To know:

• Where you are heading
• Why you are heading in that direction
• How to get there
• And finally, being able to fully realise the exceptional outcomes

Therefore having a title won’t make you a leader. Everyone has the opportunity to be a leader if they positively influence others. People of influence who multiply their effectiveness don’t rely on “positional power” but on “personal power.” While the position or title they have gives them authority, it is qualities such as integrity, trust, faith in people, the ability to actively listen and respond appropriately, to empower and understand people that sets them apart.

And most importantly of all – communicate effectively with clear purpose.

Everyone matters. Everyone makes a difference. The greatest insult in life or in business is indifference. We can’t afford the perception that people don’t matter enough for us to engage them. What people “do” could be divided into activity and accomplishment. What percentage of our day is made up of activity, as opposed to accomplishment? The latter largely depends on positive influence.

When it comes to leadership (as distinct from management), we are all a work in progress. All of us can lead better. None of us ever truly master the art. Each of our lives is a leadership “lab.”  We don’t need an organization or title to lead. What we need is a desire to make a positive difference and an awareness of the opportunities to lead that present themselves every day. This is determined more by who we are – our character, than what we know.

If each of us chose to lead (by positively influencing) at the right time in the right way what might our company be like? The real test of leadership could be – If you had no title or ability to reward or penalize others, could you still get them to follow you?

The person who thinks they are leading, but has no one following them, is only going for a walk.

So take charge of your career – whether you are an owner/director, CEO, GM or family business leader – indeed whatever walk of life.

Become your own CEO – Chief Energy Officer – and turn 2012 into a highly successful year and achieve all you have planned for – both personally and professionally.

The alternative – believe everything we read in the daily press and get mightily depressed!

Best wishes to all.

What Can an Executive Mentor Do for Me?

Is Executive Coaching and Mentoring in Australian companies destined to play a role occupied by psychoanalysis in some movie: a virtual prerequisite for anyone who aspires to be anyone?

It might seem that way at some organizations, at least to the untrained eye. IBM has more than sixty certified mentors (they call them coaches) among its ranks. Scores of other major companies have made coaching, indeed mentoring, a core part of executive development. The belief is that, under the right circumstances, one-on-one interaction with an objective third party can provide a focus that other forms of organizational support simply cannot.

And whereas mentoring was once viewed by many as a tool to help correct underperformance, today it is becoming much more widely used in supporting top producers.

Mentoring has evolved into the mainstream fast. This is because there is a great demand in the workplace for immediate results, and mentoring can help provide that. How? By providing feedback and guidance in real time. Mentoring develops leaders in the context of their current jobs, without removing them from their day-to-day responsibilities. And it does not necessarily have to be one-off.

At an even more basic level, many executives simply benefit from receiving any feedback at all. As individuals advance to the executive level, development feedback can become increasingly important, more infrequent, and more unreliable. As a result, many executives plateau in critical interpersonal and leadership skills.

So, should you have a mentor? And which managers in your sphere of responsibility might benefit from working with an outsider to help sharpen skills and overcome hurdles to better performance?

The right approach to answering these questions still varies a great deal depending on whom you ask, but input from several dozen mentors and coaches, and executives who have undertaken that relationship, does provide a useful framework on how to think about the role of mentoring.       

The Road to Mentoring Runs Two Ways

Although both the organization and the executive must be committed to mentoring for it to be successful, the idea to engage a mentor can originate from either HR or leadership development professionals or from executives themselves. In the past, it has more often sprung from the organizational side. But given the growing track record of mentoring as a tool for fast movers, we see more executives choosing it as a proactive component of their professional life.

Executive Mentoring is not an End in itself

In spite of its apparently robust potential, the very act of taking on a mentor will not help advance your career. In other words, don’t seek mentoring just because other fast movers in the firm seem to be benefiting from it.

Mentoring is effective for executives who can say, “I want to get over there, but I’m not sure how to do it.” Mentoring works best when you know what you want to get done. Perhaps, in spite of your outstanding track record, you haven’t yet gained the full interpersonal dexterity required of senior managers—for example, you’re not yet a black belt in the art of influence, which is so important in the modern networked organization. Honing such a skill might be an appropriate goal for a mentoring assignment.

But simply having a clear purpose won’t guarantee mentoring value. You have to be open to feedback and willing to create positive change. If not, mentoring may not be the answer.

There are certain times when executives are most likely to benefit from mentoring. Executives should seek mentoring when they feel that a change in behavior—either for themselves or their team members—can make a significant difference in the long-term success of the organization.

More specifically, the experts say, mentoring can be particularly effective in times of change for an executive. That includes promotions, stretch assignments, and other new challenges. While you may be confident in your abilities to take on new tasks, you may feel that an independent sounding board would be beneficial in helping you achieve a new level of performance, especially if close confidants are now reporting to you. More so, you may recognize that succeeding in a new role requires skills that you have not needed to rely on in the past; a mentor may help sharpen those skills, particularly when you need to do so on the fly.

But mentoring is not just for tackling new assignments. It can also play an invigorating role.

Mentors can help executives develop new ways to attack old problems. When efforts to change yourself, your team, or your company have failed—you are frustrated or burned out — a mentor can be the outside expert to help you get to the root cause and make fundamental changes.

