Who's Mentoring Whom?

Women at the top of their game consistently tap into the wisdom of mentors. However, with more women reaching the top of the corporate ladder, the traditional mentoring relationship has changed.

by Echo Montgomery Garrett

March 1, 2005

W omen at the top of their game consistently tap into the wisdom of mentors, and many name men as key mentors. However, with more women reaching the top of the corporate ladder, the traditional mentoring relationship has morphed. Here's how some of Atlanta's smartest women are using mentoring.

62% of women have mentors, according to a poll conducted by CareerWomen.com. Of that number, 64% said their most important mentors were male while 36% said women mentors have been most influential in their careers.

Carol Tomé, chief financial officer of The Home Depot (No. 13 on the Fortune 100), regularly appears on lists as one of the nation's most powerful women. She hasn't had a formal mentoring relationship in four years. Yet, like so many smart women who have made it to the top, Tomé constantly seeks out mentoring on an informal basis. "I get mentored by everybody," she says.

She has something else in common with her female peers. Like many high-ranking corporate women, when Tomé reflects on gut-wrenching input that changed the course of her career, a male mentor comes to mind. "My first job out of graduate school, I was a vice president at a bank in Colorado," she recalls.

After a meeting, her mentor pulled her aside and told her that she got too angry too easily. "Your passion is good, but your anger could derail you," he warned.

"After I sat down and took a deep breath, I was so thankful," says Tomé. "I worked on channeling my passion and using my emotions in the right way."

Today, she's quick to name her current boss, Bob Nardelli, The Home Depot's CEO, as her primary mentor, although she adds that he probably wouldn't attach that name to it. "He's broadened my strategic thinking," says Tomé, who has 14 direct reports and leads a 1,000-person financial organization. "He's also helped me focus on my leadership skills, because at the end of the day, it's all about people. Bob is a wonderful coach and a fabulous leader."

Two years ago in the midst of  The Home Depot's rough patch, Tomé had an epiphany after watching Nardelli inaction. "All my working life, I had measured my success by the size of the deals I made," she says. "I viewed myself as the Deal Queen. However, although I was doing all the right things, I got afraid that all my tombstone would say is 'She worked hard.'"

That was a turning point, and Tomé vowed to concentrate on making a difference in the lives of those around her by passing on what she was learning. "Now I measure my success in terms of my team's success," she says. "I have to be a coach and a mentor every day."

Tomé proudly points out that women occupy several key roles on her team: vice president, controller; treasurer; vice president of finance for the central division; and vice president of investor relations. Indeed, 50% of the managers in the financial function are women. "If you look at the Fortune 50, you couldn't find any other financial team with this many women at the top," says Tomé, who is one of only 43 female CFOs in the Fortune 500.

Nardelli applauds her efforts. "Mentoring is a critical business tool," he says. "It's a way of developing leaders and encouraging talent within your organization. Carol knows that a company's success is determined by its people - that's why she has worked to develop a culture of mentoring in the finance function and at The Home Depot in general."

To create an environment where mentoring is part of the fabric, openness and trust must be established. After her a-ha moment, Tomé recognized that many of the women in The Home Depot had not forged strong relationships with each other. In 2003, she invited a group of women at the district manager, director, vice president and other officer levels to her home for an informal get-together. Out of the 60 women who showed up, she was astounded to find that hardly any of them knew each other. Not surprisingly, there was little exchange among them. The women, sponsored by Tomé, decided to call themselves "The Velvet Hammers." Their mission was to create a network to foster development and promote involvement inside and outside the company. "Women must support each other, and women are powerful when we come together," says Tomé.

 

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OLD SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
You have one primary mentor who you rely on for virtually everything.

NEW THINKING
Peer mentoring and using a network of mentors gives access to collective wisdom and brings new insight.

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Like Tomé, at this stage in her career, Valencia Adams, vice president and chief diversity officer at BellSouth Corporation, doesn't have a formal mentor. "I don't have one person," she says. "My peers - other officers in the company like Jan Funderburg, president, consumer services; Dick Sibbernsen, vice president of human resources; Mark Feidler, chief operating officer; and Margaret Greene, president of regulatory affairs - mentor me on an as-needed basis. Instead of being career focused, it's now more around how to address a particular issue or a given idea. Mentoring for officers takes on a different notion than when you are climbing the corporate ladder."

In the last five years, Adams has made use of external mentors, too, like, for example, Coca-Cola's Ingrid Saunders Jones. "Early on in my career, I had very specific mentors, and most of them were women, which was not normal in the corporate world," says Adams. "The women tended to provide the most effective and realistic guidance for me. The women were more likely to say, 'Here's something to be aware of that's a minefield.'"

A mentor gave her advice that she's held onto throughout her career: "You're not going to be given anything. Don't wait on anything to happen. You have to make things happen." Recalls Adams, "While I wasn't expecting anything, nobody wants to hear that. However, what the person was really telling me was there will not be a gift. You really will earn it."

