E005: Mentoring and Development Networks

This is the world of work podcast with James and Jane. Hi

everyone. Just before we get cracking into this week's episode, I wanted to jump on and mention our new support page. So as some of you may know, we're on a bit of a mission to increase accessibility to good quality management and career training. And if you'd like to support us in this, you can go to www.worldwork.io forward slash support to learn more.

Hey, hello. How you getting on Saturday? I know. So for those of you who don't know, we normally record this podcast on Friday today, Saturday special day. Yeah,

good. So here we are again. Can you believe it? We're now up to episode five of the world of work podcast today, we're going to be speaking about how to build an effective network of mentors, if you're an individual understanding how networks can help your development. Or also, if you're an organization and you want to sort of create a network of mentors within your organization, a little bit about how to do that. So that's us. That's a bit of a mouthful. I wish we had a nice single word for it. Maybe it should be like mentor network building, or so the way I've heard referred is developmental relationships. Oh, right, yeah, and no, because then everyone wants to be or a direct report, right?

And don't forget, you can get in touch with us. We are on Twitter, at the WoW podcast, and we are you can reach us on our website, the WoW podcast.org,

yeah. And as ever, we'll put up some some notes at the end, so you can see some of the things, what we've been talking about. So, um, So how you been doing and what you've been up to? Oh, it's been, it's it's been busy, actually, but, but good, busy. I did something yesterday I was really scared to do. Okay, I'm trying to do this thing where I, you know, if people offer me opportunities, and it's something I haven't done before, I should just say yes and go, yeah. So I chaired a panel for the charity that I'm a trustee at nice on their conference. And, you know, it was just brilliant. They had the most brilliant speakers, most brilliant people telling toward telling their stories, rewarding, yeah, really, really rewarding and really scary. And it nothing went you know, as my mom said, it's not like anything crashed. There we go, right? Yeah, although I did sit in the wrong seat, yeah. So I sat in the wrong seat and then had to be moved because one of the panelists couldn't sit awkward. You need to work on those reserved signs. Yeah, absolutely good. Well, I've had a pretty nice week myself. I did a few things in terms of sort of learning. The thing that I did that I probably liked the most was I went to an

event with a leadership consultancy about the future of work. And that was actually really interesting, trying to get group leaders in a room defining what they see the future of work, holding and looking at what they think the core skills needed in future leadership is so that was good, so nice. All right, we've been busy then we've been busy. Yeah, no, never too busy. So what we gonna do this week? We'll do our developmental

network work and running order as usual. We'll do some definitions, we'll do a bit of a research rounder, we'll do a list of the week. We like lists actually, this week, we've got a bit of a special bonus for you. We'll be doing two lists this week.

That's James's way of saying he didn't want to cut one topic, right? Maybe that's because he probably should have done two episodes, Matthew, Then stories from the COVID keyboard, and then final thoughts, top tips. Check out. So that's, that's the running order. Do you want to lead us off with some definition? Yeah, sure. So as always, it's useful to get to grips with some of the terminology that floats around, particularly if you're you not familiar with it. So

mental is usually an experienced and trusted advisor. It's quite often someone who is further down your career, your existing career path. And it's quite often

it's mostly tends to be an unpaid relationship. Yeah, there's some payment. But generally it's generally, it tends to be. Second definition is coach. And I want to bring that up because it is different and different. Someone, you're giving them special teaching in a particular subject. It tends to be time focused, but often there's a paid relationship, and it tends to be very much about handing over skills or abilities or knowledge. It's literally, if you think of it, in sports coaching, it is giving people these skills to do something. Yeah, and one thing I touch on, so definition we wrote out. It's one of the best ones we could find. But I

think there's a bit more to it. So this is giving someone special, teaching particular subject, that kind of stuff. But for me, a lot of coaching is about helping people discover for themselves. So particularly if you think about.

A world of professional coaching in a non sports environment. It's helping people explore through different questions and discover some truth themselves and things like that. But we should do a whole episode, yeah. And actually, what I will do is I will give you a link to put up on twitter feed which has a really nice there's a kind of member organization. Is they do a really nice here's what the difference usually is, and it goes through like 10 different things, of aspects of relationships and how it will differ. And the reality they say at the bottom is, you know, coaching and mentoring sometimes overlaps, and quite often that's fine. That's absolutely fine. Don't get hung up on it, yeah. But I do think it's important to specify the difference. The other one that we've got in here is a sponsor, yeah? And I think it's really important that you understand that as also a developmental relationship, yeah? So a sponsor, in the traditional sense is, if you sponsor a proposal suggestion, you're officially putting it forward and supporting it. But in people terms, it's about someone who's kind of championing you or just raising your profile, yeah, is aware of you, and it's, you know, backing you, yeah? And they tend to be more senior as well. That tends to be someone a little bit more senior in organizations, and maybe a lot. And a lot, and they'll fight your corner a little bit Absolutely. And then I've got a couple of slightly different definitions that I thought would be really useful. One is a definition for what's called a developer, and it's in some of the research stuff. And there's a particular paper

that describes developers as people who, currently, or in the past, takes or took an active interest and concerted action to advance your career. Fine, and I really like that. So that's somebody developing you. The idea is that your developers, yeah, they're the people who are insider, through advice, through time they spend with you, or through action, actually helping you move forward. Yeah, and I think that's really great. And then that's from Johnson Van Buren and Dion's paper. And then the other one that I wanted to bring up, there's a great paper that I just loved about dirty networking, which I mentioned in your research round up later. But they talk about professional instrumental networking, okay? And they make this really important distinction. Professional instrumental networking is where you build relationships, yeah, and the professional is you're building that relationship specifically to help you with a task in your career, or with a part of your job fine. So, like, a group of tasks, so some of you got to be better. And then instrumental is about being deliberate about it. So this is not when they talk about networking. They are not talking about using existing social networks, and you know, opportunity, when they are talking about going out and cultivating relationships really active that are specifically helpful for your work, yeah. And I think it's really important, because when I talk about networking later on, that would be what I mean. I'm not talking about turning up at your old uni reunions and thinking, Oh, my God, we work in same industry. That's spontaneous or opportunistic, and that's great. You should do that, but that is not what we're talking about. Yeah. And I guess if you do that opportunistic, then you rely a little bit on luck and good stuff happens, but if you actually do a more focused pace, then you've got a better chance. Yeah, and I guess the real reason that I wanted to make a distinction is because the evidence shows that when you up your professional instrumental behaviors in networking,

