MENTORING CORPORATES

Do top executives need mentors?

BY Jayashantha Jayawardhana

When Chief Financial Officer of Standard Life David Nish was promoted to Chief Executive Officer in 2010, he knew the road ahead wouldn’t be smooth.

The organisation had begun a sweeping transformation from insurer to a long-term savings and investment company. And Nish understood that his managerial judgement would be rigorously tested in many ways.

Realising that he could benefit from the perspective of someone who had been down a similar road before, Nish chose former chairman of Unilever Niall FitzGerald as his adviser.

In their article ‘CEOs Need Mentors Too,’ published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), Suzanne de Janasz and Maury Peiperl wrote: “The mentoring relationship they (Nish and FitzGerald) subsequently established is illustrative of those we have studied in our research – a two-year inquiry into an emerging way in which new CEOs in large organisations gain access to seasoned counsel and feedback.”

They added: “We found dozens of executives who were accelerating their learning by engaging the services of high profile veteran leaders from outside their companies. To learn more about this growing but as yet undocumented phenomenon, we interviewed 15 chairman mentors and 25 protégé CEOs, CEO designates and CFOs.”

The authors believe that more CEOs should connect with mentors rather than reckon that theirs is a burden to be shouldered alone. But mentoring arrangements at the top are trickier than those at the lower levels of an organisation.

At the CEO level, attention must focus on making a match between the mentor and mentee. Their sessions should be structured to deliver the intended benefits and the process must be prioritised so that it isn’t crowded out or derailed by other demands.

In many companies, mentoring is effectively used to facilitate the acculturation, performance and career progress of new entrants, high potentials and minority populations who lack sufficient obvious role models.

Most CEOs of large organisations have had the benefit of mentoring and other developmental activities such as stretch job assignments and leadership programmes during their careers. But their arrival at the top suddenly narrows the available and appropriate options.

Now more than ever in corporate history however, CEOs must keep raising their game and having their thinking challenged for the good of the companies they lead. They must routinely make tough calls concerning matters they’ve never tackled before.

When have they ever had to lead a takeover or defend against one? Resolve a crisis as the public face of the company? Deal with a board of powerful directors with divergent opinions?

These call for new talents. What earns them the top seat is no longer enough to keep them in it.

In such high stakes situations, CEOs need wise mentoring, which isn’t the same as coaching. Although executive coaches are often brilliant at providing feedback and bridging gaps in specific managerial skills, very few of them have actually worked in similar roles themselves.

However, mentors are role models who have ‘been there, done that.’ They can provide timely and contextual advice drawn from experience, wisdom and networks that are quite relevant to the problems that need to be solved.

As opposed to many company managed mentoring programmes, CEO mentoring is driven by the mentee and reflects a level of customisation that’s seldom provided to people in the lower ranks.

A mentor should possess the relevant experience after having been at the helm of a large complex enterprise and demonstrably succeeded. The best mentors not only think differently but also understand how the company is regarded in the marketplace.

When Nokia found itself in a precipitous slide as Apple and Samsung – the smartphone pioneers – began dominating the mobile market, it brought former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop on board to turn the company around.

At the suggestion of his chairman, he began meeting with former chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International Peter Sutherland. His help was offered on a personal basis and Elop found him invaluable in many ways including as a guide to the unfamiliar dynamics of European board governance.

And Sutherland could also offer an impartial view on whether Elop’s new strategy was creating positive momentum. In September 2013, Nokia announced the sale of its key assets to Microsoft at a substantial premium to shareholders.

Trust is a crucial component in a mentoring relationship. In the strongest CEO mentoring relationships, clear rules of engagement ensure that both parties commit to total confidentiality.

And this encourages the mentees to disclose concerns without fear of repercussions, and traverse the learning curve faster and perform more effectively.