Category: Talent Development

Mentoring an Introvert? Five Points to Consider

If the personality descriptors “introvert” and “extrovert” are familiar to you, you may already recognize which of your work colleagues belong more to one category than the other. If one of your mentees is an introvert, here are five points to keep in mind:

  1. Your mentee may work independently…independently of you and her work colleagues. This does NOT mean that she’s not collaborative, or that she’s not a team player. Her preference is to think about and complete her specific tasks by herself before delivering them (complete and on time!) to the team.
  2. Your mentee rarely speaks up in large meetings. This does NOT mean that she doesn’t have something useful to say. Rather, her preference is to listen to what’s going on in the meeting, take time to think about what’s said, and then consider all aspects of the discussion before formulating a response. Ask her for her opinions after the meeting, perhaps the next day, and chances are you’ll get them!
  3. Your mentee seems to procrastinate about decisions or about taking action. This does NOT mean that she’s unconcerned or lazy. Rather, she has a strong preference to think before acting, to avoid bad decisions or unproductive/unsuccessful activities.
  4. Your mentee attends company-wide functions but may be among the last to arrive and the first to leave after clustering with a few colleagues she knows well. This does NOT mean she is ungrateful or lacks interest in the company as a whole. Rather, she strongly prefers one-on-one gatherings over large group social functions.
  5. Your mentee’s ideas sometimes seem “out-of-the-box”, perhaps even “out of left field”. Such “original” thinking reflects an introvert’s preference to think and work alone, with little, if any, input from the outside. Welcome these new ideas – then vet and test them!

For a mentor, understanding that your mentee is an introvert and that her preferences and actions will consistently reflect that can help you prepare to engage in collegial and productive discussions and direct you both toward achieving your business and professional goals.

Yes, MENTORS, there IS a PAYOFF!

What business roles have the greatest return on investment as measured by revenue and economic growth? The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) in collaboration with Ernst and Young (EY) explored this very issue. The scope of their study was broad and deep: approximately 22,000 publicly traded global companies; 91 countries; a range of industries and sectors. The results of their study were published in a 2016 report titled Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Study.  Among the reported findings and related implications:

  1. An organization with 30% female leaders could add up to 6 percentage points to its net margin.
  2. Payoffs from policies that enable women rising through the corporate ranks could be significant.
  3. The largest economic gain came from the proportion of female executives within the firm, followed by the proportion of female board members.
  4. There is a “robust and positive” correlation between having female management, and presumably a pipeline of female future leaders, with increased firm profitability.

Think about this: an organization with 30% female leaders could add up to 6 percentage points to its net margin. Mentors and managers, if you were challenged to add 6 percentage points to your company’s net margin, how would you do it? If you haven’t yet elevated formal mentoring of your women staff for the purpose of developing a pipeline of female future leaders, you’re ignoring a strategic business process with demonstrated power to improve profitability. For much more on how and why to be a better career mentor, see my full article “How (and Why) to Be a Better Career Mentor to Women” published in AMA Quarterly, Summer 2018, p. 45  https://www.amanet.org/uploaded/amaquarterly-summer-18.pdf

Criticism: Give It or “GIFT” It?

Mentors: recall the last time you had to deliver “criticism.” How did you feel? Did you cringe at the thought? Did you feel less-than-adequate to handle the task? Did you avoid it for as long as you could and then deliver the “bad” news quickly and depart just as quickly? Was it effective or only just good enough so you could cross the task off your “to do” list?

What if you could deliver criticism in such a way that those who receive it from you might actually end up craving more criticism from you because of how you delivered it?  Would you be interested in changing your approach to delivering criticism? Criticism (or coaching, correction, re-direction, guidance) can be a gift to those who receive it IF it:

  1. Reflects the fact that you, as the “gifter”, know this person very well…you know what that person needs, when they need it, and how much of it they need…in other words, the gift is customized for the receiver, as best you know how.
  2. Is gifted with utmost sincerity…without a hidden agenda…no
    “between the lines” messages…no mixed messages…no power plays.
  3. Becomes a conversation between two colleagues, both trying to do the right thing for the workplace and each other as professionals.
  4. Focuses on objective rather than subjective performance standards, mutually established, understood and accepted.