certainly in some industries, and that there's a, there's a great study on lawyer lawyers, your productivity goes

up. It is linked productive either because you make it I don't know, maybe you're finding ways to be more efficient. So we talked about return on investment. You'll get used to this. James is always, always bringing about numbers. I'll have it on a spreadsheet somewhere. Don't worry. I

know make. I tell you what. Make a formula. We should make a formula. Make a make a macro anyway. So that's some of the terminology and definitions that will be useful for you in the rest of the the episode. Cool. That's good. Sort of paints a picture of the things around the topic here, should we jump straight on to our research? Round up? Then I'm quite excited about it. Quite, quite excited. Okay, so I thought that, because mentoring fits so well with this,

I thought it would be fun to start by doing a little game that I've dreamed up called match for mentee.

So you've actually not seen anybody on here, but what I did, just to reflect a little bit on the world of mentoring, was I went out and I tried to find a list of famous people and whether they had mentors and who their mentors were, and I'm just going to chuck out some people who are mentees,

one by one, and read out a list of a list of mentors and see if you can identify a mentor for each mentee. I wish we had a little bit of fame music for I can't believe how excited I am about a ridiculous conversation. I'm kind of nervous, right? It's kind of exciting, you know this for me, because, yeah, I know I'm nervous for you. You know the answers? Yeah, I know the answers. Okay.

So, just so you know, the mentees are in alphabetical order, as are the mentors. When we start the game, we've got to get rules very clear. What I will do is I will read out the name of one mentee, and then I'll read out a list of mentors from within which you need to identify the correct mentor for our mentee. James, you are so appealing to my sports officiating background right now, I feel like you would have made a great official. I probably would have been a good rep of some kind. All right, so mentee number one, the all famous Barack Obama, yay. Okay, so the list of potential mentors you can choose from are Charles J Ogletree, James Tobin, Jane Fonda, Katherine, Hepburn, or Steve Jobs. Is it tough that you write? Oh, my life.

So I'm trying to work. So if I'm honest, right now, I'm trying to think, did Barack go Obama go to Harvard Law? And I wish, I wish I read his biography, but I haven't. So let's think about this. Let's think about this. I think I am going to go with James Tobin.

Unfortunately, James Tobin is still out there as a mentor for another one of our mentees. The correct answer is, Barack Obama had multiple mentors, actually, but from our list, it's Charles J Ogletree, who

are so close. Oh, I'm so frustrated. Yeah, well, you've got, you've got time to put it back, see where this game is going already, and it's going to be, it's going to be low scoring game. Okay, all right. So, so Barak maps up with Charles

but you know, Barack Obama has a range of mentors. And reading through the list of people that are described as mentors, there's some really interesting ones and some really nice ones, like local community organizers from when he was working in Chicago and things like that. So, so, you know, mentors across a whole range of life, from living, academics to community, and we're going to pitch up on that later. People tend to think of mentoring as a very singular one on one, one to one relationship. And actually, the all the evidence suggests that building a huge group of people, you go for different things, is really much more effective. So it's great to sit up now in action. Yeah, he got, he got the top job, right? So he did something, right? Okay, so, so next up, mentee number two. Behind door number two, we have Jane Fonda. Now we're going to go through our list of mentors. We are now leaving out Charles because we've already had an answer for him as Barack Obama's mentor. So Jane Fonda, was she mentored by James Tobin herself? Jane Fonda, she's on both sides of this equation, Katherine Hepburn or Steve Jobs. So I've got to be honest. Firstly, I secretly want her to have been mentored by herself, because I've got a real thing for Jane Fonda. I think she's bloomin brilliant. I've seen her interviewed. If you follow her on social media, she is amazing. Okay, she's just amazing. She does things like she posts,

she posted a picture of her the next morning after a big award dinner, and she'd looked fabulous, right? Yeah. And then she posts a picture of her the next day, and because her dress was so tight and had so many fasting, she hadn't managed to get out of it, and she was like, I'm stuck in my dress. And I just thought, I love this. There's a real honesty.

So I Katherine Hepburn is really interesting one, because Katherine Hepburn is a really serious

was incredible, huge thinker. She really, really was, was far more than what perhaps she'd been written about. I

but I just don't know if it would have been Catherine Hepburn and Jane Fonda. It's an old mix. Okay, I'm going to Catherine, yeah. Okay, you got it, right. So number two, Jane Fonda didn't, in fact, mentor herself. As amusing as that would have been fun. I'm sure there's someone in Hollywood that were closed, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure. So that's good. So, so again, like you said, you know, these people have had multiple, multiple mentors, but apparently Katherine Hepburn was, like you said, I mean, she's a complex.

So she is. Katherine Hepburn is, if anyone's ever interested in reading about women who in a time in America where they were really struggling to not prescribe, to subscribe to a certain type of womanliness, femininity. Katherine Hepburn was blowing the doors off. Yeah,

yeah. So there we go. So Jane Fonda was mentored by Katherine Hepburn. Man, I pay good money to be in that chat would be interesting. Those booze, I have to say, they do like a drink. Those two, as far as I can work out from the history I'm getting stuck in your dress. Maybe that's got something to do with it. Well, Katherine famously never wore dresses. Okay, she wore

trousers, which is just bizarre now, but yeah, right. So up next, we've got Janet Yellen, who was obviously head of a fed. In the US, amongst other things, up until relatively recently, yeah,

so Janet Yellen, was she mentored by James Tobin? Jane Fonda or Steve Jobs? I'm gonna go with James Tobin. Yeah, I think it has to be. It has to be, yeah, it does. I mean, it's, I mean, it doesn't have to be, but it has to be, oh, that list, it's pretty clear. So that's right. So, so, so again, obviously, you know, economics clustering together, but a great, a great example of, you know, career based mentoring.

