>> This is WorkLab, the Podcast for Microsoft.
I'm your host, Elise Hu.
At WorkLab we hear from leading thinkers on the future of
work, economists, technologists, researchers.
They all share surprising data and explore
the trends transforming the way we work.
On today's episode, mentorship
and how it can change lives and businesses.
>> Companies that have structured mentorship programs
outperform their peers by 35 percent.
Your employees are bonded to the company culture.
They feel connected to the mission
and growth of that organization.
They then want to share
their innovative ideas with your leadership.
>> That was Janice Omadeke,
founder and CEO of The Mentor Method,
an enterprise platform for mentorship.
Later we'll hear from Sarah Haggard,
who created a peer to peer mentoring platform Tribute.
>> Employers are still trying to run mentoring as
a tops down activity.
I'm here to tell you that that is no more.
Employees want to be in
control and own their own destiny.
>> Both ladies will share their insights on
what role mentorship plays in achieving
workplace equity and how companies can
effectively establish mentoring programs,
especially in the age of hybrid work.
They also both started their companies in 2019,
just before the pandemic made hybrid work ubiquitous.
Which means they each know a thing or two about
a digital first approach to relationship-building.
To kick things off, here's my conversation with Janice.
Thanks for joining us Janice. This is going to be great.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Let's just start by having you discuss with us
what mentorship means to
you and how it has played a role in your life.
>> Mentorship means not just getting a job,
but building a career.
It's using the expertise, advice,
trials and tribulations of experts
that have entered into
your industry or have a certain set
of skills that you admire and being able to learn
from those individuals to shape your own story too.
Personally, mentorship means a lot.
I am first-generation American.
My parents immigrated from the Congo back
in the '70s through
college scholarships from missionaries.
Growing up in the late '80s early '90s,
it was with mentorship and
guidance from complete strangers that
helped my parents evolve in
their careers and completely changed my life.
>> Many of us have mentors.
I think all of us stand on the shoulders of others.
However, even though a lot of mentor or
mentee relationships come about organically.
It sounds like it doesn't touch everyone,
not everybody has an equal opportunity to
find a mentor that could really change their lives.
Is that what you saw in business?
>> Absolutely.
There's a view of mentorship that unless you send
the right LinkedIn message at the right time
and day that this other individual reads it.
Or you're at the right water cooler
as in the right event,
on the right team working
on the right floor for
the companies that are returning to work.
Your chances of meeting a mentor if you don't have
that perfect alignment across what I just
described becomes slim to none.
We forget that not everybody has
the same access to resources,
mentors, and leveling up their skills and education.
When I was in defense contracting,
that's where I spent the bulk of my career.
Anytime I signed up for corporate mentorship programs,
I was just matched to the only woman or
minority executive that was available.
The basis of those measures were
really just age, race, gender,
and maybe we're both on the communications team or this
individual also worked on
the 17th floor where I was working for example.
That's not enough to actually build
a streamlined and successful relationship.
>> Well, what's the origin story of The Mentor Method?
>> Growing up in the late '80s,
early '90s we had very little money.
My dad was working several jobs.
My mom was staying home with us,
and my dad had a chance encounter with this gentleman who
sponsored them on the spot to participate in
a workforce development tech literacy program,
and went from part-time jobs with
no upward mobility to getting
a security clearance and working in IT at the Pentagon,
which completely changed our lives
from a two bedroom apartment with six people,
one bathroom, and not the best part of town
to a five bedroom home with
a yard and a good school district.
As a byproduct of mentorship,
I've seen its effects,
I've seen the power behind it.
When I was at a large management consulting company
as a manager,
my creative director asked
me to build a mentorship program for
about 150 people virtually
on top of my 70 hour plus workweek.
I immediately looked online for solutions
that wouldn't repeat the issues that I experienced.
When I looked online at the incumbents,
they really weren't fitting the bill it was
a clunky interface they
weren't providing streamlined matches,
the system was overpriced.
I just used my background in product,
graphic design and web design and built
something really just for my team
because I knew that they deserved
a better process than what I was seeing in market.
