respects, Dixie Garr saw her desire to mentor as a way to give back to society on a broad scale: “Speaking and motivating are a passion with me. Because, even though it sounds corny, but you affect so many lives, and you have, what I call, impact per minute. That’s how I measure my life, in impact per minute.”
Mitch Koss is a producer for Channel One News, which features stories on breaking news and in-depth issues that affect the world, the nation, and specifically, America’s teenagers. Channel One News is seen by public and private secondary school students in 48 states and the District of Columbia, reaching 12,000 American middle, junior, and high schools and representing more than 8 million students and 400,000 educators.2 Since its first broadcast in 1990, Channel One News has garnered more than 150 news and educational programming honors, including the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award. That level of integrity is what Mitch brought from previous jobs at the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and as a producer of documentaries for PBS. Through Channel One he also produced a documentary series for MTV, as well as segments for ABC News, CNN, and the WB. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers.
Mitch’s global-citizen approach to mentoring parallels his approach to news stories. He has worked with a number of young people, including Anderson Cooper, a reporter and rising on-air personality for CNN who has his own show, 360, and Lisa Ling, former cohost of ABC’s The View and currently host and reporter for National Geographic Explorer. Channel One’s on-air reporters tend to come to the network fresh out of high school or college, or, as in Lisa Ling’s case, still as a high school student. Mitch imbues these young people with his passion for telling the story. He recalls working with Anderson Cooper and making a conscious choice that the news stories they were producing were going to be “real” for a discerning high school audience:
The first person they assigned me to work with substantially was a guy named Anderson Cooper, a 25-year-old kid in ’93. And at that point he’s 25, I’m 39, and I realize I can either share with him everything I’ve learned in this industry, in which case he would hate me and the audience would hate us, or I can say, “Okay, partner, what do you want to do?” And I chose the latter of course because Anderson wasn’t looking for someone to teach him, he was looking for someone to help him figure something out that no one knew, namely a new approach to television journalism. Anderson was a terrific punk and phenomenally brave and very confident in being different. And the high quality of his innovations made it easier to recognize another revolutionary, even younger punk, Lisa Ling, when I was assigned to work with her a year and a half later. Lisa’s ambitions further raised the level of risk in being associated with her because not only did she want to be a serious foreign correspondent at an extremely young age, she was interested in covering abstract issues—the impact of globalization in the developing world—that were then mainly the domain of the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. So she was not only risking her life in far off lands, she was risking being in way over her head. Yet Lisa went ahead and made this edgy, funny, visceral sort of new television on issues that college professors were just becoming cognizant of—we even had a documentary Mini-Series on globalization on the Los Angeles PBS station. And if you go back and look at her stuff today, you see that her coverage pretty accurately presaged the world that we now find ourselves in.
For those of you not familiar with Channel One, the stories are not what you might remember from your school newspaper. These are hard-hitting reports. One early example by Lisa Ling and Mitch Koss concerned what was happening in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. Mitch says he was amazed by Lisa’s poise in her reporting. They again worked together on stories about Russia and China. In each of these instances, Mitch focused on inculcating high-quality reporting techniques in his young protégés. Why? What was his motivation for mentoring? In his case it was his belief in a general dedication to effective journalism. He probably also saw the experience as an apprenticeship, where the young reporters were learning the craft by his side. In terms of the forms of mentoring we discussed in Chapter Two, for Lisa and Anderson, Mitch could be considered a barrier-busting mentor. He helped them take their craft to new levels that they might not have reached without him, at least at so young an age. Mitch and Lisa’s teaming resulted in their creating award-winning PBS documentaries in addition to their innovative work for Channel One. Mitch brought a selfless dedication to the craft that helped Lisa grow as a reporter. When asked about her experiences with Mitch, Lisa recalled:
He is perhaps the most selfless, brilliant, giving, pure individual. He is someone who had worked in the field of journalism almost all of his life, and could have probably pursued it to the highest executive level, but he has instead chosen to stay essentially as a reporter/producer and go into the field. Most people eventually seek out kind of cushy behind-the-desk jobs. The guy is 20 years older than me, he’s almost 50, and he is still out there producing. When we were working together, and he introduced me to many of the people he had worked for at MacNeil/Lehrer, at PBS, at National Geographic, and what was so incredible about him was it was never, “I have this documentary,” it was, “My colleague Lisa and I ...” He also had such a powerful impact on me because he included me, and that gave me so much confidence because here is this prestigious, award-winning filmmaker, documentary filmmaker/ journalist who had taken me under his wing and included me in such a way that my work is recognized as much as his.
Mentors who mentor with a global-citizen philosophy often have a passion for their craft as it relates to larger societal issues. This passion may make them a fairly demanding mentor. In many ways this is beneficial for protégés who are young, in the early learning mode in their careers, and do not quite know what skills and knowledge are most important to succeed. Although all effective mentors can enhance an individual’s self-confidence as Mitch did for Lisa, mentors with a global-citizen philosophy not only provide many of the typical mentoring benefits, they do so in the greater service of their craft and to serve a higher calling. In Mitch’s case, the higher calling was journalistic excellence. In addition, mentors of the global-citizen type emphasize sharing the creative process and credit for the work they do with their protégés. Both mentor and protégé benefit enormously from this type of relationship.