One increasingly common use of mentoring for senior executives focuses on the challenges of managing younger workers, and on helping executives better understand and lead a new generation of employees whose work ethics and values are different.

Mentoring Engagements should be part of a larger Initiative

Mentoring works when it’s systematic. Many organizations use it as an integrated part of a larger leadership development program. Increasingly, firms incorporate “360-degree” feedback, using the results to indicate areas in which an executive might benefit from working with a mentor. Has your feedback revealed an area in which you would like to improve? Is it a skill you need to refine in order to advance through the organization? Would you benefit from an outside perspective? The answers to these questions help gauge the potential value of mentoring.

Mentoring can provide Benefits not available Elsewhere

One of the big benefits of a mentor is that they aren’t tied to the organization, your friends, or anyone else. They are tied to you only, so they support what you want and where you want to go.

Even our families, who want the best for us, can’t be unbiased or totally objective. What you do or do not do impacts them, whether it’s positive or negative. A mentor is not impacted by your decisions, your wins or losses, or anything else.

This doesn’t mean that company goals aren’t supported by mentor — indeed, the mentor was most likely hired by the company to support the executive’s efforts to achieve those goals. Even so, the role of the mentor is not to represent specific company needs or interests. The perspectives they provide, the alternatives discussed, and everything else has no agenda except to support the mentee.

For better or worse, many executives can’t find this type of conversation partner – a “truth speaker”— elsewhere in their companies. That “professional friend”.

And to reinforce this view we are trying to convey this message to an overwhelmed marketplace with a strong point of focused difference to the newcomers. A recently run article in the national print and magazine media helps us to convey our message to those we believe we can lend assistance. It follows.

So Let’s Summarize

A lot of organizations and executives jump into mentoring programs seeing them as a “quick fix”, and something quite inexpensive to implement. Many jump into it but don’t provide the necessary planning to their programming, nor the necessary support and resources to make it really work. So a lot of organizations may have mentoring programs in theory rather than in practice.

Mentoring programs vary, and depending on the organization the mentoring initiative, can be as short as a one-hour briefing before the “mentoring journey” occurs.

There are many different interpretations of mentoring. Some people see it more like a coach, or an adviser, or even a counsellor. In our opinion, it’s like those things, but it isn’t those things at all. You really need someone who can help someone think through their issues and their problems and their concerns, and come up with a good decision – rather than someone who is going to tell you what to do.

It is vital therefore that mentees have a good understanding of the agreed process and structure to ensure successful outcomes – to become fully engaged and aware of the skills, attributes and techniques for successful mentoring.

So what qualities does it take to be a good mentor and how does mentoring benefit the mentor and the mentee?

There are many qualities required for someone to be a good mentor, which can include significant professional expertise and competence in a particular field – or indeed in overall senior business leadership and management. There are also some key qualities that are necessary.

It’s important to be able to respect the “story” of the person you are mentoring and realise that this person is placing a good deal of trust and faith in you by sharing their career and professional development. Being a mentor is a privilege – and it carries with it a responsibility of confidentiality, trust and respect.

A mentor must listen with intent to understand rather than respond. By this we mean that as a mentor you often undertake the role of a “sounding board”. You can’t be an sounding board if you are doing all the talking! Taking time to listen and then determine how you can assist a mentee is a vital quality and skill.

So therefore the mentor should always be “there” for mentees – one-one, phone and email. Mentees are therefore guided towards things without necessarily being given the answers – people should work through the issues themselves and find out what suits them. Mentors actually guide, encourage and understand where you are at. It’s all about ownership and empowerment for the outcome as much as the added value in the partnership.

Significantly these days it also assists in terms of understanding people. You get a lot of talk about Generations X and Y versus the Baby Boomers. Sometimes it’s a very difficult proposition to understand someone who appears so different to you, so by being in a mentoring situation that requires you to withhold any judgement and really hear another point of view, it can increase your own skills of relating to people, so that’s another advantage as well.

However like any other program or initiative, mentoring programs need milestones, goals and some form of measurement – including that all important human feeling of well being. So when beginning the journey and developing the strategies always include those all important targeted outcomes – and review/monitor progress regularly.

We contend that mentoring for successful transition and to get people to where they really want to be has application in all walks of life – but in particular in organizations – and as much for business owners, the career minded and families in business – if not more so.     

When Peter James moved from London to Australia, he was surprised at the huge difference between the business environments in the two countries.

James, chief executive of a large professional Industry body, said: “You would think that moving from the UK to Australia would be pretty similar, with the English language, English legal system and so on in common. However, there is a fundamentally different approach here and I needed advice to help me cope.”

In the southern hemisphere decisions were made much more quickly, he said. “In Australia, if you have 80% of the facts you will take the risk and move forward. In the UK there’s more a tendency to keep talking through the issue to get more than 90% or 100%. I was not prepared to push on much faster.

“By moving halfway round the world my old network of support was no longer as valuable because they didn’t understand the new situation. I needed someone I could talk to who understood what was happening in Australia.”

“When you take on a chief executive’s role, people think it’s plain sailing. But many chief executives will talk about the loneliness at the top. There’s a lot of isolation because you have to make the tough decisions alone. You need a sounding board, preferably an experienced one, to help with the many challenging decisions facing you.”

