Sheryl Sandberg thinks the concept of mentorship for women is highly overrated. Sandberg’s wrong—and here’s why.

Before I take apart the argument about mentoring made by Sandberg, the Facebook COO who is on every media channel pushing her book Lean In, I have a confession: I never had a formal mentor and if I’d had one, it could have changed my life for the better.

When I started my career—30 years ago, in a very male-dominated industry—it was sink or swim. Produce results or find another job. I was smart, ambitious and willing to work harder than my peers, almost all of whom were men. I always managed well but relating to peers wasn’t so easy.

Case in point, I was a newspaper reporter in a unionized shop and we weren’t supposed to work overtime, even if we were covering breaking news, like fires and murders. I ignored the union and put in as many free hours as needed to do a great job—and I never asked for overtime even though I was grossly underpaid. So my bosses loved me, and I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in the newsroom. And within a couple of years, I became their boss, which didn’t endear me to the rank and file either.

If I’d had a mentor, I might have been able to find a more collaborative and less competitive way to succeed, which would have made me a much more effective manager when I was promoted over everyone else. A mentor also could have shown me how to better balance personal time and work time so I didn’t exist in a constant state of anxiety. Most importantly, a mentor could have helped me learn how to talk to my male bosses about what wasn’t working in the organization and for me, instead of being afraid of pissing them off.

What would have been effective for me would have been both a female mentor and a male mentor. There weren’t any female role models where I worked, so that wasn’t an option. And the men who were interested in mentoring picked people who looked and sounded like them—and that sure wasn’t me.

Sandberg: Women Rely Too Much on Mentors 

Sandberg argues that the current emphasis in corporate America on women finding mentors (who coach you) and sponsors (who advocate for you politically) wastes everyone’s time. For senior women like herself, she says being asked to be a mentor “is a total mood killer” that she seems to find annoying, like a celebrity being approached for an autograph.

For the mentees, she projects her “do it yourself” mantra, saying: “We need to stop telling them, ‘Get a mentor and you will excel.’ Instead, we need to tell them, ‘Excel and you will get a mentor.’”

If Sandberg’s logic follows, there will be no change in the very status quo she wants to “revolutionize”: men (and I’ll add white men) holding on for dear life to their vastly disproportionate share of leadership positions. She admits, and I agree, that people mentor and sponsor those who have common interests and who remind them of themselves. That leaves women—and Blacks, Latinos, Asians, American Indians, LGBT people and people with disabilities—out in the cold.

If women have to “lean in” and excel before they solicit mentors and sponsors—and if women should be careful not to annoy powerful women by “bothering them” for advice—only white men are going to use mentoring and sponsoring to their advantage.

Corporate Involvement 

This is the essential reason why companies that understand they have a lot of ground to make up with women and other underrepresented groups have been jumping into cross-cultural, formalized mentoring. The formalization is critical because informal mentoring leads to propagating the status quo. If the company doesn’t emphasize the cross-cultural aspect of mentoring—and include cultural awareness training for both parties before they start the relationship—again, the reach out to women and others doesn’t happen.

Sandberg says that mentoring works best when it’s combined with other kinds of leadership development and training, and cites Deloitte’s excellent Leading to WIN Women’s Initiative. The most successful talent-development efforts (such as Deloitte’s) are indeed multipronged, but they only succeed when strong one-to-one relationships are a major part of the deal.

If you look at mentoring programs that show dramatic increases in female retention and promotions, such as Deloitte’s, Sodexo’s IMPACT program, and Target’s mentoring initiatives for managers, you will see that they are very structured, very metrics-driven, and yet enable those personal relationships to grow on an individual basis.

The Other Side 

So while I’ve never had a real mentor, I have mentored several people, most of them younger women. My first mentee was Tammy, who was assigned to me when I was a senior editor at a newspaper that had just initiated formal mentoring. Tammy and I met every week and developed a strong friendship that continued for many years. I taught her how to improve her writing and what she needed to do for her next career moves. She taught me how to slow down (a little) and listen to what people are saying (a lesson I’m still working on).

