How mentoring can help you to conquer obstacles and doubt

Fresh perspectives from a seasoned mentor can make all of the difference for a female executive and there are some great choices out there, says Gabrielle Monaghan

The old adage “it’s not what you know, but who you know” is a truism when it comes to mentoring. Even the most celebrated of business leaders have relied on the support and advice of someone older and more experienced during their career.

Mark Zuckerberg turned to the late Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, for guidance during the early days of Facebook, and Sheryl Sandberg, the social network’s chief operating officer, has often credited Larry Summers, her mentor since her days as a student at Harvard University, for playing a pivotal role in her career.

Not every female leader or entrepreneur will have a former Harvard president and US treasury secretary at their disposal to dole out advice on how to grow their business or navigate corporate politics. But they can seek out a mentor who will act as an advocate or role model for them, as a sounding board for new ideas, or someone who will provide non-judgemental feedback on how to climb the corporate ladder.

Traditionally, it’s been easier for men to naturally find mentors in their workplace or industry, not just because they had greater networking opportunities through bonding on the golf course or in all-male sessions in the pub. It’s because of the sheer number of men in leadership positions to begin with, according to Brid Horan, a former deputy chief executive of the ESB. Horan is a mentor on the Top 25 Mentoring Programme run by the Women’s Executive Network (WXN), which matches high-performing female leaders with influential mentors and sits on the steering committee of the Irish chapter of the 30% Club, which aims to ensure women account for at least 30pc of the senior executives and board members at the top 25 Irish companies by 2020. At present, just 12.6pc of board members of companies listed on the Iseq Overall Index are women, Horan says.

The right mentor can help women overcome career obstacles such self-doubt, says Orla Nugent, an executive coach and the director of MBA Programmes at the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School. Nugent facilitates classroom instruction on the WXN Wisdom Top 25 Mentoring Programe.

“A lack of confidence can hold us back from putting ourselves forward for jobs we are more than capable of doing,” she says. “With a mentor, we get an outside perspective on our abilities, which gives us the strength to ask for what we want and helps us appreciate that we bring a completely different skillset to the guys in the workplace.”

This fresh perspective can be provided by a mentor either within the same industry or from a different sector entirely — a mentor outside a woman’s workplace can sometimes offer a more balanced view. Either way, finding the right mentor requires doing your homework.

“You need to do some due dilligence,” Nugent says. “Check out their reputation and credentials before approaching them and make sure they will have the time to be your mentor.”

Opinions differ on whether you should ask someone directly to be a mentor; Sandberg, for instance, has suggested cultivating productive relationships with a potential mentor instead. Either way, one of the most important factors in a successful mentor-mentee relationship is that there is some common ground and that both parties get along.

Nugent, who has had both male and female mentors throughout her career as an engineer, programmer, management consultant and start-up founder, says: “For me, it’s been about having the right fit and chemistry with the person. It’s a relationship, not a one-way street.”

She believes joining a professional women’s network can help give female executives and businesswomen access to the kind of environment that makes finding a mentor possible. As well as mentoring, the Women’s Executive Network provides networking opportunities.

Employers increasingly have their own formal mentoring programmes in place to develop potential female leaders, Horan points out. Businesses have begun to realise that greater female representation in their pool of management is a financial imperative, with research showing a female influence leads to greater profits and better investment returns. One study by Credit Suisse found that companies where women made up more than 10pc of the top operational jobs had a 27pc greater return on equity and a 42pc higher ratio of dividend payouts than companies with 5pc fewer women in such positions.

Meanwhile, women are five times more likely to set up their own business as a result of meeting other female entrepreneurs, research conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has shown. There is now a greater array of mentoring programmes available in Ireland for female-led startups, such the Female High Fliers Programme run by the DCU Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurs.

Mentoring should not only benefit the mentee but the mentor themselves. Horan, who has sat on the boards of FBD Holdings and IDA Ireland, has been both at different stages of her career — often informally — and has found it rewarding.

“It’s a real privilege to have an honest conversation with someone younger than me about the kind of challenges they are facing in their own career,” she says. “It keeps you up-to-date with what the current issues are and you get an angle on how organisations should be managing their people.”

I enjoyed being a mentor in the WXN Wisdom Top 25 Mentoring Programme so much that I have signed up again. What makes this a unique and very strong initiative is the combination of the mentoring, the quality of the class room sessions at the UCD Smurfit School of Business and of course the wonderful peer network that opens up for the mentees. I have recommended the programme to a number of high potential women as I believe it can play a key role in their development. Carolan Lennon, Top 25 Award Winner; Managing Director, eircom (now eir) Wholesale 2014 and 2015 Mentor