The feedback was \u201cbrutally honest\u201d, at times knocking \u201cthe wind from my sails\u201d, said one senior financial services leader who preferred not to be named.<\/p>\n
The bracing \u2013 but useful \u2013 observations came not from a colleague but a mentor he had sought out, who is chair of another company.<\/p>\n
The executive had been paired up with the mentor by Russell Reynolds Associates as part of its programme matching C-suite leaders with those who have been there, done that. The recruitment firm is one of a small group of organisations providing such a service.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the clich\u00e9s are true,\u201d says Suzanne Bose-Mallick, head of executive mentoring, referring to how many executives lament that it can be lonely at the top. The pressure, she says, has intensified as the \u201cspeed of turnover of CEOs is higher. It\u2019s got more complicated than ever before. Leaders don\u2019t have a huge amount of time to make decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mentorship is an opportunity to gain access to experience, as well as offering a contrast to the typically overly polite workplace culture of many companies.<\/p>\n
While coaching has become a staple of corporate support for leaders, mentoring has tended to be seen as a way to develop less-experienced employees, or in the case of reverse mentoring, for junior staff to teach senior leaders about new technology and communication styles. Confidentiality and chemistry are key to the relationship working.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe higher you get in an organisation, the fewer people will tell you what you actually need to hear,\u201d says Steffen Syvertsen, chief executive of \u00c5 Energi, the Norwegian energy group focused on hydropower.<\/p>\n
For the past year, he has been talking to a mentor, which is one of the \u201cfew relationships where there is no organisational agenda … [and where he benefits] from having someone to ask difficult questions without an agenda of their own\u201d. The mentor helped cut through media \u201cnoise\u201d and focus on priorities, he said.<\/p>\n
Russell Reynolds has run a mentoring programme for the past three years and has more than 150 mentors on its books. The programme runs for 12 months, but some pairings continue for a second or even third year. It does not disclose costs but those are typically paid for by the mentees\u2019 organisation.<\/p>\n