Since then, I’ve informally mentored several people (because our company is too small to have a formal mentoring program), most of them women. And what continues to surprise me is how much I learn from them.

If those who have become successful choose, like Sandberg, to ignore the requests of others to be their mentors, we do ourselves a great disservice. We aren’t holding on to power by denying them our collective wisdom—we are allowing an inequitable status quo to be perpetuated (with a few  “token” women and others at the top)—and we are denying ourselves the opportunity to grow in different ways by learning from those we teach.

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In our diversity web seminar on mentoring and sponsorship, BASF’s Chief Diversity Officer Patricia Rossman, and Deloitte Consulting’s Kelvin Womack, Principal, Lead Client Service Partner, Federal Health Practice, and Managing Principal, Diversity, discussed:

• How BASF Successfully Launched a Mentoring Program: The company utilizes an eHarmony-style digital system to match mentors and mentees, which increases engagement and customizes each mentoring pair for optimal results.
• Why Sponsorship at Deloitte Drives Careers: The company’s pilot Navigation to Excellence formal sponsorship program nationally paired 15 Black, Latina and Asian women with sponsors. Participants reported improved relationships with senior sponsors, networking and communication skills.

Additional insights from BASF and Deloitte include:

• Relationship Must-Haves: What you need to formalize and integrate mentoring and sponsorship programs into your corporate culture.
• Benefits of Formal Programs: How are they different from informal programs and why companies opt to formalize their talent development.
• Metrics & Data: What are the best metrics to assess progress, especially involving retention, engagement and promotion?
• Consistency: How to achieve a sustainable program at your organization.

Please log in to DiversityIncBestPractices.com to watch the presentation and download the slides.

Not a subscriber? Buy this web seminar now, or request subscriber information and pricing for DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

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KPMG, No. 22 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50, is one of eight leading companies that presented at our Managing Relationships Between HR & Diversity Departments event held in New York City.

Visit DiversityInc.com/events for a schedule of our upcoming learning sessions, such as our DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity Announcement on April 23 and 24 in New York City.

Video Minutes

00:58 The Four Success Factors of Mentoring

02:27 KPMG’s Mentoring Expectation

08:30 Business Impact: Advancement Opportunities & Senior Leadership

12:20 How to Improve Mentoring Through Sponsorship

16:05 Sponsorship at KPMG: Different than Mentoring

17:53 Audience Q&A Session

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Research, including studies from Catalyst, shows that women and people from other traditionally underrepresented groups do better than the general population—in terms of engagement, retention and promotions—when they have mentors. Studies also find that formal mentoring programs are one of the most critical ways of retaining women, Blacks and Latinos and helping them develop in leadership roles.

As discussed in our 90-minute diversity web seminar on mentoring with Sodexo (No. 2 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity) and ADP (No. 27), 39 percent of managers at DiversityInc Top 50 companies are in mentoring programs, as opposed to just 19 percent in 2005, with 94 percent reporting a cross-cultural component.

Cross-cultural mentoring not only ensures that high-potential people get the right tools and support they need to advance their careers; it also provides key benefits to a company’s talent pipeline.

Build Your Talent Pipeline

DiversityInc convened a panel of chief diversity officers from AT&T (No. 4), Ernst & Young (No. 6), Merck & Co. (No. 16), Wells Fargo (No. 33) and Northrop Grumman (No. 42) with the highest scores in talent-development initiatives and results.

They discussed the benefits and best practices of mentoring programs and how best to form these cross-cultural pairings.

For example, Ernst & Young formalized “a Career Watch program that watches careers and helps people get to partners,” said Beth Brooke, global vice chair of public policy, sustainability and stakeholder engagement. “We also have something called EYU, which is Ernst & Young and You. There are three components. One is the traditional, the learning, but the other is making sure they’re experiencing very different things in an inclusive way. Then the third element is coaching, which is mentoring.”

Read more in Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.