MASTER MENTOR

At IBM, Fran Allen worked in the area of programming languages for nearly 45 years. She was the first woman IBM Fellow at the Thomas J. Watson Research Lab, IBM’s highest technical honor, and she has done much to give back to women in computing. In tracing her relationship with IBM, she remembered reading a recruitment brochure titled My Fair Ladies—enticing women technologists to join IBM—as she completed her master’s degree at the University of Michigan.
Today the enticements remain; in fact, IBM sponsors many programs to encourage young women in the sciences. At the 2000 Women in Technology Convention, Lou Gerstner, IBM board chair at the time, spoke to the conference about the need for IBM to nurture its technical women. “We’re in a battle for technical talent right now,” he said. “It’s not strictly about money, it’s about opportunity. It’s about what we do to create the right kind of culture—where they know ideas are valued and acted on. Go mentor our young talent.”3 Gerstner was not merely paying lip service to the idea, but in fact IBM had begun a variety of programs under its “Global Women Leaders Task Force: Creating the Climate to Win” in 1995 to specifically target women and minorities for leadership development, both nationally and globally.4
Lou Gerstner is not the only one who realizes the importance of mentoring at IBM; Fran Allen’s commitment to mentoring has resulted in an award that bears her name—the Frances E. Allen IBM Women in Technology Mentoring Award, of which she was the first recipient. Her commitment is also evidenced in her work on the advisory boards of numerous organizations, such as the National Academy of Engineering, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fran is what we call a master mentor. It is her mission to get more women involved in computing within her profession. We consider her a master mentor because of her intense involvement in mentoring, which at IBM is recognized as being beneficial to the bottom line. Fran’s own philosophy of mentoring comes from having mentored many people throughout her career. This is what she shared with us:
I try to connect with the individual as a person. It also means a huge amount of listening. And I think it’s less about talking than it is about listening. And sometimes by just listening and getting people to say—people have someone to express what their issues are, what their goals are, and whom they can trust and just providing a sympathetic ear so that they can just talk very openly about it. And very often I suspected that verbalizing it and getting small amounts of feedback helps them clarify it with themselves. And ultimately I think that that’s very important because I keep thinking, well, one of the most important things for people is to understand what they’re good at and what they really want. And one can’t tell somebody. You can reinforce them in many ways and say, “Well, you’re very good at something.”
From her remarks, Fran demonstrates a very individualized perspective on mentoring. (She also utilizes many of the forms of mentoring discussed in Chapter Two: group, boss, inspirational, and even some reverse mentoring.) Obviously in mentoring so many people over the years, she has realized that any one style of mentoring or advice giving will not work well for everyone.
Understanding protégés as individuals goes a long way toward creating a productive mentoring relationship. In some circles, the distinction between coaching and mentoring has begun to blur. We believe, however, that a clear distinction exists. By definition, people who exclusively coach are not mentors. Coaching is one of the many supportive behaviors a mentor can use in the course of mentoring. Coaches are usually hired to train an individual, often with respect to interpersonal management or decision-making skills. Also, a boss could coach subordinates to improve their handling of a certain aspect of their job. We view mentoring as more of a comprehensive relationship that addresses many aspects of one’s career, including career strategies. Coaching is less comprehensive in its approach and often is subject specific.
Through Fran’s numerous mentoring relationships during her 45 years at IBM, and her involvement in organizations that provide mentoring, she has found that another important component of mentoring is connecting individuals to the right people who can help them. This could be called delegated mentoring. This makes sense in a highly technical industry such as computers, where it is doubtful that one mentor would be able to give an individual all the technical assistance he or she would need: “Most of the people I mentor are people whose goals are to be successful technically. And for some of them, I don’t know their field well. But in this laboratory—it’s a very large laboratory—I make a lot of connections for these people because I’m exposed to a lot of what’s going on. So I can say, ‘Oh, that’s a terrific idea, have you talked to you know who?’ Or I can help them understand what it means to be successful technically, and how to achieve that kind of success.”
Within IBM, the mentoring systems were created by top management and by Fran over the years. IBM has one of the most comprehensive mentoring systems in corporate America today. A mentor who holds the philosophy of master mentoring utilizes his or her extensive professional connections to help protégés find the type of mentoring that will be most useful.

SUMMARY: A MENTOR’S MINDSET

We have highlighted some of the different mentoring philosophies that we uncovered in our research. From these examples, it is obvious that mentors vary widely in what they think a mentor should do and why they should do it. As either a mentor or a protégé, it is important to take time to uncover these philosophies or mental models about mentoring, because they have specific implications for furthering the relationship. How do you find out your own mentoring philosophy, or, as a protégé, your potential mentor’s philosophy? We introduced four general types of mentoring philosophies we found in our research: corporate citizen, pragmatic mentor, global citizen, and master mentor. As noted, this list is not exhaustive; lots of other models of mentoring exist. We do not claim that any one model is better than another; each has its own unique style and benefits. To illuminate your preferred model as a mentor, ask yourself what you think your role as mentor should be. Or as a protégé, ask yourself what you hope to get out of a potential mentoring relationship. Posing these kinds of questions helps reveal the mind of the mentor and sets the stage for what follows.

THE MENTOR’S ATTRACTION TO THE PROTÉGÉ

What initially attracts power mentors to their protégés? Past research in mentoring and attraction has drawn largely from social psychological theories and found a great deal of evidence supporting the adage that “birds of a feather flock together”; in other words, it has underscored the importance of similarity. Surfacelevel similarity based on demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and race has been found to be important when mentors form initial impressions of their protégés. It is interesting, however, that more recent research suggests that deeper levels of similarity in terms of values, attitudes, and goals are more important in producing attraction than demographic similarity is.5 Paradoxically, another adage, “Opposites attract,” also applied to our interviewees’ experiences. Two additional reasons mentors found themselves attracted to their protégés had to do with either compelling personal characteristics or the protégé’s demonstrated performance or potential.