And quite interesting. Okay, so next up, we're getting down to the business end here. The scores are two points to you out of a possible three. So you're doing pretty well. Next up, we've got a young Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, who people might have heard of, and the options for his mentor are, we're down to two, Jane Fonda or Steve Jobs. So can I just say I want it to be different than what I think it probably is. I really, really want it to be Jane Fonda, but unfortunately, I think it's probably more likely to be Steve Jobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, unsurprising. But again, you know somebody from similar type of industry with a similar entrepreneurial background, so apparently, you know really useful, useful reputation. Sorry, relationship for for Mark, when Facebook was query, yeah, absolutely. Well, it's being anointed, right? Depending on what, what stage of Steve Jobs life he was at, yeah, and depending on whether he was in or out or back in, in terms of a hero of the tech industry, you know, towards sort of sponsorship, doesn't it? I mean, you know that that role is, it mentoring? It's coaching. Maybe there's some sponsorship in there as well. Yeah, well, maybe, you know, and it's interesting. That's why, once you start delving into this stuff, you start questioning, what sort of mentor, what was the role? And I think that's really matters, what are they doing for you? Because for all we know, it might be nothing like that, and it might have been. I phone you up when I'm struggling with my board, because I don't know what to do with them. Absolutely, of all the people who would know every trick in the book given his experience, two things would be that, well, I got it wrong twice, so let me tell you, yeah. So, yeah, so that's a good one, and

we've only got one possible pairing left now that we've been through, which makes me deeply happy. Actually, do you want to? Do you want to talk us through? So I've got the list in front of me, of the mentees, so I'm and the last one is Michelle Obama, who is, again, I slightly picked some of my favorite, some, not some of my favorite people.

And so the one left is Jane Fonda, which just, I think now if I could pay good money to be in a room that's the room, because I feel there would be Michelle Obama is, is massive, massive massive pin up for me, anyway, in terms of the way that she talks about her life and the way that she articulates, and I don't know, you probably won't know this, but she does lots of work. When she comes over here with a school in North London. She has a relationship, carried it on afterwards. And I just, she's just brilliant. So, and Jane Fonda is awesome. Yeah, as I've already said, Yeah, a little bit. And so Jane Fonda is on both sides, right? So she's, she was obviously, you know, a mentor to Michelle Obama and a mentee of Katherine Hepburn. So it's just, it's kind of cool to see people on both sides of that equation, yeah. And I think, I mean, it might be different. Maybe it's not different at all, actually, but at the time, I think, particularly when Jane Fonda was coming onto the scene, women had a complex role in how in Hollywood, it was really difficult. And so her understanding that value would make total sense, because she would watch the exposure of Michelle Obama through, you know, really not through her choice, yeah. And how can she use that? And I think Jane Fonda has been very effective at using her position, using her position to bring, bring a light onto certain issues. And I think that's really cool, good. So that was Matt for mentee. We might come up that game competition

scoreboard. Most importantly, I think he won. I think you did yourself proud. You had four out of five. You got a bit stumped by an early, early, difficult one there, but 80% overall, there's a pass in anyone's book. I believe, yeah, I think so, although I do feel like I should have defined what success was at the beginning. Well, I think you probably should have done thanks, James, but we can talk more about talk about defining success,

right? Goal setting and targets and all that stuff. Okay, so that was Matt fermented, and I just thought it was a bit fun but but important to to

reflect on the fact that everyone benefits from having mentors. You know, it doesn't matter where you are in your career or what your career is. It's always useful to have somebody to speak to who can provide you some advice and guidance and help

across the whole range of skills and challenges you face and requirements you have as an individual, by the way. So next up, as part of our research round up, is diversity networks, right? So this seems maybe slightly tangential to building a network and growing sort of development networks, but I think.

Yeah, I think it's really important. And a lot of the organizations that I've been part of and seen have introduced diversity networks, and I think it's just worth touching on them because,

because they provide great opportunities for individuals to broaden their own network and follow some of that, you know, professional instrumental networking that you're talking about by finding people with the skills to help them. With the skills to help them admittedly aligned to a specific subset of diversity, and I'll touch on that in a minute. And for organizations, they provide a really great way to introduce and structure networking opportunities for people in their organizations as well. Well, yeah, and I think, I think the two bits that I would talk about is, one is having a network around

where you can connect with people who are in the same circumstances as you is quite a unique scenario. So

I was at an event yesterday, and we were talking about LGBTI plus networks in the media. And the idea that, you know, when you work, go into a very rural newsroom with three people in it, yeah, being able to talk to someone who has been through the process of coming out, for example, in that environment, and can give you some advice, practical advice on how it's comfortable. Really, really good. And I think the other thing is, from organizations point of view that I think is really relevant for this is about how they can Canvas the views, but quite easily, making check, making sure that their policy is actually not accidentally going to, you know, for example, if everyone's going to give them Saturday afternoons off from a shift pattern. And it turns out that there's a faith group that really doesn't work, yeah, because they do it anyway. Yeah. So, so, yeah. So, a little bit more about, I guess, probably should have started with a little bit more about exactly what diversity networks are. And again, I think we'll do

a whole episode on something like this at some point. But when I talk about diversity networks, what I'm talking about is creating a network and a community of people predominantly, or at least initially, from a specific strand of diversity. So the examples of ones that I've been involved in are ethnicity related ones. So here in the UK, we talk about BAME ba me, Black, Asian and minority ethnic. So we're sort of

ethnicity based collective. We have gender based networks disability, which we, in my work, have included within that, mental health, age related networks, and then sexuality. So your LGBT Q type thing that you've that you alluded to. So, so when we've created these networks, we we bring together people from these diversity strands who associate with them, so that they can work with and get to know people other people from those strands, some more senior, some more junior, with whom they can build relationships. So your thing about your rural newsroom, you know, that's a great example. If there's a network, you can meet people who've approached things that or been through things that you were approaching with a similar sort of perspective, instead of challenges or things to do that you have. One thing I'd say is that actually,

while when we've done this, the networks have been about one of these specific diversity strands. In no instance, have they ever been exclusively for people from these strands. So we'll have say, an ethnicity network.