Improve Diversity in Promotions

As more companies formalize their mentoring, the importance of cross-cultural pairings increases, as diversity leaders from Sodexo, Deloitte, IBM and WellPoint (Nos. 2, 8, 17 and 34, respectively) explained at one roundtable. These four companies are successful at mentoring their employees at all levels—and utilizing cutting-edge strategies to make sure their workforce develops equitably.

IBM’s Ron Glover, vice president of diversity and workforce policy, human resources, gave a detailed example of the company’s integral mentoring programs, the Business and Technical Leader Process: “Every year, people who are currently executives, and those who are identified as having potential for executive leadership, go through this process. They are assessed against a set of competencies, and one of them has to do with the ability to manage cross-culturally and globally. Leaders are asked to evaluate their own competencies as a part of that exercise, and then where they come up needing development, specific efforts and opportunities around both mentor and mentee occur.”

Read more in Mentoring Roundtable.

Increase Retention & Satisfaction

One way to ensure your employees are primed for success is to have mentors to teach them the nuances of corporate culture, which can be hard to navigate for both long-term employees and new hires.

To assist in this, Kraft Foods offers an on-boarding program for all of its new hires to teach them about the “unwritten rules” that often cause people—especially those from underrepresented groups—to leave. The program started nine years ago but has been strongly emphasized in the last two years, and a noticeable improvement in retention of new hires from these groups has occurred.

Jim Norman, vice president of talent acquisition, diversity and inclusion, and Wayne Canty (retired) of Kraft Foods (No. 7), presented the details of this program at our Innovation Fest!

Read more in Innovation Fest! Presentation by Kraft Foods: JumpStart, Developmental Training for New Employees.

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The Difference Between Mentoring, Coaching and Sponsorship provides answers to these valuable questions that every professional should know, from entry-level staffers to the top executive ranks. It tells you tips on how to find the best mentors, coaches and sponsors.

The article serves as a primer, giving readers an easy-to-understand definition of mentoring, coaching and sponsorship. Readers will discover:

• The difference between someone who talks with you, talks to you and talks about you
• Why the cross-cultural component of all three is critical to promotion rates and valuable to senior executives serving as mentors
• Why networking is important and how to make it fit into the overall talent-development model
• Why having more than one mentor, coach and sponsor make you career-savvy

For more best practices on mentoring and talent development, read Mentoring Roundtable: How Mentoring Improves Retention, Engagement & Promotions and Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.

Read The Difference Between Mentoring, Coaching and Sponsorship on DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

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The DiversityInc Top 50 companies have demonstrated that formal, cross-cultural mentoring programs, with the participation of senior executives, successfully enhance the diversity of human-capital results in management.

In this 90-minute diversity web seminar on mentoring and talent development, Jodi Davidson, director of diversity and inclusion initiatives for Sodexo (No. 2 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity), and Joni Swedlund, lead client service partner, Federal Financial Services Practice, Deloitte (No. 8), discuss how cross-cultural mentoring has increased engagement, retention and promotions at their organizations and what specific programs have delivered success in talent development.

Watch Diversity Web Seminar on Mentoring: 5 Talent-Development Strategies to Increase Diversity in Promotions.

The diversity web seminar also provides comprehensive information in talent development on:

• What metrics your company should measure for program success
• The philosophies and outcomes of sponsorship and mentoring at Sodexo
• Why measuring mentoring progress should be a key priority for your organization
• How Deloitte makes a business case for its mentoring and sponsorship programs, and how you can, too
• Why sponsorship helps women at Deloitte progress up the ladder to senior management and get promoted

Watch Diversity Web Seminar on Mentoring: 5 Talent-Development Strategies to Increase Diversity in Promotions.

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1. Start small: Start with a pilot in your corporate office and ensure you invite as many managers as possible to participate and senior executives to be mentors. Focus it on a relatively narrow group as you begin the program, but make sure the group includes a wide representative based on gender, race/ethnicity, age, experience and job function. Once the pilot program is successful, you can expand it throughout your corporate office and into various business units. It’s important, as you do that, to ensure that the same best practices apply everywhere—training for mentors and mentees, measurable goals, corporate-office monitoring, tracking results. You don’t want to create uneven mentoring programs or, as we often see, have certain units that have strong formal mentoring and others that don’t have it at all. While mentoring should be aimed primarily at managers as a talent-development tool, it can be expanded to the work force eventually.
   