James’ instinct was to find a mentor who could help him manage this change. He got a couple of introductions and spoke to two or three people on the telephone, looking for someone who would not only suit his personality but also provide a confidential sounding board based on his broader business experience.

He said: “It was important to have someone who could understand what was happening in Australia as well as understand me. It had to be someone who was simpatico, someone you could treat as a friend. Picking someone who was a mismatch or with whom you had a prickly relationship wouldn’t help.”

James said that such a relationship would mean a commitment of at least 12 months. And if your role involved implementing substantial change it would probably have to continue for three years or so.

“The time to curtail it is when the mentor says we are beginning to go over old ground and you realize you’re coping,” he said. “A mentoring relationship is enormously helpful because you can focus on all the challenges facing you.”

For example, the mentor would help you get your work-life balance right and ask what you are doing to stay fresh and receptive to new ideas.

People in senior management roles were not invulnerable, James said. “We all need support and help.”

But mentoring should not be seen as something just for chief executives. It is perfectly valid further down the tree, particularly if you have a major change process in hand.

James’ choice eventually fell on a specialist in mentoring chief executives from the Melbourne based Carnegie Management Group. “Geographical location of the mentor was not the issue for me,” he said. “Finding the right person was!”

Paul Smith, Carnegie Management Group’s founder, believes a gap is opening in the ranks of senior management as age catches up with them.

“As more and more people retire, the problem is accentuated by the inexperience of their successors,” he said. “The average chief executive now is 15 years younger than he would have been in the same job 20 years ago. They simply don’t have the miles on the clock.”

Smith believes these executives with limited experience will suffer. “It will be what you don’t know about that will derail you, never what you know about. But a mentor is a great way to reduce the risk.

Having a mentor who can look round the corner and see the risk because he has been there before is a great help. If you work with a mentor who has no axe to grind and no hidden agenda, it’s much safer.”

Research from CMG clients shows 77% of them felt their business model would not stand up to future challenges in the markets they served.

When a group of chief executives was polled about issues that kept them awake at night, they came up with three in particular. The first was that they blamed themselves for a failure to execute strategy they had formulated – somehow the brilliance in the boardroom got lost on the way to the outside world. The second was how to deal in the international village that the world has become. And third was how do you recruit and hold talent.

Get these right and you might not even need a mentor.

These were not Paul’s employees, bosses or friends. They included corporate or government leaders, business owners and executives who engage him as a business mentor (and coach) and who felt free in a one-to-one setting, to confess how they were really feeling about their jobs. Big pay packets and titles are no buffer to human needs and emotions.

It’s a cliché, but life at the top really can be lonely or isolating, says Paul, because few employees can imagine that their “superiors” might sometimes feel vulnerable and bewildered. He’s been there too!

Few employees realise that they might lock their bosses into a projection in which they become a figment of someone else’s imagination, he says. “Leaders can be ascribed all sorts of motives and circumstances that they just don’t want to have.”

As an executive goalkeeper™ and Chief Executive of the Carnegie Management Group, the Sydney-born Smith, is hired by leaders to be the “deep, tough friend”, with whom they can develop enough trust and rapport to allow them to navigate the issues of leadership – both personally and professionally – hired by both the organisation and the individual alike.

“They benefit by getting stuff off their chest. I often find myself caring for people that others don’t care for. If we can talk about an issue and then isolate the source, we can then work with it”, Paul says.

He also leads workshops on the question of how to bring more meaning, more heart, into a working life. He individually mentors employees who have suddenly been elevated into tough new roles – or help them to get there.

“Not everyone is immediately perfect for a new job, so I help them to get the job under their belt.”

He is well qualified for this role, as he has experienced these dynamics first hand over the earlier part of his career. Graduating from Sydney University as a Bachelor of Economics he rose through the ranks of the Oil Industry with a heavy bias towards Marketing, Corporate Planning and profit centre accountabilities involving “big numbers” he proudly says. These General Management roles were followed by senior executive roles in the Logistics Industry.

Paul therefore understands workplace pressure and the need to perform – particularly in a multi-functional role that requires the leadership of managers.

However then his transition occurred, shifting his passion to work with the “real people”, he says. Hence his drive to assist executives as their third party support base, their work colleague “removed”.

“Sometimes I used to recruit them, so my background, by definition, also involved career transition.” he says. “But then my focus shifted and I became more interested in what was happening to individuals, rather than what was happening to organisations in the first instance. Hence clients also include business owners in their own right. They are no different!”

As an Executive Goalkeeper™ Paul consults with men and women from all walks of life, in those existing leadership roles – including those aspiring to leadership – “by bringing another way of looking at things that should matter.” 

The ability to seamlessly transfer from mentor to coach is the cornerstone for him, and for them.

Some of the relationships, conducted in regular two-hour meetings that encourage reflection and feedback, have lasted for years. “Human change doesn’t happen overnight.” This includes empathy, passion for the job, future vision, life balance and vulnerabilities.

The soft stuff is that which allows connection to the client and to the colleagues. It allows connection on the basis of feedback. A simple example: asking a client how they feel.

It allows people to reveal their vulnerability to him and, in some cases, to employees. “It’s a risky phrase nowadays,” he says, “but to get to empathy with employees and clients, a person has to do an awful lot of hard, intimate work on themselves, particularly the leader.

“It sounds benign, but it is necessary for leaders to do the soul searching that brings them back to the specifics and that leads to new insights.”

