SuperMentor

Do you yourself mentor others and if someone asks you to mentor them, what do you view as their responsibilities in that relationship?

I do, I have about 40 mentees at any given time.

40? How do you have time for that?

Some days, I don't know, my team gets frustrated. I look at mentoring as a huge opportunity. I love being able to help people along the way. I was struck by a quote that one of our panelists said this week, that "You have two hands, one to pull yourself up and one to pull somebody behind you," which I really subscribe to. A lot of my mentees are former interns that had worked for me who I stay in touch with and who I continue to support. I mean, some of them, I've been their mentor for 15-plus years, and so I really do love being able to be the person for people, and in terms of what I ask, I'm pretty simplistic. I say really kind of three core things: one, that if I mentor them and I give them advice, I don't expect them to take it but if they don't take it, I want to know why, they'll have to walk me through, one, so I understand that they really thought it through, and two, maybe they had a better perspective than I did and I'd like to learn. Two, I say that if I introduce them to someone in my network, which of course happens, and I have a pretty strong network, that they have to be responsible with those contacts, so if I do an introduction, they have to follow up, they can't let it drop. They have to write a thank-you note, they have to treat that contact as if it were gold and if they treat them well, then they will become their own contacts and they can sort of grow from there, and the third, in that same vein is that I tell them that I ask them to do the same for someone else, so at some point in their career, they have to give back like I'm giving to them, and that's all I ask. Pretty simple, but I think it's served them well, it served me well and it's allowed me the opportunity to see so many young leaders grow and know that I had at least a hand in helping them on their journey, so I really do enjoy it.

I really like that concept. I haven't heard that from anyone else out of all the people I've interviewed, the last point you made which is pay it forward, if I'm going to mentor you, you go mentor someone else.

I think that's really important because I had so many people that helped me along the way and I think their expectation for me, although they probably didn't say it the same way, but I think they expected that I would do the same thing and I do think that's how we advanced all of the things that we're trying to advance. No one does it alone, so if you can count on not just the people that are helping you but they can count the fact that you help others, I think that moves us along.