ACTUAL OR PERCEIVED SIMILARITY

Much academic ink has been devoted to addressing how demographic factors such as gender and race affect mentor and protégé attraction toward one another. One line of research has argued that because people are often attracted to those like themselves, and because those in positions of power in organizations have tended to be white men, women and minorities are at a disadvantage in attracting powerful mentors.6 However, one study showed that perceived similarity, rather than actual similarity of demographic characteristics, attracts mentors and protégés to one another.7 With respect to gender, the research is not as clear. Women benefit from having either male or female mentors. However, in organizations where men in powerful positions outnumber women, male mentors provide more benefits.8
What we found in our study mirrored previous research. A comment from Debra Martucci (who works at Synopsys and whose background is described in Chapter Two) encapsulates the feelings generally reported about cross-gender mentoring: “I think that it is always the first tendency for women to feel more comfortable with a woman mentor.... Maybe it’s like your gynecologist! However, I have found I have been more successful with men mentors in general. They have been very helpful to me. Also, I have mentored some men, and what I find is that there is a difference between men and women, whether we want to accept that or not. And usually with the women, it’s helping them manage their emotions.”
In terms of discussing cross-race mentoring, we found that interviewees were often cautious in discussing their experiences, with a few notable exceptions. Martha Coolidge, Ron Dellums, Dixie Garr, Judith Gwathmey, Ron Kirk, Paula Madison, Rosario Marin, Hilda Solis, Pamela Thomas-Graham, and Henry Yuen all shared the distinction of being “the first and best” in their fields. Martha Coolidge, for example, was the first female president of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), and Pamela Thomas-Graham was the first African American woman partner at McKinsey. Because of this distinction, these interviewees and others in similar “first and best” positions were extremely sensitive to the need to be role models and mentors for others, taking this responsibility very seriously in addition to performing their day-to-day high-level jobs with excellence.
The awareness of their unique positions also leads these individuals to act in ways that help their organizations increase diversity. For example, Paula Madison, in addition to her considerable duties as president of KNBC in Los Angeles, had undertaken the job of vice president of diversity and senior vice president of diversity for NBC from 2000 to 2002, reporting directly to CEO Bob Wright, as we mentioned in Chapter Three. Dixie Garr had an experience with diversity in her organization that illustrates the effects of this awareness: “I went to a partner conference, and there were 5,000 partners, 500 Cisco employees, 50 Cisco executives at this conference, and I was the only black woman in the room. I came home. I called John [Chambers, CEO of Cisco] and I said, ‘John, you won’t believe what’s happened to me.’ And I gave him the statistics. I said, ‘John, we’ve got to get me some company here.’”
Experiences like these have caused Dixie to reach out not only to protégés at Cisco but much more broadly as well. She has become a highly sought-after national motivational speaker. Like Dixie, many of our power mentors who had the distinction of being “first and best” have transformed themselves into “supermentors” and champions, using their positions to influence diversity-related policies and strategies in their organizations far beyond their role as mentors to individuals.
Clearly, perceived similarity is critical in attracting and keeping a mentor’s attention. So how can a protégé interested in gaining a mentor’s attention capitalize on this fact? The best way to do so is to get to know a potential mentor and figure out what you have in common. For example, Rosario Marin related that what she saw in her protégé, Araceli, was her ability to be fearless, which was an important trait they shared. Another mentor, Larry Carter, said of his protégé (Patty Archibeck) that he was attracted to her sense of humor—something he also valued in himself, particularly as a way of coping with stress. Mentors often spoke of shared goals, values, practices, and business beliefs as being instrumental in the initial attraction stages of getting to know their protégé. We come back to this topic again in Chapter Six when we discuss the importance of gender and ethnicity in deepening mentoring relationships.

COMPLEMENTARY SKILLS OR PERSPECTIVES

Although we just spent a lot of time convincing you that it is important for a protégé to find points of similarity between themselves and a mentor, now we want to convince you that opposites attract as well! Many of our extremely successful mentors were surprisingly humble in their own assessment of their abilities. Many saw clearly that they needed protégés who were enough like them so they would have some common ground to build on, but they also realized that protégés who had complementary skills or perspectives were enormously helpful as well. For example, Henry Yuen described the following experience with his colleague and peer mentor, Elsie Leung (then CFO of Gemstar):
I negotiated a deal with Microsoft, one of the biggest license agreements. It involved $50 million and many years of payment going forward. I remember I first arrived at a tentative agreement. I came back to brief Elsie (she was the CFO). And she would not sign off. She said that this would have given the company’s future away. We had an incredible argument because I had already given my word, I thought. And I got her to fly up with me to Seattle to say no. In the end, we negotiated an agreement that we felt very comfortable with and probably saved the company. I think the unwavering standardsetting was something that I greatly admired in her.

A COMPELLING CHARACTERISTIC OR SKILL

An additional reason that power mentors became attracted to their protégés was that they perceived the protégé to have a unique quality or compelling personal characteristic that they admired. For example, Anne Sweeney (president of ABC Television Network) described Kathleen Von der Ahe (vice president, ABC) as “effervescent. She has a bright light in her eyes. What struck me first was that this woman exuded the feeling she could do anything.” While the specific personal characteristic at issue varied from one mentor-protégé pair to another, regardless of what it was, it had to be something the mentor admired.

DEMONSTRATED POTENTIAL OR PERFORMANCE

Power mentors such as Bob Wright (CEO of NBC) and Ron Meyer (president and COO of Universal Studios) were attracted to protégés who distinguished themselves by their exemplary reputations, or by a demonstration of their excellent performance or potential. As Bob stated, “Every place that I have been, I’ve always been drawn to certain people that I thought had significant potential or ability that might not come out on its own without some help.” Bob went on to discuss his protégé Paula Madison (president of KNBC): “As I got to know her I realized that she had a tremendously positive sense about things. She was so good at getting things done that I really became a big fan of hers.” Ron Meyer shared a similar recollection about Nikki Rocco, president of Universal Pictures Distribution: “I always had great admiration for her. I thought she was smart and knew her business. And when I saw an opportunity I promoted her to President of Distribution at Universal Pictures. She was the first woman—and remains the only woman—in the entertainment business to hold that job.”