This then culminates in goal setting, milestones and ongoing review – particularly important in an ever-changing world. However as far as possible, stick to the game plan he says.

“They do have to be willing to fumble and to get to the fuzzy edges where they discover something and create new models and potentials. Also they need to be able to embrace new behaviours perhaps. Followers pick up on the authenticity of the leader.”

Coming from such long experience within corporate Australia, Paul now sees here a rather adolescent working culture that is under-confident and that still emphasises skill-based competency above all else.

“Most people tell me their organisation is only interested in their competencies, when what they really want to feel is some more purpose in their work.”

“Some of the briefs I’ve had from organisations have requested me to help people to bring more of their heart to work. They want to know how to breathe life into their work.”

This can happen if an organisation permits and nurtures whole human beings at work. “When that occurs, and an individual starts to seek more meaning, they become more creative, passionate, engaged and empathetic. They are happier and more fulfilled,” he says.

This is an adult working culture where there is a balance between work and culture and where “love” does play a part. The baby boomers (executives) are moving into adulthood (parenthood) at work and they are beginning to deal with issues of “generativity” and care.

“Generativity” means rather than producing everything oneself, the aim is to help others to be more productive. However there must be, also, a positive commercial outcome at the end of the day.

“It is a broader sense of membership and yet a lot of organisations here are still based on competency and tribalism. Also hand in hand with this, we as a business community do not seem to encourage a learning culture for the next generation of leaders.” he says.

“Therefore it’s all about strategy development and execution – for both the individual and the organisation.”

“Executive Goalkeepers™ don’t kick the goals – they guide people on how to kick.”

Paul says that when organisations allow individual workers to become fully engaged, words like productivity become almost laughable. “People will transcend their job descriptions and kick the ball right out of the park!”

The emphasis he maintains for all people – Executives, Business Owners and Family Business – is to become fully focused and know precisely where you are heading at any point in time. “The development of this clarity does not happen overnight” Paul states. It requires careful and considered personal introspection via a process to determine what it is you really want to do, develop the strategies and plans – then implement, he adds.

“At CMG this is just so important for us when teaming with our clients – we believe that our work with our clients is a journey. Accordingly our logo – our brand – reflects this journey. It succinctly depicts what we do.”

Australians have a well-earned reputation for risk-taking, but these days we are something of a timid lot. Our reluctance to stick our collective neck out has everything to do with the psychology of motivation — specifically, how we think about the goals we pursue. The problem, in a nutshell, is simply this: when making decisions, lately many of us have been focused much more on what we have to lose than on what we might gain.

Whenever we see our goals — whether they are organisational or personal — in terms of what we have to lose, we have what’s called a prevention focus. Prevention motivation is about obtaining security, avoiding mistakes, and fulfilling responsibilities. It’s about trying to hang on to what you’ve already got and keep things running smoothly, and it isn’t at all conducive to taking chances.

If, instead, we see our goals in terms of what we might gain, we have what’s called a promotion focus. Promotion motivation is about getting ahead, maximising your potential, and reaping the rewards. It’s about never missing an opportunity for a win, even when doing so means taking a leap of faith.

In the last decade, researchers in psychology and management departments across the country have conducted numerous studies showing that promotion and prevention motivations lead to different strengths and weaknesses, and very different strategic approaches. The promotion focus on potential gain leads to speed, creativity, innovation, and embracing risk, while the prevention focus on avoiding loss leads to accuracy, careful deliberation, thoroughness, and a strong preference for the devil you know.

The recent recession, coupled with financial and health care reform, have left Australian businesses (and individual Australians) focused far more on keeping what they’ve got than boldly going where they’ve never gone before. People don’t want to rock the boat at a time when consumers (and jobs) are harder to find, and when risk feels like recklessness. Unfortunately, they forget that without organisational innovation and growth, no business (and no job) will be safe for long.

If you’ve got great, forward-thinking ideas, and their reception has been lukewarm at best, you are probably wishing your boss, your co-workers, or your clients were a bit more comfortable with risk. There are really only two solutions: get them to adopt the promotion mindset (the harder option in the current climate), or use the right language to work with their prevention mindset instead. You may be thinking of your great idea as an opportunity for gain, but you can always reframe it as an opportunity for avoiding loss.

To persuade the prevention-minded person to take a risk, you should emphasise how a course of action can keep your company (or your client) safe and secure — how it will help them to avoid making a terrible mistake. A new venture isn’t a chance to get in front of the pack, but a way to not fall behind. (“Everyone is moving in this direction. It’s inevitable. We could lose market share if we aren’t prepared for the future.”)

Matching a pitch to the listener’s current motivation is the key to effective persuasion. Even the most timid, prevention-minded person among us will gladly take a risk, once you help him understand why it would be a greater risk not to.

• Be technologically savvy. There is not a single area of business that will remain immune from the advancements of technology.  Good managers do not need to be experts in all facets of technology, but they need to stay abreast of technological development, and work out which ones will improve productivity and effectiveness.

• Pursue knowledge management. Information will continue to be an invaluable asset, and the new manager will have to have the skills to retrieve, understand and repackage information swiftly.

• Able to achieve emotional balance. Stress is unavoidable; balance is a key to managing it. The successful manager must be able to help others maintain that balance.