But of course, you've got people from all the ethnicities there, and anyone else who believes that they have something to add. They can be a mentor. They can be. We talk about supporters. We talk about advocates and trying to broaden out so your population, we talk about allies. Allies. Yeah, so for us, we've had within the LGBT work, LGBTQ work that we've done, we've had allies there, but then we've had advocates and supporters networks. So that's kind of what the diversity networks are in terms of the way that they often work in the organizations. What, what I've I've often seen is they tend to hold events, be they calls or actual physical events, where they bring people together, focusing on specific topics or specific challenges, to to communicate, to share knowledge, to get views, and to some extent, to sort of build that network, as well as to sort of promote and communicate some of the challenges that are out there. Some other things I've been more involved with are maybe in the mental health space, where a lot of work is around trying to de stigmatize what's, you know, the way the world sees mental health, so part of that is a communications exercise in itself,

and in terms of some of you know, specific relevance for this conversation. Actually, these diversity networks are great places for anyone to find a mentor or to find a developmental interlocutor. I.

To to really engage in a conversation with that will help them, I guess a developer in your language, yeah,

I think the great thing about using networks like this is those the people in that room already see the value of bringing people together so that you've got you're you're plowing a really rich, fertile field. You're looking at people who already understand the importance of developmental relations. Of developmental relationships. Yeah. So as an individual, I'd recommend anyone, whether they're associated with any of those diversity strands or not, to be involved. You can be involved as an ally, or you can be involved if there's a strand that you associate with, and it's a great way to find something. But again, if you're an organization, it's a great thing for you to try and implement to help foster a culture of networking and development in your organization. And some of them, some organizations are large enough to have networks internally around some have industry related networks and broader networks. So it's worth exploring how you as an organization can bring some of this into early work. Yeah, just on a side they they trigger great conversations. So Rangers, okay, formally adopted an LGBTQI group yesterday. Yeah, do you want to say Rangers? Sorry, I should so Rangers are a Glasgow Rangers. They are a football team in this in the fair city of Glasgow. They're incredibly passionate support group. And

they it's, it's a big deal up here, and it's really interesting looking at the Twitter response, and there's a real split. That's, you know, why do you need your own space? What's that all about? And fortunately, there is also a huge number of people going, I'm ashamed to be a Rangers fan that you've asked, yeah, yeah, if they, if they're a fan group, if they want to get together and do it in their way, great. And I don't belong to your your group, can I still come and, you know, hang out with you? Yeah? And they're like, Yeah, we'd love that. And I think, I just think even in sport now, they're understanding that there is an opportunity to have people that they can relate to and learn from a shared experience. Yeah, all right, so that was a little touch point on diversity networks. Next step? Well, one other thing I want, or I've got two other bits I want to touch on, the next thing I want to touch on, in terms of research round up is reverse mentoring. Have you ever

come across reverse mentoring? So interesting? Yes, because I used to work on a youth charity, and one of the things that was really important we felt, was that the people working in it understood what was going on for the people that we worked with. So we didn't call it reverse mentoring. It was like a buddy system, but effectively it was using some of our young volunteers and leaders to help inform, shape, advise and support some of our staff who may be like me, were no longer seen as youth focused. Yeah, yeah. So, so that's kind of exactly what reverse mentoring is. When we talked about the definition of mentoring. We you're when we described it, we talked a little bit about a mentor being somebody that you can learn from, who's maybe got more experience in a specific area than you. And traditionally, when people think about that, it tends to be somebody who's hierarchically more senior. That's just the nature of it. You know, somebody who's had your job, and it's maybe one or two steps above you in a career ladder now so that you can learn, or more expert, I think, or more expert,

yeah, and so that's the way we traditionally think about it. But increasingly, there are lots of areas where senior people aren't the experts, or aren't specialists in their area, so they can really benefit from learning from other people. So this is the idea of reverse mentoring. So you'll get somebody who is hierarchically less senior, but, you know, typically more knowledgeable or expert in something, and they'll spend time mentoring a senior person. And where I've seen that work is in two different areas, I guess. The first is technology. So there's a whole piece around technology. That's actually three areas I've seen it work so technology, another one that's important is around in the industries I've been in, it's around customers. So you can kind of get youth

reverse mentoring to talk about what it's like to be a young person and to gain that experience that helps people in shaping products and offerings for customers. And then the third one is sort of more in the cultural space, and I've seen it reverse mentoring work pretty well with the diversity networks as well. So you know, a young person from one of the networks spending time mentoring a senior person who's not of that network to explain, you know, what's it really like being me in this organization? Whatever that happens to be, I like that a lot. Yes, it's a useful thing. And again, we might touch more on that. So that's reverse mentoring. So we've done Matt menti, we've talked about diversity networks, we've talked about reverse mentoring. And the last thing I want to talk about, which, again, like many things we talk about, I think might deserve an episode of its own at some point, is some point, is communities of interest. So when we when we talk about the diversity network, what we're talking about is bringing people together for a purpose. And when you talk about things like that, quite often you think about communities of interest, right? A community of interest is a phrase that people use. Sometimes people also use.

Communities of practice, which is kind of similar. And when we talk about this, really, what we're talking about is a group of people with a similar interest, maybe some similar objectives, coming together to to work towards sort of achieving that goal, or maybe more importantly, to share knowledge and ideas and experience in relation to that area. So they could all be a little bit better. So ideally, diversity networks are kind of communities of interest, but also from an organizational perspective, if you're thinking about introducing mentoring as something you want to roll out within your organization, you might want to create a community of interest of mentors. And all your mentors could get together and they share knowledge, and they learn from each other, and they share stories, and they reaffirm positive behaviors, they admit to mistakes, all those things that make it

easier to become proficient at what you're trying to do. Similarly, you could do it with a group of mentees. So if people are or, you know, new to being mentored and their mentees themselves, they could get together and share their their experiences and challenges and what they've learned, and raise ideas that they think might make things better.