I started working on it nights and weekends.
Left my very comfortable management
consulting job in 2018,
moved to Austin for
the MassChallenge accelerator and
the rest is really history.
>> You've listed some of the bigger obstacles
in the existing corporate mentorship landscape.
What might be ways that individuals could find
a mentor or create that relationship,
whether it's approaching someone or
building a mentor or mentee relationship over time?
>> If you're in a structured,
internal corporate mentorship program,
I honestly think that's one of the best approaches
because you have a clear start and end date.
You know the objective of the program.
You know that these mentors had been vetted and approved
by leadership to be impactful mentors.
My advice is always keep it organized but casual.
Have a clear idea of what you want to work on.
I think sometimes people
believe that mentorship is just a catch-all.
But you could get ready for a promotion.
You could refine a specific skill set
and knowing exactly what you want
to work on and why and
then finding mentors whose strains align with those.
Let's say you're a mid-level consultant
for a large management consulting firm and you
want to refine your financial modeling
and you want to broaden
your network to get on different projects.
You take it upon yourself to introduce
yourself to a few partners,
senior managers and other people
that are on projects that you'd want to work on.
Just asking them, how did you get onto this project
won't give you the exact alignment
for how you can do the same thing.
You really want to go deeper than that and say, okay,
these are the areas that I would love to
have an informational discussion with you
around to learn how I can
begin evolving in those specific skill sets.
My goal is to reach X, Y,
and Z competency over the next six months.
That's just an informational conversation but
allow that person to say if they have availability,
what that availability is like and
if they don't, that's okay too.
But you don't want to go in and just assume
that everybody wants to be your mentor.
>> One thing I've noticed is that this conversation
so far we've really focused on the mentee,
the person who's seeking mentorship.
What are ways that mentoring someone else can be
beneficial to the person who's being a mentor?
>> Well, studies have shown that being a mentor
helps you get promoted five times faster.
There's data to show that
mentorship is actually more advantageous for the mentor.
>> Well, and what are some of
the biggest obstacles that people
face when they are a mentor?
They're mentoring someone,
and how could they overcome those?
>> There's a pressure to be everything for everyone.
But I think that can get
heightened when you are someone's mentor.
There is the pressure to appear as perfect,
which is the opposite of mentorship.
You want to share where you've failed and where you've
triumphed and be very
vulnerable and real with your experience.
>> Yeah, that makes sense.
You talked about the benefits for
both the mentor and the mentee of this relationship.
What are the ingredients in a successful,
ongoing mentorship relationship?
>> There is a reason why the Mantra methods,
values or trust, honesty,
communication, and transparency.
That's the requirement for anyone on our team.
Because that's a requirement for
a successful mentor mentee relationship.
In addition to chemistry,
vulnerability, and a willingness to learn,
that learning mindset and coming in
without any shred of ego as
a mentor or mentee is really when
you're able to see that magic connection happen,
through being vulnerable and sharing their experiences.
>> Obviously, the landscape of work has
changed dramatically in the last two years.
I'm curious how the Hybrid working model and just not
being in the same geographic locations
affect mentoring programs.
>> They shouldn't. I mean,
what we saw through
the last two plus years is that you can
build connections without needing to be in
the same physical space regardless of the location.
>> What are some other points making
the case that businesses
should take mentorship programs seriously?
>> Yes. We approach that in two ways.
First one is retention and
the savings and costs associated with that.
The second is winning in the market.
Companies that have structured mentorship programs
outperform their peers by 35 percent.
Because your employees are bottom to the company culture,
they feel connected to the mission
and growth of that organization.
They then want to share
their innovative ideas with your leadership.
Which means that you're now thinking
ahead of where the market is.
That's really where the innovation comes from.
The CEO of a company
has the vision and a lot of great ideas.
The C-suite will bring a lot to
the table, but oftentimes,
it's the program manager that's been with the company
for less than two years with a fresh lens on
the direction of the company that
might have a cool new feature
or an idea that
really takes the company above and beyond.