Now, mentors, think again about the last time you had to deliver criticism. Replay that situation in your mind using the “gifting” approach just outlined, thinking carefully about the application of each of these four principles of “gifting” criticism. How would it have made a difference in how you felt about delivering criticism? How would it have made a difference in how the recipient felt about the criticism? How would it have made a difference in the effectiveness of the criticism?  

The next time you’re faced with delivering criticism, consider “gifting” it instead. Expect to be delighted with the results.

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Tactical Mentoring

Whether or not you are formally recognized as a mentor in your organization, you may be a “tactical” mentor. Think of a tactical mentor as one who pro-actively engages with a mentee for a situation-specific need.

Here’s an example of tactical mentoring in a situation that is fairly common in the workplace in many industries: A mentee is about to deliver her first project review presentation to a group of colleagues. The group includes members of the management team with oversight responsibility for the overall program that includes this specific project. It’s no exaggeration to say that this presentation could be “make or break”, not only for the presenter, but for her immediate supervisor and even for the project itself.

In this situation, someone who is experienced in successfully preparing and delivering such project review presentations could offer some critical tactical mentoring. Here are the issues a tactical mentor could help the mentee address:

  • How much time do I have for my oral presentation?
  • How long should the written presentation be?
  • What format do I use for the written presentation? For any handouts accompanying the oral presentation? For an online presentation?
  • What issues are most important to management regarding my project?
  • Should I present our findings upfront? Before we discuss how we arrived at them?
  • How do I handle uncertainties about our project outcomes so far?
  • Where and how should I address remaining project milestones, schedule, and budget?

For a seasoned team member, experienced in preparing and delivering project review presentations such as this, the answers are usually obvious. For a new team member, however, the answers are usually not at all obvious, and advance attention to all of these issues is essential for a successful presentation, well worth the preparation and mentoring time and effort involved.

The lessons for new mentees and project managers:

  • Keep your eyes open for those in your company who could serve as tactical mentors in situations that could be “make or break” for your workplace career
  • Enlist the help of a tactical mentor early and often when such situations arise

What if Your Mentee’s Next Role Requires Skills You Don’t Have?

As a mentor, you likely understand the difference between your mentee’s potential for advancement within the company and her readiness for that advancement. In most organizations, there are three simultaneous prerequisites for formal career advancement: timing, opportunity, and sponsorship. Mentors can be involved in all three, but can be “make or break” in regard to the timing issue. In fact, you may be the only one who can make an objective and persuasive case that your mentee is professionally prepared for promotion or for a new role at the time it becomes available.

But what if your mentee’s next role requires some additional new skills – skills so critical to success that you’re uncertain about her readiness? The solution: ENLIST MODELS. For example, your mentee has been an effective field sales representative but has no significant contract negotiation experience – could you endorse his move up to regional sales manager? Or she’s a bench scientist in R&D but has limited exposure to customers – could you endorse her move out to a full time field technical service representative? Negotiation and customer-interface skills are only two examples of skill sets that can be learned on the job – learned by exposure of your mentee to company colleagues who already successfully practice those skills and who can serve as models. These collaborations can be flexible in form and limited in duration, since the function of these collaborations is focused knowledge and skills transfer from the model to the mentee. Continuing with the above “readiness” examples:

  • The field sales representative is paired with one or two sales managers engaged in preparation and completion of several face-to-face negotiations over a period of one or two quarters. The field sales rep is essentially part of the company’s negotiation team, led by the experienced sales managers.
  • The bench scientist is paired with a full time field technical service representative, forming a two-person team dedicated to responding proactively and reactively to field technical service issues over a period of two or more quarters.

A mentor who pairs such a model of skills-in-action with his mentee in a successful working collaboration adds significant value to the business through increasing the likelihood of the mentee’s success in the new role.

For much more on how and why to be a better career mentor, see my full article “How (and Why) to Be a Better Career Mentor to Women” published in AMA Quarterly, Summer 2018, p. 45  https://www.amanet.org/uploaded/amaquarterly-summer-18.pdf