WILLINGNESS TO LEARN

The demonstrated potential of many of the protégés attracted the attention of their mentors. The mentors admired the protégés personally and felt they held great professional promise. Some protégés showed a willingness to learn that was very attractive to their mentors. As Barbara Corday put it, “I guess the first things that come to my mind are enthusiasm, passion, willingness to learn, not a complainer. Somebody who puts out to the community an upbeat attitude that expresses how I like to run my business.”
Bethany Rooney, another woman in entertainment—a television director—mentioned that it was crucial for novice directors to be open to learning: “I would like them to be open to the learning possibilities. I would like them to be willing to put in the time to do the shadowing, and I would like them to be really patient because if they’re patient, sometimes opportunities present themselves where the mentor can go, ‘Oh, here’s an opportunity where I see I can help you.’”
One study in fact found that a protégé’s willingness to learn was a key attribute from the standpoint of many potential mentors. The study also found that the mentor’s own motivations affected what he or she looked for in the protégé. For example, mentors who were very interested in enhancing their own reputations looked for very capable protégés, whereas mentors less interested in their own reputations found willingness to learn to be more important.9
In sum, a distillation of our research and other studies suggests five main reasons mentors take an interest in their protégés. In protégés they are attracted to, mentors see a
1. Perceived similarity to themselves
2. Complementary skill or perspective
3. Compelling characteristic or skill
4. Demonstrated potential or performance
5. Willingness to learn
These elements seemed very important in determining a mentor’s first impressions. In the next section of the chapter we build on these ideas by delving more deeply into what makes an ideal protégé from the mentor’s point of view.

THE PERFECT PROTÉGÉ

Is there a power mentoring secret to becoming the perfect protégé? The answer is ... yes and no. Let’s assume “yes” as we examine the common themes that were consistently reiterated by our power mentors and protégés. Past books on mentoring, how-to mentoring manuals, and even academic articles are quick to provide lists to eager would-be protégés. Usually these lists are written by mentors or mentoring experts, or represent a compilation of mentor ideas that, while valid, are also one-sided (that is, usually from the mentor’s perspective). Imagine trying to uncover the secrets to finding the perfect spouse but only gathering data from all of the husbands in the world, rather than husbands and wives. This would be an incomplete list, since a marriage is not a list of someone’s qualities but a dynamic relationship between two people. Valuable information can be gained from surveying both parties involved in the relationship. The fact that we gathered information from both mentors and protégés makes the following discussion unique.
We conducted a thorough search of the literature to uncover what makes a perfect protégé and found that most of what is frequently cited dates back 20 years. In 1984, Michael Zey conducted interviews with 150 executives in Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller firms, and from this material created a list of criteria that the ideal protégé meets.10 The mentors in Zey’s study looked for the following 10 qualities in their protégés: (1) intelligence, (2) ambition, (3) desire and ability to accept power and risk, (4) ability to perform the mentor’s job, (5) loyalty, (6) similar perceptions of work and organization, (7) commitment to the organization, (8) organizational savvy, (9) positive perceptions of the protégé by the organization, and (10) ability to establish alliances.
Zey’s criteria for the ideal protégé have some very interesting similarities to and differences from our list. In terms of similarity, both groups of mentors valued three identical characteristics in their protégés: intelligence, ambition, and a willingness to take risks. These attributes are consistent with what we value in our corporate leaders today, so it is not surprising that these attributes have remained constant among mentoring relationships as well.
Perhaps more telling than the similarities are the changes that have occurred over the past 20 years. Our list of characteristics comprising the perfect protégé includes not only the first three attributes mentioned (intelligence, ambition, and a willingness to take risks), but seven additional ones. These are as follows: (4) initiative, (5) energy, (6) trustworthiness, (7) integrity, (8) high emotional intelligence, (9) optimism, and (10) complementary skills. It seems clear that mentors’ ideas of the perfect protégé are shaped by the environment and values of the times.
Zey’s list clearly pertains to traditional mentoring, because 7 out of 10 of his characteristics seem to presume shared organizational membership and upward mobility within the same organization. Zey identified the ability to perform a mentor’s job as a critical protégé attribute, indicating that this is likely a classic hierarchical relationship, in which the protégé is being groomed to be the mentor’s successor or at least to move up to higher levels in the organization. This characteristic was not mentioned even once by our power mentors. Instead, we heard many examples of more global qualities such as initiative and energy. This may be a sign of our times, because in one episode of NBC’s The Apprentice, when Donald Trump was asked what he looks for in a young executive or protégé, he said, “Energy and stamina.”
We found it particularly interesting that the 1984 mentors’ emphasis on loyalty and organizational commitment was replaced in 2004 by an emphasis on trustworthiness. This is indicative of today’s tendency toward boundaryless careers and mobility, discussed in Chapter One. Because knowledge workers and particularly senior executives experience relatively short tenures within their respective organizations (the range is three to nine years for a CEO11), the emphasis is less on loyalty to an organization than on loyalty to an industry or profession. Perhaps because organizational commitment and loyalty are at an all-time low, trust has become more salient to mentors and protégés. In fact, trust between mentors and protégés was such a resounding theme in our research that we devote a significant portion of Chapter Five to this idea.
In 1984, mentors valued organizational savvy, positive perceptions of the protégé by the organization, and the ability to establish alliances. In 2004, mentors valued more global and portable attributes, such as emotional intelligence, integrity, and optimism. This is not surprising, because research on emotional intelligence—popularized by Daniel Goleman’s best-selling books, Emotional Intelligence and Working with Emotional Intelligence—shows that interpersonal competence or emotional intelligence (EQ) may be even more important for organizational success than IQ.12 This is reflected in the concepts related to EQ mentioned frequently by mentors, including the importance of the protégé being a good listener and being able to give feedback effectively. The importance of integrity mentioned by the 2004 mentors may be a reaction to the recent spate of corporate and government scandals. Finally, we heard from many of our 2004 mentors about the importance of optimism on the part of the protégé; many of them mentioned the desirability of an “upbeat attitude,” “positive outlook,” and “no complaining.” Indeed, there is a surge of popularity of optimism studies in organizational psychology, and researchers have found that optimism is an important predictor of career satisfaction and success.
The other characteristics mentioned by Zey, such as similar perceptions of work and organization, commitment to the organization, organizational savvy, positive perceptions of the protégé by the organization, and the ability to establish organizational alliances, all related to the assumption that the role of a mentor is to groom a protégé for succession purposes and organizational success. While this may still be very important in some mentoring relationships, today’s power mentors offer an expanded perspective.
Perhaps the most important difference of all leads to a new theory or paradigm shift related to mentoring. In 1984, the ideal protégé had a perception of work similar to that of his or her mentor. In 2004, we found the opposite. While similarity in terms of values and goals was very important, we found that mentors and protégés thoughtfully sought out mentoring relationships with people different from themselves. As noted in our earlier discussion of attraction, there was tremendous energy from both mentors and protégés around the idea of complementary skills and diverse perspectives. As Henry Yuen of Gemstar articulated so well, “I look for complementary skills, complementary approaches and sometimes even complementary ways of handling a problem. You want to have as much diversity as possible. We have to share moral and business values but have diverse or complementary approaches. If you want to build an organization all over again, I would look for those similarities: a sense of value, both moral and business, and look for diversity in skill sets and style and approach.”
Joan Buzzallino captured the idea of a complementary theory of mentoring very well in the following comparison of herself with her IBM mentor, Linda Sanford: “Linda came from a technical discipline; I came from a sales background and then in HR. Linda was clearly an assimilator. I’d be sitting there talking to her, and she’d be assimilating everything and forming ideas. I’d say, ‘I’ve got to watch her and just [notice] how disciplined she sits there and absorbs all the information.’ She is much more of a visionary. I mean, she can just not only assimilate all this information, but really think it out and beyond, where I am much more of a tactical person.”
In sum, the answer to the question of what makes the perfect protégé is simply that “it depends.” It depends on the industry, the project, the mentor’s expectations, and many other variables. In short, it depends on the unique dynamic between the protégé and the mentor. The attributes that the perfect protégé can offer depend especially on the complementary skills the mentor may be looking for. In other words, if you want to be the perfect protégé, figure out what the mentor doesn’t have and then see if you can fill that need. Fortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all protégé model, and more than anything we were struck by the wide variety of traits that mentors found important in their protégés. More often than not, the perfect mentor-protégé match involved an ideal “fit,” taking into account the complementary characteristics of both parties rather than a one-size-fits-all perspective. As in most marriages, we found little evidence of mentor “soul mates”—instead we saw wise careerists at the top of their game who relied on a diverse network of mentors for various aspects of their career development.
No matter how similar or different mentors and protégés were, mentors often recounted the importance of tests and challenges in determining whether the mentor relationship would get off the ground and eventually deepen.