2. Have prospective applicants fill out questionnaires and YOU create the pairs: Do not allow voluntary pairings—use a web-based tool to create pairings that are cross-functional and cross-cultural as much as possible, and assess personalities to avoid “toxic pairs.” Some companies in the earlier stages of diversity management tell us they don’t need formal mentoring programs because they have great informal mentoring. The real danger of this is that a person will get “bad” advice from a malcontent or not get the right type of training, cultural awareness and help on negotiating the corporate culture. Instead of developing talent, you could lose key talent.
   
3. Train the mentors and mentees: In advance of the formal start of the program, offer both mentors and mentees effective training in meeting company goals, culturally competent communications and learning/teaching styles. One of the most critical aspects of this training is cultural competence and microinequities training. Like good diversity training, this is essential in fostering communications and an inclusive workplace.
   
4. Set measurable goals and finite periods: Most mentoring programs last one year and relationships can continue voluntarily after that time. Make sure there are goals and mileposts set throughout the period. The Sodexo mentoring program is exemplary in its one-, three-, six- and nine-month goals, including e-surveys. You can assess progress in a variety of ways: surveys, in-person debriefs, webinars and checkpoints.
   
5. Track success: Monitor the success of the mentee (retention, promotion, productivity) and the value of the relationship to both. Continue to track the progress for at least three years after the formal relationship ends. Assess the performance and progress of mentees and mentors versus those who did not participate in the program. Assess the progress of those with more than one mentor/mentee versus those with only one. Assess the progress of those with cross-cultural relationships versus those with only same-culture relationships.

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Here are some of the highlights.

Benchmarking customers: Look for your personalized monthly report on mentoring, including your comparatives to The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity and your own competitive index.

Here are the key points from Sodexo’s Spirit of Mentoring:

• The goals of Spirit of Mentoring, as stated by Sodexo, are to establish a diverse pipeline, develop leaders, align resources and strategies, drive organizational culture, cut costs and enhance the company’s reputation as an “employer of choice.”
• IMPACT, the cornerstone program started in 2004, has had 125 partnerships. Pairs make a one-year commitment.
• What’s considered in matching pairs? Levels, that they be cross-divisional, cross-functional and, most importantly, cross cultural. Geography also is factored in to allow for the most possible in-person meetings. The mentee needs always come first.
• Ninety percent of the pairings have been cross-divisional and 75 percent have been cross cultural.
• The key players in each pairing are the mentor and mentee, of course, as well as the program manager, the implementation team, the executive sponsors and senior leaders, and HR.
• In a typical year, the program is launched after mentors and mentees are trained, with a 90-minute meeting of the pairs, which is then held monthly. At the two-month point, the IMPACT team does a checkpoint. At four months, a webinar is held and at six months, an e-survey to ascertain progress is held. Another webinar occurs at eight months and another survey is held at the one-year closing mark. The company also follows up on the progress of its teams.
• A 2008 e-survey of IMPACT participants found for every $1 spent, there was $2.28 in retention/increased productivity realized. And the same e-survey found more than 95 percent of both mentors and mentees reported a positive experience.
• The company calculated the costs as time and resources to set it up and monitor it, time from the employees involved at all levels, and efforts to look for employees who might not normally be considered for leadership tracks, as well as efforts to measure results.
• A study of mentors and mentees for intangible benefits by Sodexo found 72 percent of mentees and 79 percent of mentors cited increased job satisfaction, 74 percent of mentors and 72 percent of mentees cited organizational commitment, and 52 percent of mentors and 54 percent of mentees cited increased diversity awareness.
• A 2008 e-survey showed almost all participants reported a positive experience and would recommend the program to others. Almost all said the program demonstrates the organization’s commitment.
• Sodexo identifies the following key long-term factors in its success: It expands over time, since culture change is not immediate; they continue to “raise the bar”; it is aligned with strategies; they identify trends and make the connections for relevancy; the role of executive sponsors as key stakeholders is emphasized; measurement is critical for credibility; cascading communication is essential.
• Participants cited: the cross-cultural component; the importance of face time; the mentee-driven concept; that different styles require different approaches; and the strong level of commitment is vital.