So in terms of what you need to do to be successful, when trying to create a community of interest, there are some things that are useful. So having clarity of purpose or interest is important trying to get that sense of shared identity. So if you think about a lot of diversity networks that I've

sort of been part of and helped set up and stuff, they tend to get a name, identity, a logo, all those things that help create that shared identity.

They need to be well led and steered. They need senior sponsorship. Unfortunately, they take work. So they need some coordination and admin. They need effective communications internally and outwards. Your members need to be interested. They you know, the membership needs to feel it can really make a difference. You need to not just feel you can make a difference, but you need to do it. There needs to be some delivery, some momentum, some stories to tell. You need to listen to the members and get their ideas. Increasingly, you need collaboration tools to do this effectively, because you're bringing a group of people together, predominately remotely. For them to be effective, they also need to be unique. So you know, they shouldn't overlap with any other communities that you've got, if you've got sort of conflicting competition and you dissipate the effectiveness of that community, they tend to bring in guest speakers and things like that to drive momentum and to stay engaging. They need to recognize success,

and they also need to have a reasonable expectation of their members. So, you know, communities of interest are predominantly voluntary. I'd say they're pretty much all voluntary, sort of side of your desk, things in my language. So, you know, you just need to bear in mind that this isn't somebody's full time job, so anything you get from them is good. Have you got thoughts on communities of interest? Have you seen I guess so we because my experiences in the sport and the charity sector mean that generally, I've worked with much smaller organizations. So a big organization, in my terms, is 1000 people and much more likely to be much, much smaller. So actually, where I've seen communities of interest really work well is, and there's a there's a fabulous one, there's a group on Facebook, and I won't say its name, because I've spoken to them about it, but basically it is a group of people who work in income generation and charities and fundraising, and they have of their own back created a Facebook group. It's got about 4000 people, and it is the most extraordinary place to be. These people are so free with their skills and their time to each other. It's a beautiful you know, people post, they're like, Oh, my life. I've just had a message. Apparently, our policy has changed. I've got to write new one. Has anyone got one that I can use as a template? And literally, within about three minutes, five people have gone, yeah, have mine. Have mine because they're, they're all up against a similar community. And it's, it's a really lovely thing to see. And so for our industry, it tends to, they tend to be industry or sector wide, and they might be sub sector wide. So for example, we have a great heritage volunteering group. So that's heritage charities who and the volunteer managers within them. I know there's one that's really, really strong, and they're kind of a halfway house between

industry learning and general industry networking. And so they understand the challenges they face, and they talk and they do all of those things, all of the things that the good ones that I've seen have, all of the things. They're using virtual collaboration tools. They nominate someone, they're voluntary. They've been nominate someone each year to do the pulling together and come up with ideas. They've created that shared identity. And there is and the momentum bit, I cannot state enough how important there needs to be a group of people who want to move this forward. Yeah, so yeah, I would wholeheartedly encourage organizations and people and sectors to think about how they can use them. Yeah, great, great ways to do that, just in terms of scale. The.

The networks, the diversity networks, in the organization I last worked at, I think all of them had more than 1000 members, yeah, you know. And some of them are pushing 10,000 members, and, you know, from within one organization. So I guess the lesson that people listening can take is it doesn't matter whether you are in a massive corporate organization with offices all over the world and 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of staff. Or whether you were in an organization with five people like I was, people can still tap into these networks and these communities of interest and find ways for them to work for them. And I think that's really important help you together. All right, just just wrapping up the research, round up a couple of teeny specific hints if you're looking at setting up one of these community of interest type networks. So a few quick points for you. So one, if you're going to set them up, remember it's voluntary, and

implement co leadership. So don't make one person responsible for setting up your networks, because it's a side of your desk thing, and there are going to be times where they can't do it. So by dividing the responsibility, you divide the workload, and you double the communication. So that's a great way to do it. I'd say more than two is is too difficult, but if you can divide it between two federal I'd say at least double your chance of making it really good. You've got to use technology. You know, increasingly people are remote. You've said in small organizations, you need to think externally well. You need to be digital and about collaboration. In large organizations, you'll be multi site, so you need to use technology there do the basics well. So you've got to remember to send invites. You've got to treat it professionally. You've got to remind speakers that they're set to come, you know, all that kind of stuff, right? You've got it. You've got to just do the admin bit, because it won't take care of itself.

You also, we talked earlier about it. You've got to set specific, measurable, ambitious, but achievable targets. You know, people are here because they want to do something. So help figure out what that is and and work towards it and celebrate your progress towards it, and that'll help achieve the goals that you're aiming at.

Listening to the members is really important. You've got to actually see what people are looking to do

and value their contributions. And then the last point is just be prepared for stuff to go wrong, right? I mean, you can only prepare for so much, but somebody won't turn up, or something won't happen. Or, you know, there's always a bit of a mess out with a lot of these things. So just be, be ready for that. And yeah, I would, I think that's really important. I don't, you know, I have, I've been involved in setting some of these up in various ways. And I go into all of them assuming they're going to fail, but delighted when they succeed, yeah, because they won't, you won't make this happen. You will put the framework in place. Potentially, the people who you are trying to help will make it happen. The people who want to drive it, and if they don't want to drive it, there's no point happening. Yeah, exactly. So