TESTS AND CHALLENGES

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments
of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
 
Our power mentors posed a number of tests and challenges to their protégés. It is interesting to note that many of these tests and challenges were remembered very vividly by the protégés, yet sometimes not at all by the mentors. This indicates that the mentors may have been posing the tests and challenges unconsciously; alternatively, the protégés may have perceived challenges where none actually existed. Some of these tests did occur consciously at the beginning of the relationship, as ways to “weed out” unsuitable potential protégés, whereas others occurred later and led the mentoring relationship to deepen, transition, or terminate. Tests and challenges are important for both mentors and protégés to know about, because they help protégés gain a unique glimpse into what power mentors may want and need. If you are already a mentor or are considering becoming a mentor, you may find these ideas to be useful in your interactions with potential protégés. In this section, we provide a description and examples of the various tests and challenges discussed by our mentors. We conclude each subsection with a list of assessment questions that you will find helpful, whether you are interested in getting started or in deepening your mentoring relationship.
Also, it is important to mention that several of our interviewees initially felt uncomfortable with the idea of testing their protégés.13 As Judith Gwathmey, CEO/president and chief scientific officer of Gwathmey, a biotech firm, stated, “The world tests you enough, I don’t test my protégés—I prepare them.” However, on further consideration, most of the mentors and protégés realized that testing was an integral part of the relationship, even if only in the initial stages.