When Adams was in middle management, a mentor also gave her the courage to push ahead when a boss didn't believe in her. "My boss called me in and said, 'We both know you have gone as far as you are going to go,'" she says. "I was somewhat stunned. My mentor at the time said, 'You have the option to choose to believe that or not.'"

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OLD SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
Advice goes one way.

NEW THINKING
Mentoring is a give and take relationship, and 360 degree feedback is encouraged.

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Adams has seen a subtle shift in mentoring, and she sees it as a positive one. "I believe the mentoring relationship is one of equals, and I see it as reciprocal," she says. "I enter mentoring relationships where I believe I have an opportunity to learn as well as teach. Mentees help me as much as I help them."

She also maintains ties with former mentors: "Every mentoring relationship I've been in, those mentors are in my life today. The relationship moves to a friendship."

As the only African American female officer in the company, Adams is regularly approached by people both within the organization and from the outside, asking her to be their mentor. However, in addition to a single formal mentoring relationship she has within BellSouth's leadership group, she limits the number of people whom she mentors to two or three. "I'm looking for someone who is willing to work and who demonstrates commitment and a sincere desire to grow," she says.

Those lucky few who gain her notice get her undivided attention when they meet with her. Adams sets aside time and fiercely protects it. She asks the mentee to give her an agenda and let her know at least three days in advance what she or he wants to discuss in case Adams needs to provide books or other resources: "I make sure it's a good use of our time."

Meg Nollen, vice president, investor relations for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, strongly advocates the mentoring process. She relies on a group of executives - both male and female - that she calls her "board of directors." "They are people who have seen me at work, who understand my strengths and shortcomings and my tendencies to react," says Nollen, who has been with G-P for 18 months.

Nollen says her board "knows and loves me in spite of my warts, but I don't have a bunch of cheerleaders. These people also speak frankly and directly."

However, like Tomé and Adams, Nollen - who for her work with Houston-based Dynegy, Inc., won IR Magazine/Barron's U.S. Awards Grand Prix for Best Overall Investor Relations in a large-cap company in 2001 - has assembled these mentors informally to help her navigate.

She finds she turns to the women "when it comes to understanding reactive circumstances or when I need to know how to present and sell an idea. When my question is more strategically-oriented, I tend to go for the men."

By the nature of her role, many of the people Nollen draws upon are former CEOs and CFOs, and, she says, "They are men. With men it's just business, it's never personal. There's a game to it, and they want to win. The men aren't worried about hurting feelings, what's not fair, or overanalyzing, thinking, 'If I do that they'll think this.'"

Since her move to Atlanta from Houston, Nollen has been on the road almost non-stop for G-P. "I'm working to make contact with my peers - Paula Norton at UPS and Carol Tomé at The Home Depot have reached out to me and been very warm," she says. "Female executives look out for each other. I remember starting out, I had to wear bowties and buy my suits at men's stores. I started a family shortly after I got married, and all the other women executives I knew were either single or childless. It was very difficult."

When she was new in management, a female executive peer gave Nollen life-changing counsel. After a meeting, the woman pulled Nollen aside and said, 'Don't ever apologize. Men never apologize. Women do it by nature. It's a subtlety in our communication. Don't frame the conversation that way. Executives don't talk in those terms. Just say, 'Here are the facts, and here's what I'm doing to correct the problem.' It's not about blame. It's about resolution and learning from it, so you don't do it again."

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OLD SCHOOL OF THOUGHT
Mentoring relationships should be formalized and assigned.

NEW THINKING
Mentoring happens organically, and the best relationships form naturally.

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Nollen doesn't believe that mentoring relationships need to be formalized. "Mentoring can be done in an elevator," she says. "With the advent of internet and cellphones, my mentoring circle is so broad and so wide that geographic boundaries don't get in the way. To me mentoring is more about self awareness- having someone help you hold up the mirror and peel away the layers of emotion and reactions and get down to the true issues at hand."

Nollen has observed that women get less mentoring for one simple reason: They don't ask. "They are so hesitant to approach," she says. "Women are more empathetic. They know how busy you are and apologize for asking for a moment of your time. Men approach so differently. They'll just call and say, 'How do you handle this?'"

The other block to getting help is fear of looking foolish, she says: "People are afraid to let others know that they don't know how to proceed or don't know the answer. When you try to bluff, that's failure."

In her role as general manager of the Renaissance Waverly Hotel, Debbie Karcanes oversees 400 employees. She is one of only eight female GMs in the Renaissance chain, and her hotel, which had $35 million in sales in 2004 up 11% over the prior year, ranks as one of the chain's top performers out of 70 domestic properties. Karcanes, who has been a GM for 10 years, says all her primary mentors have been men.

"Very few women have been GMs before me, and so they were not in positions of leadership in my industry," says Karcanes, who is single with no children and who has moved 10 times in the past 12 years. "We're a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week business. Women take themselves out of this field, because many women don't feel like they can have a family life and do this job. That's what we're trying to get past in this industry. That's why I work hard so hard at mentoring - especially females."