I just tend to assume it's not going to work. Get this lovely, pleasant stuff, and goes, oh my god, can you come and speak there? And you're like, really, what the thing I set up really still happening, yeah, so I like that. Okay, so that's research Roundup. So Right? Max to menti diversity networks, reverse mentoring and communities of interest. So hopefully that gives people a bit of a flavor of some of the things you know around development networks, how you can create them, sort of concepts within them, and a little bit about mentoring itself. Okay, all right, so that's research Roundup. Do we want to jump on to list of a week? Yeah, absolutely. So we thought the most practical thing we could do with list the week is we're actually going to two brief lists, and we're going to do

effectively how to build mentoring, development relationships, Development Network for yourself, and we're going to do it from the perspective of for the person, and we're going to do how an organization might do it. But do you think that's the most waste useful way to

wow, divide the work? So I think maybe the best thing for me to do. Shall I crack on with the for yourself? Yeah, and then you can take on the organization, given your wonderful corporate experience. Oh, yeah. So our list of the five,

top five things you need to do to build developmental relationships in the developmental network. Number one, know what you're doing. It. James alluded to it earlier, be really clear and honest with yourself about what your goals are. Can you explain them? Because you're going to have to to the person that you're you're doing it with, and do you want to grow and develop and be honest about that. When we were chatting a little bit earlier and speaking about the mentors here, we said that, you know, people have multiple mentors. So I think that's okay. So certainly, we were talking, I was talking about a tool that's online, that's free, called my personal boardroom.

You google it, you'll find it or use any other search engine, and effectively, what it does is it identifies that there are kind of 12 in their language, different roles.

For people, and you want to try and fill that boardroom. And the idea is you might have some people who are unlockers of resources. You might have some people who are your I really like some of their terminology. So they have things like anchor, yeah, which I really, really like. And then they also have nerve giver, nerve I know. And I think the idea is, who do you phone when you need someone to go? Just go for it, yeah, yeah. And just hold your nerve. You're gonna be fine. I have, I have a guy that I worked with years ago. I don't, I'm not touch with him anymore, but he used to say to me when I was building up stuff, keep your powder dry, yeah, keep your powder dry, and hold your nerve. Hold your line. You'll get what you want. And I loved him for that. So I really like that idea that understand that one person can't be everything, particularly in this world where everyone's really busy. But instead, if you've got this sort of group of people, it might be five or six. It might be, in my case, it's 15 or 16. Some of those people I speak to, maybe like once every couple of years, but I tap them up for very specific advice, or because I want to run something through with them, or because I'm in their field and looking for some help. So be really clear why you're doing it and what you're looking for. Number

two, choose a mentor from your network. So stone, don't start complicated. Start really easy. Look who is already in your network. Look who is already in your sphere. Who do you have contact with, and think about why they might want to network with. Might want to develop you. Yeah, think about, would they? Why would they want to champion you? Usually,

quite often, if you, certainly if you have quite a lot of relationships, I have found that I've looked around I thought, oh, I want that person. I'd really like to spend more time. It's not even I know why, yeah, but first point is, I really want to spend more time with that person. And then I work out quite often, they've been mentoring me and I didn't know, yeah, they've been, like, cultivating this little friendship, yeah? And they're like, No, I thought I really was right. Okay, so choose someone from me that way. This is the easiest place to start, and actually it's a really straightforward process, if they're already in your network. Step three, engage with that person. And

you know the phrase we use to engage your mentor, but I want to be really clear about this, most mentoring relationships don't have the word mentor in them. I have sounding boards, yeah? I have people I grab a cup of coffee and bounce ideas off. Yeah? I have people I come to when I'm having a bit of a stress, yeah. And so quite often, when I reach out initially, I do not say I'd like to be your mentor, because actually, they don't know me that well, yeah. What I say is, Can I buy you a coffee, cup of coffee and pick your brain? Yeah? Or I'm really interested in the project that you did a while back in your career. I'd be really great to, yeah,

buy your coffee or have a drink. You know, really informal, because apartment thing else, you don't commit to it until you've started to understand, do you gel? Is there? Is there a communication route there? So for me, that's really important, and therefore the next one is a follow on for that, which is test the waters. Have that coffee, have that drink. We've called it a chemistry meeting, which is quite formal.

It's a phrase. It is. It is a phrase, yeah? And as you'll see, James is corporate background. He knows all the lingo that I don't, and I'm sure you guys probably know that. But have that moment where you sit in a room with them or in a place and have a chat and see how it feels, and see if you feel like there's room for you. Don't expect to be best mate straight away, and don't rush it, but if you feel like there's potential for that relationship, go for it. And I'd say, like, for me, a first meeting shouldn't really be about for subject. It should just be about a person. Yeah, and I think that's really important for I'm going to come on to that top tip. Because I think, as a mentor, sometimes you go into that meeting and you're like, Okay, right? I'm ready to change this. I'm going to really not going to solve this person, this person has been trying to solve their life and crap on, and they're doing a very good job. So, but definitely don't commit to anything until you've had that conversation. It's really important, because it's got to be worth you know, if you're going to take time both of you, then it's really important that's going to be worth it, and a chemistry meeting, as you refer to them, are really important. And then the fifth step is be, be a good mentee. You know, if someone's taken their time to invest in you and understand where you're at and to champion you, be prepared. Be clear on why you're wanting to talk to them. Pay attention. Listen to the advice. You don't have to accept it. Absolutely. Most of I've got one specific mentor. I nearly always don't accept their advice, but it's really helpful to hear his view.

Yeah, absolutely, but, but do listen, don't. And really real. You know, you mentioned the basics earlier, right? Be on time, yeah. Turn out, when you said you were going to and be honest about, is it helping you? And if it's not, you know, say, so, yeah.

So, yeah, that's the list for how to develop your mentor network. And I would add a Secret Six, which would be, keep your eyes open so every place you are and you think, I like that person, they're cool. I like the way they.