INITIAL TESTS AND CHALLENGES

Most interpersonal relationships involve some testing. Also, because the power mentors we spoke to were top leaders in their respective industries and thus are highly sought after, they needed to develop litmus tests for evaluating the myriad requests for their time and attention. To pass initial hurdles of this kind, protégés need to follow some basic strategies:
1. Have a plan. First and foremost, when a protégé approaches a potential mentor, it is important for the protégé to have and be able to communicate to the prospective mentor a goal and a plan of action for their future career. This idea was well articulated by Linda Sanford and Nikki Rocco and was echoed again and again by our other power mentors, who stated that the key test questions are
• What do you want to do—what is your ultimate goal?
• What do you see yourself doing at the peak of your career?
2. Bring something to exchange. Debra Martucci added a second idea, which relates to the idea of social exchange—the expectation that both the protégé and the mentor should gain something valuable from their relationship. The following passage captures her typical thoughts when she is approached by someone who wants her to be his or her mentor:
I weed them out on a basis of two things: “Can I actually help them?” and “Do they really need me?” I mean, I’ve had women bluntly ask me, “Could I take you to lunch? I’d love an opportunity to talk to you about my career.” And I’ve had to, in the nicest, gentlest way say, “No.” You know, it just didn’t have that feel. I don’t think I’m the right person to fulfill that need. And it may be selfish, but I didn’t see what I would get from it. So I think there is a bit of mental filtering that I go through.
As part of their career plan, would-be protégés should be able to show how the mentoring relationship would benefit the mentors, too.
3. Make a good first impression. There is an entire body of literature related to the idea of impression management and job interviews. Practical wisdom maintains that an interviewer often makes a decision about a job candidate in the first five minutes of the interview.14 Cisco’s former CFO, Larry Carter, would likely agree with this assessment. He says he looks for several important nonverbal characteristics, including good eye contact, attentive body language, and clear communication in terms of how questions are phrased, when he evaluates a potential protégé. Larry related the following story to illustrate those points: “I had one lady [a potential protégé] who rocked [in her chair], and it drove me nuts. She was sitting there talking and rocking—drove me crazy. So, in a private session as she was explaining a work problem, just in a nice way, I just leaned over and held the chair and said, ‘I just want to make sure I can listen to everything.’”
Larry also suggests that the use of appropriate self-disclosure can be helpful in enhancing communication and trust. He went on to describe an experience where self-disclosure served as an important tool for developing trust with a protégé: “I had one experience with a fellow who was talking about his son having a learning disorder. Well, it turns out that I have a son who has a learning disorder, too, so all of a sudden we had something in common, and we shared about what was his son’s problem and I shared what mine was and what we did and what he did, and all of a sudden we bonded because we had something in common. This builds trust, and if you don’t have trust you are going to waste a lot of time.”
Also related to the idea of impression management is something that Larry says he looks for in a potential protégé. It is their capacity to manifest or acquire that “special something,” which he refers to as “executive presence”:
Executive presence is not just how you dress or how you look, but it’s something about a state of mind that you develop. So you think like an executive. You behave like one. You can look somebody like John Chambers in the eye and talk to him just like you are an equal. You don’t have to talk up to him. So this is a little bit of psychology. Develop confidence in yourself and have the ability to communicate, and feel comfortable around people of stature. I call this executive presence.
4. Communicate positively and with passion. Debra Martucci emphasized what not to do in the following example. She also stressed that protégés should make sure they are clear about what a potential mentor can do for them and vice versa:
The quality of the person and their motivation is important. I tune out very quickly with anyone who starts to use, “I’m a woman, it’s all against me.” I have a real struggle with that, and hence that would be a quality or a characteristic that I would not want to be involved with. And I find that more and more I’m not here to change the world for everyone, and it may not be always a fair world, but you know I do believe in equity. I do believe in the ability to be acknowledged for the talents that you have and not for how you dress or what gender you are. So I think when I see the passion in a person, that they want that for themselves and for their organization and for what they can give, then I think I connect very much with them. So that would probably be one that I would use that is sort of a litmus test.

QUESTIONS TO ASK IN NEW MENTORING RELATIONSHIPS

1. Does the protégé have a goal?
• What are the protégé’s goals, and are they aligned with what the mentor is willing and able to provide?
• What ideas does the protégé have in terms of where they want to be at the peak of their career?
2. Can this be a win-win relationship?
• What will the mentor gain from the relationship?
• What are the specific ways the mentor can be of assistance to the protégé?
3. What do your first impressions say about the protégé?
• How does the protégé’s nonverbal communication style (for example, eye contact, body language, and energy) check out?
• Does the protégé have—or do they have the potential to develop—that “special something” or executive presence?
4. Is this protégé a winner or a whiner?
• Does the protégé describe problems and challenges in their career and job constructively (that is, without whining or slamming other people)?