• Have interpersonal skills; managing relationships, not employees. In the dynamic workplace of full-timers, part-timers, free-lancers, temps and flexi-time workers, new managers will need to understand the weaknesses in these varying groups and utilise their inherent strengths.

• Be flexible and adaptable.  In the changing world of work, a successful manager will have to adapt to dynamic environments. This means they will have to switch from strategist to mentor and to team leader.

• Know resource management. As companies peel back to the essentials, their main competitive advantage will be the experience and expertise of their employees.  Coaching, mentoring and succession planning will be mandatory in a good manager.

• Adopt ethical practices. Sound ethical practices will be required, as they are the key to promoting loyalty, pride and commitment in employees.

• Be able to thrive in the midst of diversity. Managers will have to learn to appreciate the customs and beliefs of their staff and the people that they do business with globally.

• Be able to lead, not manage.  Managers perform a critical function, but essentially they maintain the status quo and focus on systems.  In comparison, leaders are innovative, look long term, and focus on people.  The key skills that people identify as being important for leadership are the ability to inspire trust and the ability to motivate.  A good manager will have to show these attributes as well as bear the hallmark of a good decision-maker.

• Be able to demonstrate vision. Vision is something more than a quarterly objective or personal aim. In the tough new competitive world, managers will need to have a vision – or be able to share a vision – of where their company should be, and what is needed to achieve that vision.

• Finally, please remember life is not all about work – working smarter – not harder – is the key. Have your goals all mapped out, stay fit and healthy – then you will note some marked work/life balance. Not just doing the “do”.

All these factors can be influenced by managers to a greater or lesser extent.  The message is clear; don’t rest on your laurels.  To do so is risky and could result, worst case, in your joining the growing pile of business and management corpses on the scrap heap.

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing – because you can only do little. But first you must know for which harbour you are headed, if you are to catch the right wind to get you there.

Credibility. A nice word. Sufficiently powerful to unmask the pretentious and unethical who plague our professional lives. Credibility is hard to gain. Easy to lose. Difficult to restore. With credibility you leverage a successful career, enhance your organisation and engender meaningful relationships. Without credibility you’re left to ponder what went wrong.

Increasingly, the credibility of the burgeoning executive coaching sector is facing scrutiny.

We are witnessing an influx of over-hyped, ill-equipped people calling themselves coaches – yet often bereft of business acumen, empathy, analytical skills and interpersonal qualities.

Much of what’s being offered is drawn from the heavily hyped US coaching market with a seemingly endless variation of coaching specialisations like life coaching, personal coaching, leadership, experiential, executive, success, corporate, relationship and career coaching. Then there’s remedial coaching, retention, change, mentor, developmental and situational coaching.

Let’s be clear, good executive coaching is a value-adding contributor to contemporary senior management, but identifying a credible coach is difficult. Not to mention a mentor!

So what’s the difference?

For us at CMG a coach is more instructional, more “technically” focused and should primarily fine-tune existing skills – and indeed develop new ones – for the client. The client may either not know where they want to be or be very goal focused. The role of the coach is to develop the requisite skills to get the client achieving goals.

A mentor, on the other hand shares experiences, listens well and asks many questions designed to create options for a client. It is a collaborative “Peer” relationship that is as much based on skills knowledge as the imparting of wisdom accumulated over many years.

Gold dust for a client is to find that 3rd party who can seamlessly transfer between both roles as and when required.

It is a recent phenomenon, for example, with the CMG team, that more and more we are mentoring succeeding generations as opposed to coaching. These clients are exceptionally well developed skill-wise, but engage us more to consider all implementation options, techniques and strategies – particularly on the people issues. Business skill issues invariably follow.

So how do we choose the right person?

Let’s talk initially about Mentors. It is our strong belief that with the plethora of so called coaches (just try a Google search to understand this), it is imperative to find a mentor first who can coach – NOT the other way around.

First up, ignore the puffery, and probe for their credentials, leadership experience and client portfolio. And just because a mentor was once a great CEO, an effective company director or a financial whiz, doesn’t guarantee they’ll be a master mentor – indeed coach. Word of mouth has limited value in the search for a suitable professional, because any person who talks about their clients in detail is no professional at all.

Mentoring therefore is difficult to quantify. I’ve found that the very personal nature of this vital role is what sets it apart from normal professional development or consulting. So competence and qualities are essentially the key factors for a good mentor – and must include subtlety, empathy, curiosity, trust, character and insight. The mentor must be strong on strategy, good at lateral/creative thinking and able to customise individual programs to suit each executive’s particular needs. And there must be mutually agreed objectives.

Top mentors can often be found operating within multi-function teams where the most useful professional backgrounds include organisational development, high-Ievel consulting, and executive management. Everyone’s needs are different, and there’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach.

I benefited significantly from informal coaching early in my own career in the Petroleum Industry, but regret the absence of mentoring – someone to share with during my GM years and who could have empathised and analysed. I am now fortunate to have a long standing mentor who has also felt the “blow torch” of leadership.

For the future just as the world itself is becoming more complex, so too is executive mentoring and coaching.

It’s assuming an integral role in the lifelong learning paradigm. But remember that mentoring is not, as some would have us believe, a solution to all of our workplace flaws. Instead, a master mentor is akin to a harbour pilot – being neither ship’s captain nor crew, but helping you avoid the shoals so you can steer your vessel on the right course.

