Mentoring – a pathway to a stronger, more inclusive culture

Mentors don’t need to share your interests and aspirations. They don’t need to possess identical skills and talents, nor do they need to be an expert in the field you work in. And regardless of whether they look like you or share similar life experiences, they can still provide excellent counsel when it comes to assisting you with your personal and professional goals. Additionally, mentoring isn’t always about the nuts and bolts of doing a job. You might want to focus on the mindset you bring to your work and some of the broader challenges of being a leader. What goals are you working toward? What challenges can you anticipate? What new skills or competencies would you like to attain? How will you know if you’ve reached your goals?

Instead of talking with someone who knows exactly what you’re going through, it’s often more useful to interact with a person who has a completely different approach to their work. You may even give your mentor a few ideas to think about. Find the value in embracing alternative points of view. It doesn’t mean you have to adopt them, but there’s nothing wrong with learning how someone else looks at a situation.

If you want someone to be your mentor, go out and find that person and then make your pitch. But before you do that, be clear about why you want a mentor and more specifically, why you want this particular person to be your mentor. There is certainly an element of salesmanship and persuasion in this process. At the same time, you probably don’t want a mentor who has to be convinced to take on the role. Finding the right mentor is key to an individual’s personal and professional development. And it’s never too early or too late in life to seek a mentor. Mentors can offer advice that can help you navigate your career and life in general.

As mentioned above, you need someone who is committed to making the relationship work. Whether you’re looking for someone to challenge you and make you a little uncomfortable, or you need a more reassuring voice during a difficult time, use those same instincts that come into play when making a hire or issuing a promotion to find the right person to serve as your mentor.

Your first mentor may not be a great match. Or, you may come across “unofficial mentors,” who unbeknownst to them, teach you what not to do. It’s just as important to learn lessons from these interactions – hopefully only a few – so as to appreciate the full breadth of mentoring experiences you will encounter in life.

Mentors are revered for their ability to share words of wisdom and provide a pathway for mentees to advance in their careers. But through the process of teaching and advising others, mentors often come away with valuable lessons of their own. It becomes a chance to reassess their own approach to their careers, confirm what works and perhaps take a closer look at other tenets that don’t fit anymore before they advise others. The act of mentoring can enhance your interpersonal skills, increase your self-awareness, boost your executive presence and afford you an opportunity to gain valuable coaching and teaching skills. Also, be intentional. Look for opportunities to mentor people who don’t look like you. Doing so will help increase diversity in your respective profession. And it’s never too late to be a mentor, imparting sage advice and lessons learned to help someone else’s career.

Research shows that companies with diverse and inclusive teams tend to outperform their less diverse peers. Yet, unintentionally, many organizations fail to understand the unique challenges diverse employees face, namely, belonging – the feeling of being welcomed – which is highly correlated to workplace engagement. One way to foster an authentically equitable culture of belonging for all is to create diversity mentoring programs that recognize the challenge of feeling different at work because of gender, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Companies can administer formal mentorship programs that are highly structured and focus on measurable outcomes (e.g., retention levels, performance ratings), and also support a culture of informal mentoring, which happens more organically. EY offers both individual mentoring (more formal) and group mentoring (less formal) to its employees. A good example of the latter is our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) – what we call EY Professional Networks — which are intended to provide stimulating opportunities for all our professionals from diverse backgrounds to form a community, connect internally and externally, create informal mentoring relationships, and strengthen their leadership skills. ERGs can be an excellent place for mentees to network with employees who share similar backgrounds. Typically, ERGs are part of an organization’s broader commitment to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion and have executive sponsorship.

Business accelerators provide another platform for individuals to mentor to diverse individuals in the business community. For instance, in 2020, EY created the Entrepreneurs Access Network to team with Black and LatinX founders to transcend barriers and scale their businesses. And for more than a decade, our EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women has worked to address the gender gap in entrepreneurship by targeting “the missing middle” – savvy women founders.

Mentoring can also be a tool to help people make an impact in the communities in which they work and live. EY College Mentoring for Access and Persistence (MAP) is a multiyear, group‑mentoring program dedicated to providing access to higher education for underserved youth in the US. EY College MAP matches groups of EY volunteer mentors (of all levels, backgrounds and service lines) with groups of local 11th and 12th graders from underserved schools across the country.

Joining a professional trade organization may also be a good place to find someone who could be your mentor. Within every industry sector, there are trade organizations that have their own mentoring programs – definitely, a great way for individuals to integrate themselves into their field. Regardless of the type of mentoring approach a company chooses, the key is that it should link back to the organization’s purpose and consider a broad set of stakeholders, from employees and customers to communities, the planet and society.

Building a mentoring program can enhance the value of the organization’s social and human capital in the longer term through increased employee engagement, less employee churn and a higher level of organizational trust, each of which contributes to enhancing an organization’s brand with its stakeholders (current and prospective employees, investors, suppliers and customers). Mentoring also aligns with environmental, social and governance (ESG). Studies show that businesses which incorporate ESG into their operating strategy, no matter the industry, tend to do well over the long term and create long-term value because they are simply better-run companies. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation, formal mentoring programs are a great way to promote positivity in the workplace.