Do things, write it down, and then if you ever come across them, in another scenario, see if you can convince them to, you know, come have a coffee with yeah, that's all it is. Have a coffee. Have a coffee so it goes, just don't drink too much. A bit bit too much caffeine. Can be bad for your mental health. Little health warning, well, and you know, you don't want to motor mouth it. But anyway,

six shots later, and yeah, I've done that. They don't have any space. So our second list of the week, yeah, list of week number two content is about, you know how you can build a mentoring Development Network as an organization, so maybe as an organization, you want to bring in a culture of mentoring and all that kind of stuff. So this is, again, five points that would help you think about how you go about doing that, and it's kind of similar to the others, but there's a bit of difference. So again, the first thing is, why are you doing it right as an organization? Pretty much every time you do something, you want to be clear about what your objectives are, you know. So when you're looking at bringing in something like a mentoring network in your organization, there are different reasons for doing it. Are you doing it because you want to demonstrably invest in your employees? Is it because you want to create a better employee experience so you know, a better sort of feel it at work? Are there specific skills that you think that you need to maybe develop for the future, but you need people to learn? Do you think mentoring would help you with that if you're looking to maybe broaden your engagement externally. Do you want to? Do you want to try and bring in some sort of approach to external networking so that your people meet more people externally? Do you need to improve your internal network so that you have maybe cross functional engagement, things like that? Do you do have risks that you need to mitigate, that you think networking might help with. So there are a whole lot of reasons why having a regular, sort of well adopted approach to networking can be helpful. And you just need to be clear on on why you're doing it, and think about it right as ever. Don't do stuff just because somebody mentioned the word networking or mentoring, and you're like, well, we should do more of that. Just be clear on your purpose for so step one, know what you're doing. Step two, I think, is really important, and this is, understand your people. So if you're going to try and roll out mentoring, you need to understand what's your starting point, and your starting point is, inevitably, your people, when you're talking about a people related thing like this. So you need to know, do your people know what mentoring is?

Do you have any visibility on who potential mentors are within your organization, or what about potential mentees? Do you have any sense of what your mentors or mentees motivations might be?

Do you get a sense whether or not mentoring is something that your people would actually like if you if you brought in the idea of mentoring, would people say, Oh wow, that would be really good. It would say, Oh no, here's something else I have to do. So, you know, really understanding your people is the second point in thinking about rolling out a mentoring network in your organization. And then if you go through those stages and you know why you're doing it, step one, and if you understand your people and feel that it's the right thing for them. Step two, then you can start to actually progress. And the next stage here is bringing your people together. So you need to be clear on how you'll bring your people together. Will you know, is there some of it you kind of want to make mandatory? Do you want to maybe get one of your leadership cohorts and say everyone on a leadership development program. Should have a mentor. Do you just want to let anyone choose? You know, what's your approach to doing this? And how will people find each other? Particularly if you're a large organization, this can be difficult. So you know, you might want to create a

you might want to do something like maybe a speed dating event, so people can get together and say a little bit about each other and see if something works there. You might want to do something like a digital solution where mentors write down a bit about themselves and mentees write a bit about themselves. You might want to have a central group of people who try and identify based on what they know about people suitable relationships. But whatever you do, you need to try and find a good way to to bring people together, and

you should include all levels of hierarchy within your organization. If you're going to do it, you know, like, like, all this stuff, if you're going to to really make a difference, you need to include the top as well as the middle and the bottom. So if you do that, and you get people together, and they're they're mentoring and mentoring away, and it's all good. Then you move on to step four, which is really about supporting and celebrating what you're doing. So you know, how are you going to

help this? You know, early culture of mentoring really germinate into something that's sustainable and supportive and beneficial to you in the long run. And there are several things that you can do. You need to think about how you'll demonstrate leadership engagement with this. You need to think about how you'll communicate so you know, what stories will you tell in relation to mentoring? Will you celebrate great mentors? Will you celebrate great mentees? How are your leaders going to talk about it to make sure that it's.

Out there. What do you do if things don't work? Is there extra support you need to provide for people? So really, this is about making sure that you support, you celebrate, and you make your culture of mentoring sustainable.

And with that, there's just a piece around managing expectations as well. You don't want people to go in thinking that, no, I've got a mentor. I'll be promoted and leading the company soon, or whatever, right? You know, some people think in that way. So there's just a piece about setting expectations, and I think that's an important piece around your support piece. And then point five is about reviewing your progress. So if you've set up a mentoring network, you really want to review it, right? I mean, you talked to or we talked to or we talked a little bit at the beginning about knowing why you're doing it and your objectives. So you need to review it and say, Is it helping you? Mentoring networks are great, but they do. You know, if it takes place in work time you're you can use up a lot of time with it, and if it's just people not getting any return on investment, then then you might want to think about reassessing it and stopping it. For all of you don't have can't see what we're doing, which is all of you James got a little wry smile on his face because his background is an account return on investment pops up. So much so, yeah.

So you just need to be clear on understanding how you'll know if your your network is successful, what your review process is how you'll decide if it to carry on, how you'll know if it's time to stop. So for me, those are the five steps for setting up a networking, mentoring, sorry, a mentoring network in your organization. So replaying them. Know why you're doing it. Understand your people, bring your people together, support them and celebrate any success, and then review your progress and decide if you want to carry on or if you don't. So that's our lists for the week, indeed. So get mentoring, yeah? Get mentor. So moving on, we were going to talk about stories from the keyboard, yeah? And I think, I think today we were going to maybe share our own experiences mentoring might be the most helpful thing, yeah, and I guess, I guess my reflection on this is that

I've never really felt that I've had a great mentoring relationship. I've had people who fill certain roles,

but certainly going through large organizations, I've, you know, you get paired up with people, you know, you go on whatever program or something or other, and people decide that you should have mentors, and you get paired up, and you find them, and you speak to them, and and it's never really worked for me, if I'm totally honest.

And I think part of it is because, in in that approach to mentoring, I've never, I think, been really clear on why I have that relationship. So where I've seen mentoring work with people in my team who we've got mentors for. They've had specific things to work on

over the course of 18 months or two years, but I've never really had that for myself. So I've got people that I speak to. I've got a lot of people that I like having coffee with. They're people who I like to go to for inspiration or encouragement or enthusiasm or to pull me back to Earth. But I've never had a mentor in the corporate sense that really worked for me, so that's kind of my reflection on it.

So as always, when we do the podcast, I am the complete opposite. James, yeah, I don't know if that's an industry thing. So mentoring is quite important to the nonprofit and the sports sector, primarily because we have no money. So personal development quite often has to be found internally.

