Spare time is a valuable commodity for many women. Whether you’re working full-time or part-time, managing kids or not, few of us can say we have too many additional hours available to help out other women with their careers.
And yet there are so many experienced and seemingly busy women out there who are willing and able to share their wisdom and offer a helping hand by mentoring women. They find the extra hours, oftentimes mentoring multiple women at once or even making themselves practically available 24/7 to offer guidance on pressing issues.
So why do they do it? And, more importantly, how can we ensure they keep doing it?
I put these questions to two such mentors, both of whom are working in significant management roles and managing a family at home.
EY Sydney managing partner Lynn Kraus has been mentoring four women over the past five years and sees building such relationships as a responsibility. “I am a believer that once you have ascended upwards on the corporate ladder, it is your duty and privilege to extend a helping hand down to help the next generation of female leaders.”
Kraus, who won our ‘Mentor of the Year’ prize at the NAB Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards, has been a ‘mentee’ herself and knows just what it means to be on the receiving end of excellent advice. “While these two [female mentors] were very different in many ways, they did share several things in common: personal resilience, self confidence and both were excellent communicators. They invested in me and believed in me and I feel it is my job to do the same for others.”
She says she never tells her ‘mentees’ what they should do, but rather listens to their issues and challenge them on their responses, encouraging them to find their own solutions. “This makes for a more sustainable solution than simply telling someone what to do,” she says.
Allied Health director Penny Munro also mentors multiple women and sees it as an opportunity to ‘give back’. “It’s my contribution to the community and to providing support and hope and encouragement to women.”
But Munro personally benefits too. “I get to constantly learn from remarkable people who often don’t think that they are remarkable. Listening to their stories always provides me with lots of food for thought, personally and professionally,” she says. “The second thing for me is the joy. It’s so lovely to watch women develop and be courageous and take risks and achieve. Mentees provide me with lots of joy and laughter and humility.”
Given the energy these women invest in their mentoring relationships, mentees have a responsibility to uphold their end of the bargain and ensure they’re not taking advantage of the arrangement, or wasting their time.
Munro believes mentees should enter such relationships with purpose. They should be prepared to engage themselves fully in the conversation, do the work that’s required and take risks.
That means getting over or being willing to at least see past any ‘imposter syndrome’. “I find just about every mentee starts with feeling like they are a fraud and believing they can’t possibly achieve what they aspire to so it’s important I give them regular feedback and encouragement, but I also ask them to reflect deeply on our discussions,” says Munro.
If that many mentees feel like a ‘fraud’ when they start out, we can only hope more women find the time and energy to continue creating mentoring relationships in the future.
Are you a mentor? Why do you do it?