Mentoring and its dangers: beyond the ‘male’ paradigm

Mentoring is in the news. Businesswomen say nothing will change in top levels of management without it. Women need mentoring to gain board appointments, to become government department heads and CEOs, to succeed at any higher post. Now, with mentoring such a byword, even businesses are told that their boards are obsolete, that they require mentors instead. In that scenario, boards are out. Mentors are in.

Similarly with networking. In the 1980s, networking was the password to high posts in the corporate sphere. It was proclaimed to be the way women would succeed in business. It was the message women received when concerned about obstacles in their careerpaths. Networking was answer to overcoming all barriers.

Yet this phase passed. Networking became passé, or at least was relegated to a place of lesser priority. Mentoring replaced it as the prize method for easing women’s entry into the holy grail of the top job. Yet does mentoring match all its claims?

Mary Cunningham graduated at the top of her Harvard MBA class. Destined for immediate advancement in the corporate world, planning a career in investment banking, describing herself as ‘in the right place at the right time’. She was inundated with job proposals, even before graduation. Then came the offer from Bendex, a Fortune 500 company. Would she become executive assistant to its highflying head, who was touted as on the way to even greater heights? She accepted. Bill Agee became her mentor.

Convention would have it that as executive assistant and mentoree, Mary Cunningham, too, was positioned for her predicted passage to the heights of corporate stardom, the corner office with six-inch carpet on the floor, expansive, waxed desk, and behind it the supple-leather chair, with her firmly seated on it.

Too soon, reality bit.

Rumours began. Allegations that Bill Agee was ‘too close’ to his executive assistant. Whispers that she had gained the job through looks, physical configuration, and sex: in both its meanings. Complaints that she was overbearing to others, prevented them from seeing ‘the boss’, and had far too much say in his affairs. Indeed, she was his major affair, and more. Knives were out, and it hadn’t taken long. The scenario played as to be expected in the world of corporate cut and thrust.  Mary Cunningham was ‘let go’. Bill Agee had stood up for her, denied the rumours, affirmed to the board her contribution, making her financial and associated abilities transparent. It wasn’t enough. Indeed, his loyalty was taken as another indicator of the rumours’ purported truth.

Nor, in the end, was it enough to save Bill Agee himself. And here lies the rub, the realities of mentoring in a macho world.

Bill Agee began as mentoree of W. Michael Blumenthal, who built Bendex. Blumenthal was Bendex head of board when Mary Cunningham joined. When Blumenthal was sworn in by the U.S. President as Secretary of Treasury Agee succeeded him in the chair. Blumenthal’s parting message was that Agee should run the company without backward interference from him. ‘Don’t keep the seat warm for me,’ he said, as he departed for Washington.

Nonetheless, the traditional scheme of mentoring applied, anyway. With the end of the U.S. President’s reign, Blumenthal lost his post as a leading government administrator. No longer at the financial hub, he suffered loss of power. He sought a return to Bendex. Agee resisted, declining to revert to ‘seat-warmer’. Having had the power, Agee wanted to retain the power he had. Unsurprisingly, Blumenthal fought.

Through lobbying colleagues and gaining re-election to the Bendex board, it was Blumenthal who brought the Agee-Cunningham combination to an end. And it was Blumenthal who, in a struggle between his former acolyte and himself as former mentor, ultimately disposed of Agee. Resiling from his wish that the seat ‘not be kept warm’ for him, this is precisely what Blumenthal executed in his return to Bendex. In the clash of the antlers – the young, upcoming mentoree who has become powerful and, in turn, mentor to others (or at least, one other – Mary Cunningham) and the older, successful mentor who sees the younger, now, as his rival – it was Blumenthal who won.

Mary Cunningham’s forced resignation was a side-wind to the real power-play in the corporate boardroom. At heart was Blumenthal’s desire to regain and retain power. He had to eliminate his rival, the very man he had mentored into the post Blumenthal now sought to recover for himself. Mary Cunningham was forced out first. Agee was next in line to go.

As Living Generously – Women Mentoring Women (Scutt, 1996) confirms, this – the traditional ‘male’ form of mentoring –will not truly assist women to go anywhere, at least not to the top. Traditional ‘male’ mentoring has an older male promote a younger male, who then grows to become a rival. Ultimately, one or the other must go, for there is no room for two at the top. Even where the mentoree is promoted into a post in another organisation, the rivalry at the heart of the corporate world will play itself out in the proverbial slash of the rapiers or pistols at dawn.

Like Mary Cunningham, women caught up in this mentor-mentoree scenario are vulnerable. By placing all their energies into one mentoring relationship, they run the risk of oblivion if their mentor loses the rivalry struggle. They run the risk of being written off as ‘handmaidens’ by corporate players who may be, and could be, vital to their career plans. They almost inevitably will be cast into a sexualised role by middle-managers and mischief-makers, colleagues who seek their own advancement or simply cannot abide by the advancement of others – particularly where those ‘others’ are women.