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Corporate Case Study No. 1: IBM

At 26, Inhi Cho Suh was a rising star at IBM, the youngest person on her team and the manager as well. Fortunately for her—and for IBM—a mentor showed her how to respectfully supervise older people and how to flourish in a demanding corporate culture.

Today, at 34, Suh has 100 direct reports and another 100 people globally for whom she is responsible. She is vice president of information management product strategy in the IBM Software Group.

Last year, she met Tami Cannizzaro, who had been working in IBM’s finance department but was switching to marketing. She admired Cannizzaro’s high energy and positive attitude but felt Cannizzaro could benefit from some guidance on how to become a manager.

“I saw she needed a transition from being a strong individual performer to being a team leader,” Suh recalls.

What’s interesting about this mentoring relationship is that Cannizzaro is actually six years older than Suh and their backgrounds are quite different. Cannizzaro, who is white, knew Suh, who is Asian, because they had worked on a few projects together. Based in New York, Cannizzaro is now the director of IBM Marketing’s Smart Work Technology.

IBM has a strong culture of mentoring, especially for women.

“I asked Inhi if she would be my mentor. I was very impressed with her and how she handles herself in meetings—her demeanor and her business acumen,” Cannizzaro says.

Suh recalls Cannizzaro seeking her out when Cannizzaro was returning from maternity leave and wanted to know how to position herself to become a manager. She gave her an exercise asking others for feedback on how they perceive her and she started a word game with her on how she brands herself. Suh gave her mentee a list of 10 famous people and told her to name the first three adjectives that came to mind about those people.

“I wanted her to understand that we have impressions of people, even those we don’t know, and your name carries your reputation. It’s the same thing in business and you have to find your brand,” Suh says.

Since Suh works out of North Carolina and Cannizzaro is based in New York, they only meet a few times a year.

Sheila Forte, who manages the worldwide mentoring program for IBM, says this is common. The corporation has three types of mentoring: expert mentoring, in which a specific discipline or technological knowledge is transferred; socialization mentoring for new hires; and long-term career guidance and coaching, which is what this relationship is all about.

IBM employees report an 85 percent to 95 percent satisfaction with the mentoring program, and the company evaluates relationships midway through the program as well as when it’s completed.

Forte, who is Black, has mentored many people in her years at IBM, including several cross-cultural relationships. She recalls a Latina mentee, new to IBM and right out of college, who had very good technical skills but “did not have the personal characteristics and attributes to be successful. She was very abrasive.”

Forte sat down with her and said: “Do you realize how you are coming off to others and how damaging to your career this could be?” The young woman was very open to constructive criticism and worked with Forte to change her behavior. She later sent a note to Forte thanking her and saying: “Now I feel comfortable with IBM and know that I can succeed.”

Forte also recalls her first mentor at IBM, a white man, who “saw something in me I didn’t see in myself. He told me I needed to do a personal assessment and see what my strengths are—and act on those strengths—such as being a team player, having strong negotiation skills, being strategic and being open to other points of view.” She says he taught her that “there’s a delicate balance between confidence and arrogance.”

Corporate Case Study No. 2: Sodexo

Ronni Schorr joined Sodexo three years ago and experienced a culture shock. Schorr had more than 25 years’ experience as an entrepreneur and had founded a company called e-Touch International, which helped consumers order and pay for food with nutritional analysis via their desktop or kiosk. When her company was acquired, she stayed on with the acquired company for a year and then joined Sodexo as the vice president of brand management in corporate services.

“I was new to a company this size and I didn’t understand how to navigate the system. I needed to understand the rest of the organization—our value proposition,” she recalls.