Good mentoring demands complete confidentiality. The empathy and trust required to optimise the outcome must be founded on highly sensitive interpersonal skills and organisational acumen. A professional friend – we call it. He does not catch the fish for you; he guides you on how to fish.

As the coaching industry in Australia matures, it will be those executive coaches and mentors who can differentiate ‘themselves via their credibility and core skills and qualities who will enhance their reputation amidst what will inevitably be a sectoral shake out brought about by an influx of ill-equipped practitioners.

Industry accreditation will only be a partial solution to the problem. Financial planners (many of whom should more accurately be termed “financial brokers”) are in a sector that has recently gone down the accreditation pathway – albeit with mixed success.

Beware of those theorists who market convoluted, irrational coaching systems to camouflage their own inexperience and professional inadequacy, at the same time creating coaching modules that are easier to mark up. And there are plenty of them around!

Finally, why be mentored at all? Perhaps because gazing at yourself in the management mirror can give a distorted reflection. And, in a world where complexity and communication increasingly dominate, the objectivity and subtle guiding hand of a mentor can help attenuate your management blemishes. The coach can then step in to fine tune!

The erosion of the “job-for-Iife” mentality following the advent of globalisation and the knowledge economy has awakened the more alert among you to the reality of on-going career changes – managing transition.

Achieving your goals through the savvy selection of a mentor is likely to prove as value-adding a career move in the years ahead as will the choice of appropriate postgraduate studies. And these days this applies to business owners and families in business just as much to the career-minded.

Beware the hype.

One of the events we remember only too well at Carnegie Management – and we were the first Australian company to specifically brand ourselves as Executive Mentors and Coaches (reference search engines and directory entries in 1999) – was being told we had to become members of the International Coaching Federation in 2002. When informed that their membership was predominantly comprised of HR recruiting companies and mature age sole traders, we gracefully declined.

“We are witnessing an influx of over-hyped, ill-equipped people calling themselves coaches”

Accordingly we at CMG decided that with this plethora of coaches and mentors, we needed to define ourselves with a “tag” that aptly describes who we are and what we do – THE GOALKEEPER ™ – who works with Business people to re-focus and then keeps them on track to achieve their goals. Totally consistent as well with our logo – our brand.

Therefore we now ask you to ask yourself the question – whether you may be a CEO, a senior executive, CEO, SME business owner or family in business…

What Can an Executive Mentor Do for Me?

Is Executive Coaching and Mentoring in Australian companies destined to play a role occupied by psychoanalysis in some movie: a virtual prerequisite for anyone who aspires to be anyone?

It might seem that way at some organizations, at least to the untrained eye. IBM has more than sixty certified mentors (they call them coaches) among its ranks. Scores of other major companies have made coaching, indeed mentoring, a core part of executive development. The belief is that, under the right circumstances, one-on-one interaction with an objective third party can provide a focus that other forms of organizational support simply cannot.

And whereas mentoring was once viewed by many as a tool to help correct underperformance, today it is becoming much more widely used in supporting top producers. In fact, in a 2005 survey by CMG, 86 percent of companies said they used coaching (read mentoring!) to sharpen the skills of individuals who have been identified as future organizational leaders.

Mentoring has evolved into the mainstream fast. This is because there is a great demand in the workplace for immediate results, and mentoring can help provide that. How? By providing feedback and guidance in real time. Mentoring develops leaders in the context of their current jobs, without removing them from their day-to-day responsibilities. And it does not necessarily have to be one-off.

At an even more basic level, many executives simply benefit from receiving any feedback at all. As individuals advance to the executive level, development feedback can become increasingly important, more infrequent, and more unreliable. As a result, many executives plateau in critical interpersonal and leadership skills.

So, should you have a mentor? And which managers in your sphere of responsibility might benefit from working with an outsider to help sharpen skills and overcome hurdles to better performance?

The right approach to answering these questions still varies a great deal depending on whom you ask, but input from several dozen mentors and coaches, and executives who have undertaken that relationship, does provide a useful framework on how to think about the role of mentoring.

The Road to Mentoring Runs Two Ways

Although both the organization and the executive must be committed to mentoring for it to be successful, the idea to engage a mentor can originate from either HR or leadership development professionals or from executives themselves. In the past, it has more often sprung from the organizational side. But given the growing track record of mentoring as a tool for fast movers, we see more executives choosing it as a proactive component of their professional life.

Executive Mentoring is not an End in itself

In spite of its apparently robust potential, the very act of taking on a mentor will not help advance your career. In other words, don’t seek mentoring just because other fast movers in the firm seem to be benefiting from it.

Mentoring is effective for executives who can say, “I want to get over there, but I’m not sure how to do it.” Mentoring works best when you know what you want to get done. Perhaps, in spite of your outstanding track record, you haven’t yet gained the full interpersonal dexterity required of senior managers—for example, you’re not yet a black belt in the art of influence, which is so important in the modern networked organization. Honing such a skill might be an appropriate goal for a mentoring assignment.

But simply having a clear purpose won’t guarantee mentoring value. You have to be open to feedback and willing to create positive change. If not, mentoring may not be the answer.

There are certain times when executives are most likely to benefit from mentoring. Executives should seek mentoring when they feel that a change in behavior—either for themselves or their team members—can make a significant difference in the long-term success of the organization.