But actually, all of my best mentoring experiences, and it's funny, isn't it? Because you describe, what you describe is what my experience is. And I would label that mentoring, yeah, but I guess that's because it's been,

it's fit that more traditional description. So they tend to be people who've more experience with me. Three of my strongest mentors are ex bosses, yeah? And I, you know, that's not a surprise to me, because I've always picked bosses. I've always picked bosses and jobs, but I would guess that probably the most important experience for me as a mentee was

doing this current MSC. So I said my intention to study, to go back to uni, out loud, maybe four times, to four different mentors, because I wanted to see if they laughed me out the room or looked horrified. Because I know the look of horror, because I remember speaking to two of them about going to remote working, and they looked at me at horror, like, why would you do that? That's crazy. And surprise, surprise. They were right. I really struggled with it for a long time, whereas when I said what I wanted to go back and study organizational psychology and why, they all looked at me and actually to the point where one looked smug.

Well, it's funny. You should mention, yeah. And so for me, the most powerful things might and I love the idea of this, you know.

It's when they pull for you. Yeah, right. It's when they write you reference. So two of my mentors wrote me references for my because I wasn't working at a company anymore. They wrote me references for my organizational psychology masters. And I read them and and I, you know, I knew that's what they thought about me, but my word, it's lovely when someone writes down how they feel about you and it will your potential and what they think. So I think for me, at times when I was really struggling with knowing that ability to go back to them, and I've got, I've got one. One in particular is one of my old bosses. And he just occasionally texts me and just sends me the best so they're not mushy. He is not a mushy man, but he just occasionally is like, saw this, thought of you smashing it and stuff like that. Yeah, that's all I needed to hear. And when we, when we, you know, they've it's moved way beyond any kind of formal relationship and very close friendship, but that he's still at its heart. I look to Him, and the relationship is not equal, and that's how I know it's a mentoring relationship. I he talks to me about his life, but it's not the same when I actively seek him out for advice, yeah, and for checking, yeah. So, yeah. So it does work for some people. And I think a lot of it comes back to what you said. Do you know why you're in that relationship? You know, I guess in some ways I'm kind of like, I get through some of my family, a lot of that type of stuff, and so that's where, you know, I get a lot of that. I believe I get a lot of the honesty and the advice and guidance and and that's where I tend to go. So interestingly, you might have noticed during the episode that I've tend to choose with language developer and James talking mental mentor is a very corporate approach to it and exists elsewhere. But some of the research I was reading is wonderful, article, which I need to find to be able to reference it. But they talk about non work mentors, and they they basically say, label all the people of influence who care about your career and would pull for you effectively into work, community, school and family, yeah, and then take the community, school and family, label it non work. And what they argue and their research shows is, and I'm now going to have to find the reference. I can put it on purpose. But what their research shows is that if you're looking to prove your salary, you need a work mentor, yeah, if you are looking to improve your career satisfaction, yeah, both work if you are looking to improve your life satisfaction, yeah, non work mentors will probably be more successful for you. And I think that kind of fits with this. And just as you were chatting, I was thinking a little bit about the last podcast we did around values. And I think part of the reason that I've struggled with some of the mentors in the corporate space is I think there's probably been a bit of a value misalignment, you know, and I think that you just get into it, and I just know that we're just coming at things from different places, and I felt that they maybe haven't understood what my objectives were

in a way that worked for me. So yeah. So yeah, the paper for anyone interested is Wendy and crams paper on the role of non work relationships, developmental relationships, and James, the one thing I would say to you is

I didn't say it out loud, but I would absolutely, wholeheartedly agree with that. If you, the listener, can't find a mentor in your organization that gels with you, I would strongly suggest you at least have a little consideration about why is that? Yeah, recruitment,

that's a whole other podcast, but certainly you may want to reflect on the organization that you're working with, and why is that? Yeah, yeah. Cool. All right, so on our way towards the end of this, any final thoughts from you?

No, yeah, maybe one, which is, when I was an early career starter, I thought mentoring was a bit and mentoring was a bit and mentoring and developmental relationships was a bit like corporate and I thought it was a bit like, Oh, you're climbing the greasy pole by and I thought networking was generally gross. And now looking at the people in my life who have influenced my career and helped me and championed me and backed me and given me advice and actually given me bad news when I need to not getting it right.

I can't tell you how much a better person I am at my role and my work because of those people. Yeah, so great. So do it? Do it? Yeah, I guess my my final thought on this is, I guess, a little bit from experience, and it's,

it's if you, if you want to mentor yourself, and you want to have a good mentor mentor relationship, one of the things I'd really recommend doing is to be a mentor yourself. I think unless you've been in the shoes of a mentor, it's really hard to be as great of a mentee as you can be. So I think being on both sides of that equation is a really useful thing to do. I think the reverse of that is also true. Yeah. I think the reverse, yeah, if you're a mentor, it's very easy to think hierarchically downwards. Absolutely don't. And I would also mention the power done. And actually that helps deal with the pan dynamic that we were talking about earlier, just before we started, we were talking about mentors and how it's really easy.

To forget you are quite often in a very much more senior position, the person you're with, and that they will probably not be natural to start with, and you need to be careful about that. So giving them a whole load of advice to be really rebellious or assertive, for example, in their position authority, they may well take your direction as an instruction. Yeah, yeah.

Careful about that, and especially if you're a boss anyway, it's really easy to shed that light to just be careful. Yeah,

cool. And that's final thoughts. So I think that's us getting to the end of our chat on mentoring, development networks, relationships. Development a monster. It's been a bit of a beast. It has, but I think that's probably because there's a lot of things in there. We could break up as well, yeah, and we might split them into different episodes at a later date when we've got gray hair and have done our other 400 episodes that we're thinking about. But every time we have a chat, we're like, oh, let's do one. Never fear, listeners, we'll be back a lot more if we're to get to our list.

All right, so that's it from us, and until next time, that's it from me. I'm checking out and that's it from me. So see you soon. Hi.