Enter her mentor, James Taylor, president of the senior-services division. Taylor, who joined the company nine years ago, has held major operations roles. He started his career as a dishwasher and has had the discipline and drive to work his way up. He’s been recognized by Black organizations and national organizations for his leadership.

Sodexo’s IMPACT mentoring program, which is cross-cultural and cross-divisional, put Taylor and Schorr together. The selection process is very secretive, but Taylor, as a senior person, had a say in it and sought Schorr out after observing her. Sodexo has had 125 partnerships in IMPACT since it was started in 2004. The cross-cultural lens is key. Pairs make a one-year commitment and are assessed on their progress.

“As I live out my leadership role in Sodexo, I want to bring the best and brightest to the company,” he says. “I’ve always been excited about how we let people live their dream within Sodexo. We offer people a different lens to look through as they think about how they view work.”

They got together in March as part of the initial pairing and found they shared family values and a strong desire to help others. “What gets both of us excited is helping people, working with clients, customers and coworkers,” says Taylor.

Schorr recalls that early on Taylor had her write down everyone she knew in the organization and prioritize how well she knew them—who knew her name, who would greet her in the hallway. “It gave me a really good map of where the voids are in the organization and how I could get myself known,” she says.

She adds that “our values are the same. The cross-cultural perspective of getting to know each other as individuals reinforced that.”

Schorr recalls Taylor telling her to think about the president’s committee, which had all white men on it. He told her to “think about talking to them. How do you convince them from an operational and emotional standing that they need to buy into this?”

Taylor says he learned a lot from Schorr’s entrepreneurial style and adds that he intends to continue the relationship when it formally ends in March. As for Schorr, she’s signed up again for IMPACT—this time as a mentor.

Case Study No. 3: Target

Tia Whitlock had a stereotype in mind of what a typical buttoned-down white woman in finance would be like. To her surprise, Cathy Wright was nothing like what she had imagined.

“Cathy’s very authentic, real, direct and open,” says Whitlock, an HR manager for Target who is Black. “Immediately, there was a trust factor. She was willing to talk about whatever needed to be discussed.”

Whitlock was new to the company when they were paired together last year as part of a mentoring pilot program called Connections, which featured a cross-cultural component and was applicable to manager levels and above. The cross-functionality also was appealing to Whitlock, who had no experience with finance and was eager to learn more about different aspects of the company.

She needed help understanding how to present to people at the executive level. “Cathy is at a level [on which] I aspire to be. I needed to know if I keep my presentations at a high level or go into detail. I need to know if I experience things because of my gender or race,” Whitlock says.

She used Whitlock to assess her career development and run scenarios past her. “One time in a meeting, I got feedback that my communication style was very direct, that I say what’s on my mind. Black women get the stereotype—fair or not—that we’re aggressive. I wanted to make sure that wasn’t what was going on here,” Whitlock recalls.

Wright, who now mentors eight people at a time, said she had received similar feedback early in her career, when she was in industrial relations. “I gave her tactical suggestions—read your audience,” she says.

Their one-year formal mentoring relationship ended in August but they have kept in touch. Both are based at Target’s Minneapolis headquarters.

What did they each say was their major takeaway?

“I appreciate the authentic relationship that has evolved and my mentor’s availability to be that valuable sounding board, adding perspective and helping me to think outside the box,” says Whitlock.

“I have learned a great deal from the frank conversations and insights and appreciate her genuine respect for my perspective and experience,” adds Wright.

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Here, we look at mentors and mentees at two companies: Rockwell Collins (No. 43 on The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50) and Abbott (No. 20). They tell you, in their own words, what these programs have meant to them.

Rockwell Collins 

Apryl Broach, who is Black, is a systems engineer who was new to the company and to full-time employment in corporate America. She sought out mentoring because she wanted ‘to seek guidance in navigating this company, which was unfamiliar territory, and also to begin to build a strong network of leaders in other areas of the company.’