Is this to say, however, that mentoring lacks value for women? Should mentoring be dismissed, so that out we must go into the world of research, projections, proposals and predictions yet again to find ‘the answer’ to ensuring optimal performance and quality in both the private and the public sector? Must we search yet again for the solution that will see equal numbers of women and men at the top, in middle-management and in support and other roles?

The problem lies with the idea that there is one answer. Networking remains relevant when done not on the basis of a glorified business-card exchange or ‘how can I promote myself to the detriment of others’, but as a creative means of ensuring positive exchange of ideas and recognition of skills, on a shared basis. Quotas on boards and in workplaces generally must be compulsory and affirmed through contract compliance.

If the numbers are not equalised and there is no assured plan actively designed and effected to achieve this outcome, companies will lose government contracts and heads of government departments will be brought to book for quota compliance failure within their own organisation.

As for mentoring, this must avoid the mentoring dyad that permeates mentoring today.

Mentoring schemes take many guises:

• The ‘mirror mentor’, matching mentor and mentoree is a one-on-one approach to mentoring. One is a ‘mirror match’ with the mentor and mentoree working in the same field, with similar interests, enabling mentoree to consolidate in a particular field, learning what is available, what possibilities arise, what avenues may be followed. The other is a ‘contra match’ with mentor and mentoree working in different fields, with different interests, providing mentoree with different ideas, possibilities, avenues not envisaged or imagined as open to her.

• The ‘serendipity mentor’ is the potential mentors and mentorees brought together through seminars, discussions, coffee-casuals, presentations of work and field discussions, so each comes to know the nature of others’ work and working styles, capacity for providing support, and possibilities as to how support may best be given. Mentors and mentorees find their way to the relationship/s best suiting them and their potential.

• The ‘self-selection mentor’, rather than serendipity mentor, the self-selecting mentor sees mentors and mentorees come together with formal offers and requests, so that each knows what may be given, what needs require fulfillment, what pattern of ‘giving’ is expected, and what requests can be sustained.

Yet the overriding principle in any mentoring scheme, whether organised or entered into informally, must be to avoid the one-on-one sole mentor-mentoree dyad that so poorly serves women, and that leads to, creates or consolidates rivalry at the top.

One mentor is not the answer. One mentor cannot provide all the answers in any event. Mentoring requires multiple scenarios, multiple possibilities and multiple mentors:

• ‘The Big Picture’ Mentor– providing ideas, possibilities, connections, suggestions regarding the mentorees’ career approaches and expectations, what is ‘out there’, what jobs, research posts etc. might be available.

• ‘The Nitty Gritty’ Mentor – giving advice as to why meeting conformations arrange themselves as they do – people sitting around a board table taking particular positions next to others, opposite others, or distant from others/another; some caucusing before meetings – who does this, with whom, and why;  some board members having particular interests, ‘pet hates’;  or why some union or political party members group together in particular seats or parts of the venue – what motivates and characterizes these groupings;  why individual workers, board members, middle-managers, trade union or political party members or officers sit ‘where’ in lunchrooms or on coffee breaks.

• ‘The Sounding Board’ Mentor– mentorees confront problems, concerned the cause is sex/gender or race/ethnicity or sexuality, or disability – and need someone trustworthy with whom this can be talked through – is the cause correctly identified? Does it have nothing to do with sex/gender, race/ethnicity, etc. so talking with an experienced person assists in the ‘sorting through’.

• ‘The Network’ Mentor– providing networking opportunities, including conferences, meetings, seminars, workshops and business-social functions for useful opportunities, and inviting a mentoree to such occasions to establish channels of communication with people in her field, with job or research, etc. opportunities/possibilities for herself and that she may pass on to colleagues.

Mentoring by and amongst women must recognise, too, that mentoring should go both ways. Women’s careers generally do not run in a straight trajectory but have points where women ‘side-step’, take time out, face barriers or move into other fields or areas. The careers of most do not necessarily run directly from lower to higher levels of management, authority, or fields of endeavour. Some will be in a position to mentor at particular points in their lives/careers and then those very same women will need mentoring themselves. When today’s mentorees become mentors tomorrow, they need to remember that the woman who today mentors another will or at least may need her former mentoree’s mentoring in the future. This is the nature of ‘living generously’.

The McKinsey Report, Unlocking the Full Potential of Women in the Economy, affirms that (just as in Australia) women ‘have been a growing factor in the success of the U.S. economy since the 1970s, with women’s productive power accounting for a significant proportion of the GDP. Still, says the Report, ‘the full potential of women in the [paid] workforce has yet to be tapped’. This, the Report concludes, is vital to sustaining GDP growth rates. Highly-skilled women must be brought into and sustained in the paidworkforce, and fully deployed, ‘to drive productivity improvement’.

Revisiting networking, mentoring and compulsory quotas is vital not only for success and satisfaction of women in paidwork. It is vital for Australia’s economic future.