Early on in Karcanes' career, her boss at a big hotel chain "took me under his wing and really helped me understand the whole corporate mentality and how to manage upward. He was specifically helpful to me in setting my goals for what I wanted to attain. He's still one of my best friends, and we talk and bounce things off one another. We have a very strong relationship, but now it's more on an equal level."

She aggressively mentors people, seeking out those who could do more than they are doing. "Many times when you mentor someone, you get as much out of it as they do," she says. "The key thing to me in mentoring is to get them to set some specific goals for themselves. Too many people wait for something to happen rather than creating the opportunity for themselves."

Like Nollen, Karcanes has noticed that women sometimes appear afraid to ask for mentoring. "Many of us would drop what we're doing in a heartbeat to work with an open-minded person who is willing to listen," says Karcanes, who frequently lunches with her peer Michele Swann, GM of the neighboring Cobb-Galleria Centre, to discuss Cobb County issues and how they can both be more successful. "You can tell right away when someone is willing to take some risks."

Carolyn Johnson, vice president of healthcare operations of Kaiser Permanente and responsible for 10 direct reports and 2,000 employees, goes to different key individuals, depending on the subject matter of the issues or decisions she's facing. Johnson, who notes that throughout her healthcare career most of her mentors, including her immediate boss, Carolyn Kenny, have been women, says, "I might ask, 'How might I best launch initiatives?' The executive might not be in the core of our operations, but that person might have a better handle on the community impact or how my proposal will be perceived in the marketplace. I trust my mentors to give me candid feedback. Part of being a good mentor is asking probing questions."

Johnson noted that her mentors respect her privacy: "They are really good listeners, and they don't pass judgment. These are people of integrity. For me personally, it's also important that they have a good sense of humor."

One of her key male mentors worked with her outside the corporation in fundraising. "He helped me understand the importance of involvement in the community," says Johnson, who subsequently closely aligned herself with the March of Dimes and is serving as chair of this year's Atlanta's Walk.

"I've observed that men are far more comfortable giving very direct feedback," says Johnson. "Men and women can be equally effective in a mentoring role, but when you look across multiple industries, there are far more men who are perceived as mentors."

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Gail Evans On Supporting Women
We all live in the fantasy that it can only help your career to have a powerful mentor, but relying on somebody big and famous to take you under his wing and help you make it happen is dangerous. That classic mentor in most corporations is still a white man. Naturally he usually finds a young man to mentor, because you mentor somebody you see in your own image.

When women entered the workplace, we tried to formalize the process and assign mentors. But that didn't work. One of the fundamentals of a good mentoring relationship is that the two really like each other on a deep level.

I've probably mentored a hundred women. They are people I think are smart. They are comers. They are people I didn't want to see go through what I've gone through. Here's how women can make mentoring work better.

Don't ask somebody to be your mentor.
Nothing makes me crazier. Mentors and mentees find each other. What you do is wait until a quiet moment and ask for five minutes of the person's time to talk about how to handle a particular situation. Coming to the person with a request fosters a relationship, shows your interest and acknowledges the fact that you know they know what they are talking about.

Forget the fantasy that you get a mentor and that person guides your career all along.
Most people have lots of different mentors.

Learn to recognize when you're getting mentored.
No question this guy, my big boss, was my mentor. His secretary would call me and say, "He wants to see you." I'd walk in and sometimes he'd be on the phone in the middle of a negotiation. He'd look at me but would just continue. He was showing me how to negotiate by letting me be there.

Recognize that you already know how to mentor and how to be mentored.
Women mentor each other all the time by asking questions. We're great mentors on pregnancy, babies, families, life, but nobody says, "Will you mentor me about my baby?" The minute we come to the office, we turn mentoring into some formal program that's mysterious.

Mentor other women.
The minute any woman gets her first or second promotion, she has an obligation to mentor other women - especially if she's a woman of color. You don't have to be at the top of the corporation. Mentoring is helping somebody to avoid stepping in the minefields.

Recognize the huge opportunity with peer mentoring.
Share with each other what we observe. You know who got listened to in the meeting, and why his plan got adopted even though hers was better. Instead of saying, "Gee, Janet screwed up," we've got to reach a point where we can sit down with Janet and say, "Your work was great, but the CEO checked out after three sentences. One page is all he wants."

Gail Evans is the best selling author of She Wins, You Win and Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman.

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How Mentees Say Mentors Help Most:
Source: CareerWomen.com

Female Mentors:
  Informal fellowship  79%
  Guidance within corporation  77%
  Motivation and encouragement  41%
  Feedback, coaching, advice  38%
  Networking/advancement opportunities  24%
  General business training  8%
  Leadership opportunities  5%

Male Mentors:
  General business training  92%
  Leadership opportunities  95%
  Feedback, coaching advice  62%
  Networking/advancement opportunities  76%
  Motivations and encouragement  59%
  Guidance within corporation  23%
  Informal fellowship  21%