TESTS AND CHALLENGES THAT DEEPEN THE MENTORING RELATIONSHIP

In mythology, would-be heroes and suitors are typically asked to pass a test, such as slaying a dragon, before they can achieve a desired goal, such as marrying the princess. Sometimes it works the same way in mentoring. We found that often mentors require that protégés perform certain tasks before the mentor agrees to continue the mentoring relationship. On most first tests, the protégé’s failure to perform successfully usually hurts the protégé only in the sense of a lost opportunity. For the mentor, the first test generally represents only a loss of time. Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) is often deluged with requests for mentoring and assistance from up-and-coming politicians. She posed the following first test to her protégé, Sharon Martinez, now Council Member, City of Monterey Park, California. As Martinez described it:
Hilda began by asking me, “What’s your budget?” She said, “I need you to raise this much money by this date.” That was my test. She said, “You come back, and when you tell me you’ve raised $10,000, then we’ll talk again.” And she told me exactly how you do it. She said, “You call all your friends. You make a list of 100 people who may give you $100. You make another list of another 50 people who may give you $200. And make a list and do that. And come back, and when you’ve done that and you’ve got your $10,000, then let’s talk again.”
The next test posed by the mentor can have direct work implications and serious repercussions, both for the mentor and for the protégé. Typically, these tests are about a mentor giving a protégé a serious work challenge, providing the protégé with a big break or opportunity, or publicly aligning himself or herself with the protégé. If the protégé performs well, the mentoring relationship deepens and often results in more trust, greater respect on both sides, and more professional opportunities. Bob Wright and Pamela Thomas-Graham both recalled one example in this regard. As Pamela related:
I think there were challenging times in terms of the cycle of our dot-com company (CNBC.com). Because we had to build it up very fast in 1999, and then pretty much over the course of the latter part of 2000 into 2001 we basically had to take it back apart. This meant hiring and then laying off or reassigning people in a very short time period. Now, that was not a deliberate test that was set for me, but it was certainly very challenging. And I think I learned a lot from Bob in terms of being able to manage both the growth period as well as the downsizing period.
In recalling this incident, Bob Wright also described additional challenges: “After this, Pamela went on to become head of CNBC, which was an existing organization at the beginning of a big downturn for financial services companies. So that was a very different challenge and different set of relationships. Even harder, she had to reduce the cost to the organization to deal with failing revenues and establish herself as a leader.”
In fact, we found that often power mentors and protégés were successful in their careers because of their propensity to take risks. However, sometimes no matter how big a risk taker the protégé is, the risk they have taken doesn’t pan out. What happens when the mentor poses a challenge, provides a big break, or aligns himself or herself with a protégé and then the opportunity backfires? How the mentor and protégé recover from the protégé’s failure is the true test of relationship resiliency. Marc Buckland reminisced about working with his mentor (who could be considered a mentor of the moment—a common phenomenon in Hollywood), executive producer Steven Bochco (creator and producer of NYPD Blue, Murder One, and LA Law):
Every time that I would go off to direct an episode, the last thing Steven would say after our meeting was, “Don’t f**k it up.” And I think he still says that to everyone. You know, he’s kidding, but he’s not. Well, in Steven’s company, if the director comes in and f**ks it up, you don’t usually get invited back. And that’s just because Steven wants to maintain a certain level of quality in his work. But, I must say, Steven endured and supported my learning curve. I know the first episodes I did were ... I certainly was a young, new director who had a lot to learn. After my first show I did for him, I do remember that he gave me the note to really keep an eye on the actors because perhaps I was so concerned about covering a scene and staging a scene that I may have not been focused enough on the shape of a scene, the performance and all that.
Even though Steven Bochco had tremendously high standards, it is notable that he took the time to give Marc Buckland a chance to develop his skills. This risk has paid off for both, because Marc is now an extremely successful television director in his own right. His directing credits include Ed, Scrubs, Felicity, The West Wing, and NYPD Blue.
On the other hand, U.S. Representative David Dreier (R-CA) relates the following story of mentoring a protégé (in what one could consider a barrier-buster relationship) who failed, causing serious repercussions for Dreier:
Congressman Jay Kim was the first Korean American to run for and be elected to the Congress as a Republican, and I was very excited and enthused about that. He got into real trouble and was defeated in his election because he was convicted of campaign finance misdemeanors. I had really taken to this guy and I supported him to the end because he said to me that he was not guilty, he loved this country and all that. He looked me in the eye and asked me to support him, and I agreed. Well, I was politically attacked, and there were letters to the editor in the newspapers out in California saying, “David Dreier must be a crook because he is supporting this crook.” I have one of the most pristine records. I mean, nobody has ever questioned my ethical standards and credibility. When I mentor someone I’m intensely loyal, and I mean, I supported this guy until the very end. And a lot of people backed away from him; and I didn’t. And I don’t know if that was a fault on my part or not, but anyway, I did it. I paid a price, as it did give some fodder to my political opponents that I had mentored this guy, but I seem to have withstood it.
Although David bounced back based on the strength of his own record and reputation, clearly the mentoring relationship was over. It seems likely that when a protégé fails as miserably as Jay did, the mentor might be reluctant to mentor others in the future.
Another story from the entertainment world relates to well-known producer Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator) and Roger Corman (Hollywood’s top “B” movie producer, with more than 300 titles since 1954). Corman is known not only for being prolific but also for giving some of Hollywood’s greatest their starts. Gale Anne Hurd is one of Corman’s former protégés, and she recalled the tests she encountered from Roger early in her career:
Everything with Roger was a test. His philosophy was sink or swim. Roger would task me with three or four different things at once. And one was casting a film, another was location scouting, and a third was arranging for a production company to be set up in a foreign country. All this was to be done when he was out of the country. And I’d never done any location scouting before. So I went to a number of different locations; I took some notes, I didn’t think to take a Polaroid camera. I didn’t think to put it all down on the board so I could share it with him. I had it all in my head, and so when Roger came back, everything else was pretty much done, but, you know, he said, “Well, so what are the locations?” And I said, “Well, I found this, and I found this.” And he said, “Well, where are the photos?” I said, “Well, I didn’t take any photos.” And we had a big falling out, and then I was very defensive about it because I wasn’t used to failing at something. I was devastated. And it took me a while to realize that the only way that you learn sometimes is by either by making mistakes or by asking someone, you know, how they have done it, and in some cases if you don’t get the right answer, pooling a number of people and see if everyone has reached the same conclusion.
Gale went on to relate the story of quitting in a fit of frustration. However, she also had the courage to return to Roger and ask to be reinstated. He gladly welcomed her back. Although her failing was difficult for both of them, ultimately it resulted in a better working relationship because she learned how to do her job more effectively and he trusted her skills.
Trust is a tremendously important theme that mentors and protégés spent a great deal of time discussing in our study. The theme of one popular test is “Can I trust the protégé to tell the truth to me, and reciprocally, can he or she be a trustworthy confidant for me?” It is said that it is lonely at the top, and often power mentors tended to solicit feedback from and confide in their protégés. Sometimes testing comes in the form of soliciting opinions or advice, where mentors and protégés use each other as sounding boards and confidants. Marc Buckland, director (Ed), shares the following story about testing his protégé, Laura J. Medina:
The only way I would test her is sometimes I would ask her after a certain take what she thought. And that wasn’t so much to test to see if she had the right answer or the wrong answer. It was more to get the sense of her sensibilities. I’ve let her watch cuts of all the shows. And I was always interested in hearing what she liked and didn’t like. And a lot of that was for selfish reasons, too, because I’m a big believer in fresh eyes, somebody who I think is smart, okay, why didn’t you like that? How can I fix that? Or what did you like?
Perhaps one of the most crucial tests of all in determining whether the relationship can deepen is simply whether the protégé acts on the mentor’s advice. As Dixie Garr, put it, “My biggest test is, ‘Are you willing to do the work? I’m willing to put in time, but you’ve got to be willing to put in time and effort too.’ So if I ask somebody to think about some idea or put together this plan, and they don’t come back, I am so through.”
Kathleen Von der Ahe related the following story about advice given to her by her mentor, Anne Sweeney. Later, when we interviewed Sweeney, she reiterated the story and was most impressed with the way Kathleen had followed through with her advice. In Kathleen’s words:
I had a real tough month professionally. The Network performance was just horrible. The affiliates were just not happy. It was a very depressing time for me. It’s like why am I getting up this morning? I had one of my meetings with Anne that afternoon. I said to her, “I kind of feel like I’m stagnant right now. I need something to sink my teeth into and feel good about.” And so she said to me, “Kathleen, what you need to do is set yourself goals.” And so she shared a story with me about some goals that she set for herself. And about a week later I had a meeting with my team, and I said, “We are going to start conference calls every morning for the next two months. And we’re going to do a sales meeting with every one of our 43 TV stations. And we’re going to give them a sales pitch about our May Sweep plans.”
Kathleen’s story underscores how she passed the challenge Anne put to her. The test deepened their relationship in a couple of ways, because Kathleen risked telling Anne about challenges she was having at work, which is often difficult to admit to another, and Kathleen met the test by following Anne’s advice in setting specific goals in order to overcome these challenges.
The final set of challenges relates to getting to know the protégé as a whole person. These might involve observing them in social situations, judging if they are fun, and observing how they react under pressure. The depth of the relationship can depend on how the protégé responds in social settings or outside the boundaries of work. Bob Wright mentioned this: “I always try to find or look up people in social environments if I can, because you do see other sides of people. Or maybe you don’t see another side, you see the same person. But some people are different. And sometimes it’s tension, and sometimes it’s just you get more of a chance to see their personality and their interests.”
Mentors may also test protégés by either putting them into a pressure-filled situation or observing how they respond under pressure. Patty Archibeck and Larry Carter both discussed observing one another under pressure. Patty related a story of how they work together in tense situations when she talked about what happened during a very important presentation:
When I feel Larry’s eyes on me [in tense situations] I just go calm. An example would be on a presentation I remember where he came in, and there’s was a change that needed to be made, and he was supposed to be on stage in like two seconds, and he wanted a slide moved or something like that. He was literally walking up onstage after he told me, so I said, “Okay, your cue is that you don’t start speaking onstage until you see me in the back of the room,” because then the presentation is closed back up. So I ran back to the graphics person, and they made the change. And I walked to the back of the room and he looked at me and smiled and just started.
In working together, Patty learned how to respond when Larry put her on the spot, and Larry learned that he could depend on her time after time when he challenged Patty. Although making a last-minute change in a presentation looks trivial, this situation shows that they knew they could depend on one another whatever challenge was presented. This type of trust is the result of an ongoing cycle of tests that the protégé passes, and it eventually deepens the mentoring relationship.