What we forget is that
these HR teams that are responsible for implementing
mentorship programs across companies are also facing
the great resignation while trying to retain
hundreds of thousands of employees for these companies.
But what they've seen with
structured mentorship programs,
especially with the mentor method,
is that they're able to reduce churn by
five percent and see over
$100 million in retention savings
annually just by implementing
a tool like the mentor method.
>> Wow, Janice,
I want to give you a chance to talk about one of
your own mentors that you want to shout
out and what that relationship
has meant to you personally.
>> I would love to shout out Gwen Houston.
She is the former head of Diversity,
Equity and Inclusion and globally for Microsoft.
To know Gwen is to be in awe of her.
She has helped me refine,
so many approaches with our solution,
broadening my network and has been
a true sounding board for me as a black woman executive,
she knows the hurdles and
barriers and challenges that I face on a daily basis.
Having her as a sounding board has
just helped me get through
a lot of those hang ups and just
continue building the best company possible.
>> Janice Omadeke. That was great.
Thank you so much.
>> My pleasure. Thank you so much.
[MUSIC].
>> So far, we've heard how
having a strong mentor or being
a strong mentor can be
an integral part of a fulfilling, successful career.
We've also learned how companies can establish
effective mentoring programs for their employees.
Next up our corresponded Desmond Dickerson chats
with Sarah Haggard, CEO of tribute,
a peer to peer mentoring app
leveraging technology to foster
more meaningful relationships at work.
[MUSIC]
>> Sarah, thanks so much for joining us today.
>> Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
>> As we're all experiencing
this hybrid and remote work experiment,
Gen Z in particular,
they've never known what we would
refer to maybe as a normal working world.
What is mentor-ship like for them in
such a dynamic and experimental environment.
>> For Gen-Z they grew up in
a world where they were digital natives.
They grew up in a world where,
access to information was
so native and natural to them that I think
they just expect that they will be able to
learn through mentors, it's how they learn.
They crowdsource information.
They ask deep questions,
they learn through others very naturally,
and they do it on their digital devices.
But I think the most interesting thing about
Gen-Z is they are coming into the workforce
with the least amount of social capital of
any other generations in the workforce.
I say that because they don't walk into
an office where they get greeted by a bunch of people.
A lot of them have spent the last two years
doing college remote.
I think it's something that companies
need to really be eyes wide open about
and think about how they're going to create
opportunities for this generation to
build that capital which ultimately becomes
their avenue to navigating their careers.
>> Let's talk a little bit about where do companies tend
to go wrong when they setup mentorship programs.
>> I want to start by saying
that I think if your company is
trying to do it, give them kudos,
I think where companies go wrong in this is that they
don't think about the scale challenge of,
okay, even if I set up
a spreadsheet or setup an Internet site where
people can go sign up
that tends to not scale across the organization.
That's also limiting because you create
all these subcommunities and
the organization doesn't get to
benefit from the collective knowledge,
wisdom of the whole.
The other thing that I see most frequently is
employers are still trying to run mentoring
as a tops down activity.
I'm here to tell you that that is no more.
Employees want to be in
control and own their own destiny.
They want to own how they connect.
Start thinking about how you can run
this bottoms up that's employee driven,
that steps the org out of the way
and let's your employees really
connect in those moments of need.
That's the future of mentorship.
>> What role does mentorship play in establishing
equity or equality among different types of employees?
> Yeah, Tribute's mission is really to
equalize in flatten the hierarchy.
We absolutely believe in lateral mentorship,
reverse mentorship,
all different directions of mentorship.
That's based on our thesis
that everybody has something to
give and get at all points in our career.
I mean, I think a lot of us talk about reverse mentoring,
like it's the hot new thing.
But it's really nothing more than an acknowledgment
that we're all lifelong learners including at the top.
[MUSIC]
>> That was Desmond Dickerson and
CEO of Tribute, Sarah Haggard.
That's it for this episode of
the WorkLab podcast for Microsoft,
check out the WorkLab digital publication
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