Transcriber: Felipe Nunes Reviewer: Lucas Kaimaras
I was 21, young and ambitious, wanted to make money,
be independent and start my life.
I was just about to graduate college when I met an executive named Mitzi
at an advertising club meeting.
Mitzi and I hit it off and she told me -
she said she would introduce me to some folks at Grey advertising.
Grey would be my dream job,
but I had no industry connections
and my college wasn’t known for marketing and advertising.
Mitzi knew I needed guidance.
Having come from an underrepresented minority group herself,
she told me something that would change my life.
She told me, “You need a mentor”.
And then she helped me get the job at Grey.
A year later, I met my first real mentor, Richard.
From Richard I learned what to do and what not to do.
He mentored me professionally and personally.
Initially, we met in New York City, when he offered me his couch
as I was in-between jobs and I’d broken up with my girlfriend.
Richard also introduced me to the woman I was married to for 25 years.
Twice, he brought me back into the business
when I left advertising for a while.
And when I moved to California,
he was instrumental in finding me a place to live in L.A.
and also in obtaining account executive positions at KIIS-FM
and finally at KCAL TV, which was then owned by Disney.
Richard became the big brother I never had.
Another mentor was John.
With John, my career took on a more accelerated trajectory.
He watched out for me and made sure my name was in consideration for promotions.
If I got the promotion, it was up to me to do the job.
But John also made himself available to me when things got tough.
I remember when John was being promoted and he wanted me to replace him.
Politics made the promotion tenuous at best.
But in the end,
we were able to work it out and I was able to succeed John
and replace him as president and general manager at KTLA.
We need mentorship today more than ever before.
We need professional and personal, formal and informal mentors.
Millennials and Generation Z are born in the financial impact of,
not only the pandemic,
but the Great Recession of 2008.
They’re behind professionally and financially,
and they need to catch up.
Well, millennials projected to comprise more than 75% of the workforce by 2025.
And with 79% of them saying mentoring is important to them,
it’s crucial - it’s imperative that we support this generation.
The pandemic’s effect on this generation
points to three areas the companies need to focus on:
skill development,
stress management and emotional intelligence.
Mentorship is a crucial solution that’s existed for thousands of years.
Socrates mentored Plato,
John Wooden mentored Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
and Maya Angelou mentored Oprah Winfrey.
In each case,
the mentees gave much of the credit to their success to their mentors.
Oprah said of Maya Angelou:
“She was there for me always,
guiding me through some of the most important years of my life.
Mentoring is important,
and I don’t know how anybody can make it in this world without mentorship.”
The evidence continues.
Those who had mentors at work
are 71% more likely to say there’s opportunities for advancement.
And 89% more likely to say their colleagues appreciate their contributions.
And 91% more likely to say they’re satisfied with their jobs.
Mentorship provides stability - it’s like an anchor.
When young professionals feel cared for and invested in,
their commitment to the organization increases.
The top reasons for young professionals wanting to quit their jobs,
Its lack of opportunity for advancement and lack of learning and development.
Mentorship helps mentees learn faster
and leapfrog rookie mistakes and misjudgments.
I love this famous quote from Sir Isaac Newton:
“If I’ve seen further than others,
it’s because of standing on the shoulders of giants.”
What a great quote.
Newton gives credit for those who helped him for success.
Mentees can also learn over the course of several years
or in the course of one meeting.
Once I was in a meeting, and I wasn’t accomplishing my goals.
For some reason, the client wanted to help me and he took the opportunity
to show me another way to make my proposal more enticing,
and then he bought what I was selling.
(Laughter)
But mentorship
is also a strong precursor to promotion for mentors and mentees.
Mentees are five times more likely to be promoted than those without mentors,
and mentors themselves are six times more likely to be promoted,
than those who were not mentors.
But mentorship does not guarantee automatic promotion.
And mentees can get discouraged.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a great mentor.
When work politics got between John and I and I almost didn’t get the promotion,
it was a very difficult time, to say the least.
But trust in John, trust in the process,
believing that he was doing a good job, was the key to my long term success.
Mentors must have influence
if they are going to influence the advancement of a mentee’s career.
It was easy to trust John because he had influence in the company.
I told you earlier that Mitzi told me I needed a mentor.
What I didn’t tell you was everything she said.
She told me I needed a white mentor.
What she said perplexed me for a long time
but in the end I realized her words had my best interest at heart.
Most of the senior executives in the industry were white,
as it is in most industries today, and in organizations,
and the best mentors have a sphere of influence or power.
But one of the challenges is that mentees don’t get to pick their mentors.
Mentors tend to pick people like themselves.
In 2000, white males were 35% of the population,
but 96.4% of the Fortune 500 CEOs.
In 2020 a slight improvement:
white executives were 85.6%,
African-Americans were 1%,
Asians were 2.4%,
and Latinx was 3.4% of the Fortune 500 CEOs.
Diversity at the bottom doesn’t necessarily make it to the top.
Hence, I needed a white mentor.
If top management was more diversified, Mitzi wouldn't have had to say that.
If your company is mostly white at the top,
mentoring a diverse group of mentees
is the organic and sustainable way to make it diverse at the top.
Companies are 25% more likely
to outperform their competitors financially
when gender diverse,
and 36% more likely to outperform them when ethnically diverse.
One of the hardest truths about mentorship
is that mentees don’t get to pick the mentors -
it’s the other way around.
The power is in the hands of the mentors,
and there's just not enough of them to go around.
In fact, most people think mentors are important.
76% of them think they are, but only 37% have them.
There’s a huge gap.
Mentorship perpetuates itself as mentees become mentors
and both groups benefit.
I mentioned earlier Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Kareem said of John Wooden:
“I learned so much from this man, from day one until the day he passed.
And since he’s passed, I’m still learning from the experiences with him.
What an incredible human being.”
And John Wooden said of Kareem:
“I had no idea how tough it was for him at times.
I learned so much from Kareem about man’s inhumanity to man
than I’ve learned anywhere else.
I never imagined anyone could feel or talk like that.”
I get it - once you’ve been mentored, you want to give back.
Remember my mentor, John?
We hadn’t talked in a while.
And last year we started talking more frequently.
And every time we talked, he would mention to me
how much more I did for him than he did for me.
I’d never thought about that.
I’d always thought about what he did for me, not what I did for him.
And remember Richard?
I hired Richard at KTLA four years after leaving KCAL.
And we worked together for over a decade.
Whether it’s over the life of the mentees or in a single moment,
we’ve seen the benefits of mentorship for thousands of years.
It’s good for the young professionals,
it’s good for the enterprise and it’s good for the mentors.
We can’t afford not to step up and mentor.
Are you a mentor? Could you be a mentor?
Are you a coach?
Are you a tutor?
Are you a good neighbor?
Turn to the person next to you and tell them
who you’re going to mentor starting on Monday.
I promise you, it’s the greatest feeling in the world.
Thank you. (Applause)