TESTS THAT DEEPEN THE MENTORING RELATIONSHIP

1. Can the protégé “put their money where their mouth is”?
• When the mentor gave the protégé their first assignment, did the protégé do it, and if so, how well? Typically, failing at the first assignment hurts only the protégé; the only loss to the mentor is time spent giving the advice or suggestion.
2. Will this protégé help me or hurt me?
• How well did the protégé handle the first challenge that had direct work implications or repercussions for the mentor’s career? The next challenge is more serious, since the protégé’s failure can have serious work or reputation repercussions for the mentor. This challenge is often job related and really ties the protégé to the mentor’s reputation.
3. To err is human, to forgive divine ... if you learned something.
• How did the protégé deal with failure, and how did the mentor and protégé overcome this stumbling block?
• What happens to the relationship when the protégé embarrasses the mentor or damages the mentor’s reputation?
4. Can I trust this protégé to tell me the truth and really hear me?
• How well does the protégé provide useful opinions, advice, and/or feedback to the mentor?
• Did the protégé prove to be a trustworthy confidant to the mentor?
5. Is the protégé doing the work, and does he or she appreciate the mentor?
• Is the protégé continuing to act on the mentor’s suggestions?
• Is the protégé communicating to the mentor on how he or she acted on suggestions, corrections, or advice?
• Is the protégé communicating appreciation of the mentor?
6. What’s this protégé really like, as a whole person, and do I like him or her?
• How does the protégé behave in social settings, and how comfortable are the mentor and protégé with each other outside of work?
• How does the protégé respond under pressure, and how does that help the mentor?
• Is the protégé fun to be around?

CONCLUSION

In this chapter we examined the important factors, from the mentor’s perspective, that affect the nature of the mentoring relationship. The chapter underscored the need for mentors to explore their own philosophy of mentoring by asking themselves a series of questions:
• Why do I want to mentor others? In other words, what’s in it for me?
• What is the protégé’s role in setting the tone of the relationship?
• What do I expect from the protégé in this relationship?
Protégés should ask themselves similar questions about potential mentors in order to understand the mentor’s philosophy. In addition, protégés should explore their own expectations for the relationship and their assumptions about their perfect mentor.
Mentors noted a wide range of attributes that are attractive in a protégé. Sometimes the success of a relationship boils down to a question of chemistry, and if such chemistry is not present, then it is important to find a relationship that holds other promise. Generally, though, the five main reasons for attraction included:
1. Perceived similarity, not necessarily based on demographic similarity
2. Complementary skills or perspectives
3. A compelling characteristic or skill
4. Demonstrated potential or performance
5. Willingness to learn
We also discussed important characteristics of the “perfect” protégé from the point of view of the many mentors we interviewed. These characteristics give would-be protégés a comprehensive list of skills that are important to a power mentor. For a protégé, leaving the attraction to chance is not an effective way to attract a power mentor. Successful protégés should work to perfect the following abilities:
1. Intelligence
2. Ambition
3. Desire and ability to accept power and risk
4. Initiative
5. Energy
6. Trustworthiness
7. Integrity
8. High emotional intelligence
9. Optimism
10. Complementary skills
From the mentor’s perspective, the relationship often begins with a series of tests and challenges. The mentor gives a potential protégé a small assignment to determine whether the protégé has the qualities the mentor is looking for, or as we said earlier, to screen out unsuitable protégés. The tests often tell the mentor whether the protégé is skilled, trustworthy, and/or optimistic, or any other of the characteristics that may be desirable to that mentor. As the mentoring relationship deepens, the tests and challenges often become more numerous and complex, and we argue that, in power mentoring relationships, these events are important in determining the intensity of the relationship and its outcomes.
This chapter has provided guidelines that can help both protégés and mentors come to a better understanding of the mentors’ expectations and behavior in a developing mentoring relationship. In the next chapter, we investigate protégés’ motivations for entering into mentoring relationships and what they hope to gain.
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