More specifically, the experts say, mentoring can be particularly effective in times of change for an executive. That includes promotions, stretch assignments, and other new challenges. While you may be confident in your abilities to take on new tasks, you may feel that an independent sounding board would be beneficial in helping you achieve a new level of performance, especially if close confidants are now reporting to you. More so, you may recognize that succeeding in a new role requires skills that you have not needed to rely on in the past; a mentor may help sharpen those skills, particularly when you need to do so on the fly.

But mentoring is not just for tackling new assignments. It can also play an invigorating role.

Mentors can help executives develop new ways to attack old problems. When efforts to change yourself, your team, or your company have failed—you are frustrated or burned out — a mentor can be the outside expert to help you get to the root cause and make fundamental changes.

One increasingly common use of mentoring for senior executives focuses on the challenges of managing younger workers, and on helping executives better understand and lead a new generation of employees whose work ethics and values are different.

Mentoring Engagements should be part of a larger Initiative

Mentoring works when it’s systematic. Many organizations use it as an integrated part of a larger leadership development program. Increasingly, firms incorporate “360-degree” feedback, using the results to indicate areas in which an executive might benefit from working with a mentor. Has your feedback revealed an area in which you would like to improve? Is it a skill you need to refine in order to advance through the organization? Would you benefit from an outside perspective? The answers to these questions help gauge the potential value of mentoring.

Mentoring can provide Benefits not available Elsewhere

One of the big benefits of a mentor is that they aren’t tied to the organization, your friends, or anyone else. They are tied to you only, so they support what you want and where you want to go.

Even our families, who want the best for us, can’t be unbiased or totally objective. What you do or do not do impacts them, whether it’s positive or negative. A mentor is not impacted by your decisions, your wins or losses, or anything else.

This doesn’t mean that company goals aren’t supported by mentor — indeed, the mentor was most likely hired by the company to support the executive’s efforts to achieve those goals. Even so, the role of the mentor is not to represent specific company needs or interests. The perspectives they provide, the alternatives discussed, and everything else has no agenda except to support the mentoree.

For better or worse, many executives can’t find this type of conversation partner – a “truth speaker”— elsewhere in their companies. That “professional friend”.

And to reinforce this view we are trying to convey this message to an overwhelmed marketplace with a strong point of focused difference to the newcomers. A recently run article in the national print and magazine media helps us to convey our message to those we believe we can lend assistance.

So Let’s Summarize

A lot of organizations and executives jump into mentoring programs seeing them as a “quick fix”, and something quite inexpensive to implement. Many jump into it but don’t provide the necessary planning to their programming, nor the necessary support and resources to make it really work. So a lot of organizations may have mentoring programs in theory rather than in practice.

Mentoring programs vary, and depending on the organization the mentoring initiative, can be as short as a one-hour briefing before the “mentoring journey” occurs.

There are many different interpretations of mentoring. Some people see it more like a coach, or an adviser, or even a counsellor. In our opinion, it’s like those things, but it isn’t those things at all. You really need someone who can help someone think through their issues and their problems and their concerns, and come up with a good decision – rather than someone who is going to tell you what to do.

It is vital therefore that mentees have a good understanding of the agreed process and structure to ensure successful outcomes – to become fully engaged and aware of the skills, attributes and techniques for successful mentoring.

So what qualities does it take to be a good mentor and how does mentoring benefit the mentor and the mentee?

There are many qualities required for someone to be a good mentor, which can include significant professional expertise and competence in a particular field – or indeed in overall senior business leadership and management. There are also some key qualities that are necessary.

It’s important to be able to respect the “story” of the person you are mentoring and realise that this person is placing a good deal of trust and faith in you by sharing their career and professional development. Being a mentor is a privilege – and it carries with it a responsibility of confidentiality, trust and respect.

A mentor must listen with intent to understand rather than respond. By this we mean that as a mentor you often undertake the role of a “sounding board”. You can’t be an sounding board if you are doing all the talking! Taking time to listen and then determine how you can assist a mentee is a vital quality and skill.

So therefore the mentor should always be “there” for mentees – one-one, phone and email. Mentees are therefore guided towards things without necessarily being given the answers – people should work through the issues themselves and find out what suits them. Mentors actually guide, encourage and understand where you are at. It’s all about ownership and empowerment for the outcome as much as the added value in the partnership.

Significantly these days it also assists in terms of understanding people. You get a lot of talk about Generations X and Y versus the Baby Boomers. Sometimes it’s a very difficult proposition to understand someone who appears so different to you, so by being in a mentoring situation that requires you to withhold any judgement and really hear another point of view, it can increase your own skills of relating to people, so that’s another advantage as well.

However like any other program or initiative, mentoring programs need milestones, goals and some form of measurement – including that all important human feeling of well being. So when beginning the journey and developing the strategies always include those all important targeted outcomes – and review/monitor progress regularly.

We contend that mentoring for successful transition and to get people to where they really want to be has application in all walks of life – but in particular in organizations – and as much for business owners, the career minded and families in business – if not more so.