At Rockwell Collins, company leadership directs matches to put individuals together based on development needs. The goal is to educate mentees about the culture, develop knowledge and broaden skills, and achieve and expand career development. For mentors, the goals include developing skills in coaching, giving and receiving feedback, sharpening business acumen, expanding horizons and sharing best practices.

As an engineer, Broach expected to be placed with informal mentors with technical backgrounds, ‘but what I really wanted was a different perspective of the company and, more importantly, a sounding board and source of feedback that communicated differently than I or most engineers would.’

She sought a mentor who wouldn’t let her use ‘engineer speak’ and would help her learn to communicate effectively with non-technical people, a skill she would need if she wanted to become an effective manager. She also recognized that she might want to shift careers at some point and would need to be aware of other functions and have relationships with others in the company in different areas. She was paired with Sue Daughtery, a Korean-American manager in the Finance People Development and Projects department. Daughtery is an experienced mentor who has mentored individuals in engineering, finance, accounting, operations and human resources. Daughtery says all her mentees have been of different backgrounds than hers, whether it’s by age, race, gender or professional background. The relationships last anywhere from six months to forever. ‘I’ve always had a passion for relating to individuals, watching them develop in their careers, and helping them experience success,’ she says. ‘The most satisfying aspect of mentoring comes from seeing an individual achieve success in their current role and their future development.’

Broach says the pairing has been very successful: ‘I’ve learned so much from Sue. I have always been comfortable in my own element as well as confident in my understanding of other roles, but Sue helped bridge a gap of a more global understanding.’

Specifically, Daughtery invited her to discussion events and seminars, outside of the engineering community, and included Broach in her own programs as a speaker or presenter to help her develop leadership and communication skills.

‘I also like that Sue can dissect a situation that I am confronted with and give feedback on different ideas to approach it, while always allowing me to discern a solution for myself … I’ve developed higher standards of myself and my future as a leader here, just seeing Sue in action and how she communicates with her team,’ Broach says. ‘You know she is not going to tell you what you want to hear about yourself or professional choices but what you need to hear in order for you to think more wisely or from a different viewpoint.’

Daughtery notes that what surprises her in these relationships is that ‘there’s always common ground and a learning opportunity. In every relationship, I learn something new, whether it’s about me, the business or the mentee.’

Would Broach like to become a mentor? Absolutely. ‘I want to be like Sue when I grow up,’ Broach says. She has started by sharing many of the same conversations she’s had with Daughtery with junior engineers and her peers. ‘The knowledge and encouragement is very transferrable,’ she says.

No. 2 Abbott

At the pharmaceutical company, a formal online mentoring program was launched for the U.S. organization in April 2005. It offers mentors and protégés the option of including a preference for the race and gender of their partner, and they may include personal comments about themselves in their profiles, such as orientation or disability.

The formal program is a structured, year-long ‘developmental partnership,’ says company spokesperson Matthew J. Bedelia. ‘Participants benefit from each others’ experiences and expertise in a number of ways, including developing or enhancing skills or competencies, sharing institutional knowledge, navigating the organization, forming networks and making important business connections.’

The company surveys the participants at the three- and 12-month points for satisfaction and measures success in the number of partnerships formed and the percent of protégés matched. In addition, after their mentoring relationship has formally ended, participants are surveyed.

The company offers as an example Michael Wood and Saeed Motahari, who both are long-term employees but who worked in very different areas. Wood was a sales representative working out of his home in southern California. Motahari is a divisional vice president who works at Abbott’s corporate headquarters in suburban Chicago. They were matched through the online mentoring program. After participating, they developed a professional relationship and Motahari hired Wood to work in his group.

Another Abbott mentee, Yolanda Spann-Morgan, an associate research data coordinator in the global pharmaceutical research and development department, said this: ‘Before I began my mentoring relationship, I had only a vague idea of where I wanted to go professionally. My mentor has been instrumental in helping me to concentrate on my chosen career while discovering a role that would complement my skill set and qualifications. With his guidance and assistance, I am positive my career path will extend further than I initially imagined.’

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