Seeking advice from wise heads has been second nature to Angela Wright,
managing director of Crealy Adventure Parks, ever since she started out in
business.
“I have always asked lots of questions and sought out the people with
answers,” said Wright. “It started with my parents. They have been in
business a long time and have always offered very wise counsel.”
Today she works with a personal mentor, an experienced and successful
business-woman, as well as with the mentoring organisation Footdown Fifteen.
Members of Wright’s local group meet once a month to help each other work on
the challenges and dilemmas they are facing in their professional lives.
“The group comes from different sectors, sizes of business as well as from the
public sector. They have been really helpful. It’s a bit like having a board
of nonexecutive directors,” said Wright.
Her work with these mentors has helped her with a range of issues including
achieving specific goals, such as improving her network of contacts. It has
also helped with longer-term issues, such as getting her management team to
work more productively together.
Wright’s experience of mentoring is not unique. Using a mentor can offer many
benefits to entrepreneurs, according to Bob Garvey, professor of mentoring
and coaching at Sheffield Hallam University.
A recent programme Garvey set up to see if mentors could help with a specific
goal, ended up demonstrating much wider benefits for the entrepreneurs
involved. These benefits included transferring new skills and knowledge,
creating better networking opportunities as well as helping them improve
their product and in some cases even going into business with their mentor.
Many of the benefits of mentoring lie not in helping them with concrete goals,
however, but in making the mentored executives more rounded individuals –
improving their ability to solve problems, to interact better with other
people and to cope with challenges, said Garvey.
“Mentoring helped the entrepreneurs we worked with understand better how
people think. It helped them improve their network, gave them new insights
into their own activities as well as challenging themselves to think things
through more thoroughly.”
Finding the right mentor to help you do this is important. “One problem we
experienced was that some of the people being mentored were too fastidious,”
said Garvey. “Matching mentors and executives for difference rather than
similarity is important. A good example is the time we lined a ceramics
entrepreneur up with an international banker. He was not happy with this at
first but he ended up telling us how amazing the process was.”
Wright agrees that having a mentor from a different background can be
valuable. Her personal mentor from Footdown Fifteen is a former chief of
police for Somerset and Avon. He might not seem an obvious person to advise
on running a leisure business, but his experience and insights have helped
Wright to manage her business.
“I spend a lot of time with people involved in my industry, so
industry-specific issues are not always what I need help with,” said Wright.
“He has a broad take on humanity and knows what makes people tick.
Ultimately business boils down to people.”
Graeme Shankland, managing director of Bank of Scotland Corporate, agrees that
certain general characteristics rather than specific sector experience are
the most important thing to look for in a mentor.
“I have found working with mentors amazingly useful. It forces you to confront
issues that might otherwise fall down your list of priorities and can help
you freshen up your thinking, but the chemistry has to be right.
“It’s important for them to have experience, to have a few grey hairs. They
also need to be skilled at listening, they need to be empathetic and
sensitive, encouraging a solution out of the person they are mentoring
rather than telling them what to do.”
As well as receiving mentoring himself, Shankland has seen the benefits
mentoring can have on the businesses that Bank of Scotland Corporate’s
Integrated Finance arm invests in.
Integrated Finance offers the firms it backs the services of a group of
experienced nonexecutive directors as advisers and mentors, said Shankland.
“We help the management teams we have backed in a number of ways. We put a
talented pool of wise, experienced people at their disposal.”
To get the most out of mentoring it is important to be clear about the
relationship and honest about how the relationship develops, said Shankland.
“In my experience, many mentoring relationships only really work for 9 to 12
months. By then you have usually got everything you will get out of it. It’s
also important to be able to say if a mentoring relationship isn’t working –
if the chemistry isn’t right, for example.”
Giving both parties the means of making a graceful exit is a good idea, said
Garvey. “The parties need to review their relationship with each other
regularly and give each other feedback – that’s an important element of a
good mentoring relationship. You need to walk out if it’s not working.”
To get the most out of your mentor you also need to have the right approach
and attitude, said Garvey. “You need to be up for it and you need to be open
to the idea of learning new things. In our experience, owner-managers are
often their own worst enemies, being overambitious, showing a lack of
tolerance to other people, being overly assertive or aggressive in their
behaviour.”
Being prepared to change such behaviour is as important as wanting to learn
specific skills or make particular contacts, he said. “Gaining self insights
through mentoring can be more important than concentrating on improving your
business performance.”
It is important to search widely if you want to find a worthwhile mentor, said
Garvey. Your own network, business associations, legal and accountancy
firms, banks and universities are all good places where you might find a
seasoned professional willing to help.
Ensuring the relationship is fruitful is ultimately down to you, however, said
Wright. Working successfully with a mentor is not about being handed the
answers to a problem, but about using your mentor to help look at situations
and dilemmas afresh.
“Usually the solution to the problem lies in looking at it in a new way. Half
of the benefit of working with a mentor comes from being made to look at the
problem differently.”
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A MENTOR
— Search widely and beyond your industry for a mentor
— Look for experienced, successful people with a few grey hairs
— Be open and honest about the mentoring relationship
— Be prepared to have your assumptions challenged by your mentor
— Don’t be afraid to find new mentors and use more than one at the same
time