• Articulate a strategy
• Establish guiding principles
• Make decisions quickly, efficiently and effectively
• Earn the trust of your people, include them in the process, treat them fairly, keep them informed and above all else communicate effectively
• Keep the organisation focussed on the positive outcomes

Therefore a definition of Leadership –

“To maximise the expectations, the positive hope of the outcomes that come from change – while minimising the fear of change for those involved.” – Paul Smith

Strategic coherence results from your ability to connect what you sell (your products and services) with your unique and differentiating capabilities (what you, as a company, do to be great) — all within the framework of a clear way to play (your way of creating value for your customers).

In trying to “be great,” many of today’s leaders are caught in a trade-off dilemma between focusing on those businesses where the company’s unique strengths matter versus achieving the growth that shareholders seem to want, regardless of whether that growth will come with long-term financial success.

Leaders need to look past this and instead make sure their core strategy will result in long-term success. However, that doesn’t mean restricting growth; in fact, it opens up new doors for growth in unexpected areas that still leverage your differentiating capabilities.

Research shows that coherent companies earn what we call a coherence premium because strategic coherence provides greater differentiation, enables the right form of scale, focuses limited investments, and has the hugely important benefit of aligning the entire organisation around a common and consistent purpose – conveyed by very effective communications.

Putting Capabilities at the Foundation of Your Competitive Advantage

First, let’s make sure to define capabilities clearly: by capabilities, we mean the interconnected people, knowledge, systems, tools, and processes that create differentiated value for customers. That’s because winning strategies don’t start outside the company. Competitive advantage stems from what the company does better than any other and from using those capabilities over and over again to create value for customers. The first and most important step toward strategic coherence is identifying those unique sources of value.

To lay the right foundation:

1. Treat strategy, capabilities and cost together: What the company already does best should be driving its strategic direction. Don’t choose a strategic direction and then wonder how you can build the required capabilities. Start from the opposite direction: Find an attractive market that values what you do best! Similarly, think about every item of cost as an investment. Disproportionately allocate your costs to your essential capabilities and streamline the remaining areas – this is what propels your company to greatness.
2. Focus on capabilities rather than just fixed assets: Fixed assets, including brands, are more difficult to leverage across diverse businesses and tend to expire, become obsolete, or give way to related services. The competitive value of capabilities, however, will only grow as you apply them to your entire portfolio of products, day in and day out.
3. Identify your differentiating capabilities: Identify what your company does particularly well, what your customers value and your competitors can’t beat. Such capabilities could be rapid-cycle product development, point of sale merchandising, large-scale fabrication, and so on. Make sure to sort out which capabilities are merely table stakes in your markets, versus those capabilities that truly differentiate your company and create a competitive advantage.
4. Define your way to play: Be specific about how you’re going to approach the market, i.e., your way to play, and base this on what you already do well. Define precisely how your way to play adds value for your chosen customers (e.g., as an innovator, a value player, or an experience provider) and how it differentiates you from your competitors.
5. Integrate capabilities into a system: Develop capabilities that are mutually reinforcing since such capabilities systems provide stronger support for the company’s chosen way to play and are almost impossible to copy. A capability system in FMCG, for example, combining direct store delivery, continuous innovation of new products, and a proficiency with local consumer marketing programs that reinforce demand, provides a perfect example.

Earning the right to win is never a cakewalk. But we believe a capabilities-driven strategy is the most direct, efficient, and effective way to get there. With the right capabilities in place – strengthened and refined over time – winning companies are well-positioned for the right kind of growth, and they lead their market by delivering unique value to customers that competitors can’t beat.

In Summary

Instead of looking for winning strategies outside of your company’s walls, outperform competitors by leveraging what your company does best. Use your company’s capabilities — the people, knowledge, systems, tools, and processes that create value for customers — as the foundation of competitive advantage. Here are four ways to make your capabilities work:

1. Put capabilities first. Don’t decide on a strategic direction and then wonder what you need to get there. Look at your core strengths and let those drive your strategy
2. Identify differentiating capabilities. Figure out what your company does uniquely well, what your customers value, and what your competitors can’t emulate
3. Focus on capabilities, not just fixed assets. Fixed assets tend to expire or become obsolete. Capabilities help keep you agile because they can be applied to changing circumstances
4. Communicate your message effectively to all your stakeholders – both internal and external alike.

When I pursued this with a manager some time ago, he admitted he was really concerned about being time poor, with not enough hours in the day to what he considered had to be done. As a result, he was under stress, had difficulty sleeping, with no time for his family and no exercise program. When asked what he did for relaxation, he simply laughed.

As we discussed this further, it became clear why he had difficulty coping with the demands of his job. Energy management was the root cause. He told me he continually had broken sleep and woke up more tired than when he went to bed. He eventually made an appointment with a doctor and was given some medication which helped him sleep. However, this was only a short term solution. Here are some of the other strategies that helped him become a good time manager, not because he lacked the skills – he lacked the energy!

• Attitude – when you’ve done all that you can do, be satisfied
• Mental energy – don’t beat yourself up and take the blame for issues beyond your control
• Exercise – there is a direct relationship between physical fitness and how we think, feel and act. If we lack fitness, then our attitude, enthusiasm and commitment will be sluggish with resultant poor time management and performance
• Balanced diet  – especially low GI and carbs, fruit & vegetables
• Work / Life Balance – time for family, hobbies or interests
• Mentor– identify someone  to help develop, support and monitor your progress
• and importantly learn how to delegate well through effective communication styles thereby achieving your team’s “buy-in”.