Mentoring, role models and networking
Women need to be encouraged … to move on and up. (Bella)
Success for me … it’s more about how people relate to me and trust me and feel that I’m a good mentor. (Carrie)
Over the course of my career … networking has been quite important; being able to make use of people on the way up. (Gill)
Introduction
An important part of professional development and career progression for the women involved in this study relates to mentoring and role models (see, for example, Monserrat et al., 2009), though it is not without its difficulties (Morgan and Davidson, 2008). This chapter looks at the ways in which the women have been mentored and supported in their work and the kinds of people that have provided them with role models, especially for their current jobs. It discusses the key characteristics and approaches of the people who have acted as mentors and role models. It looks at men as mentors and role models for women, and considers the role of family members in providing support. It then looks at the women’s own approach to being mentors and role models and concludes with an analysis of the women’s experience of different types of network -including women-only groupings -their use and value.
The importance of good mentoring and role models
Kate was one of many who said how important it was to have a good mentor:
I think that you benefit from having a good mentor or a good coach. You might not need that person all the time, but just every so often you need someone that you can actually unpack it all with and they say ‘think of it like this’ or ‘think of it differently’.
Bella contextualised the importance of good mentoring and the availability of female role models in terms of women’s lack of confidence, as noted and discussed elsewhere in this book:
I think there are loads of women who haven’t been encouraged who don’t as a consequence [move on], whereas you see men who just don’t seem to have the same problem. They just apply for promotions and put themselves forward. I don’t quite know why it is because I would’ve thought in this day and age there are enough women in senior positions that we should be capable of knowing we can do these things … But it doesn’t seem to work like that; it’s not how you feel. I don’t know, it’s quite inexplicable to me, I just can see it; I can see it all around me and I can see it in myself … You’re never going to prove a direct cause or connection but I think there is a very, very strong relationship there, simply because I just see it in too many other people … I can’t say why the one follows on from the other except perhaps there may be a matter of role models.
Individuals
All the women interviewed mentioned a number of individuals who had been instrumental in helping them to develop. Ruth described two senior colleagues whose support, sharing of information and ‘willingness to listen’ had been especially valuable to her:
He … was very clear on the importance of professional development in a multi-professional institution. By the end of my time there I felt I could have a debate with him about professional issues about sectoral issues as an equal. We could disagree and it wouldn’t be ‘right your privileges are suspended’ it was just a professional disagreement … I think I first learnt that from [a previous boss]. He’d toss things across the desk and say, ‘have you read this?’ and then he’d ask you what you thought. So there’s something about sharing information, about trying to get people to discuss things.
Olivia listed a similar group of individuals who had been helpful to her in different ways and at different times in both her career and her personal life. This is what she said about one of them:
The first one … is the individual who when I was going through my divorce he then allowed me and supported me to get another job. It was interesting in a sense in that he hadn’t previously wanted me to progress because it made his life harder. That was a key learning point for me in terms of when I’m looking at my team’s development I ask myself am I keeping them here because it makes my life easier or am I stopping them because I don’t think they’ve got the capability to do it?
Maggie referred to a particularly strong female role model and mentor who was clearly a strong and successful leader herself, but also spoke about a very small number of – mainly senior – work colleagues who also provided invaluable help and support:
I would cite [individual] as being influential … [She] took me under her wing and did some mentoring and coaching with me. She was incredibly visible as a leader, not just with me but across the organisation. Incredibly down to earth. She was somebody … whose personality was the driving factor not her rank. She worked with me on an ongoing basis formally and informally to kind of nurture my talents I suppose. She was one of the people who … gave me the courage and the confidence to build on everything I’d already done.
I get my support in the workplace from a very small number of really trusted colleagues … two of them are of higher rank than me. One of those is a woman and one of my closest friends within the organisation is a male [rank] I’ve known for many, many years and who has followed a similar career pathway. We regularly ring each other up, chat … My other closest confidante and friend is a [rank], female, ranked lower than I am, who I mentored first of all … and we developed to become really firm friends … She’s a real rock for me.
Kate summed up a lot of the women’s experiences when she talked about the times when people had been prepared to ‘take a risk’ on her. As noted in the previous chapter, the word ‘luck’ was mentioned:
When I first qualified I went to see this woman who ran this regional centre and said, ‘I’d really like to work here’, and she said, ‘you can do whatever you like’. And that was someone who thought this person is a perfect fit and we need her here … So generally, it’s where someone is prepared to think ‘actually she might be a bit odd and I can’t quite fit her but whatever she does it’s really added value’. That’s where it’s helped me move on … I have to say I have been lucky. I suppose I do engender fairly strong feelings and generally they’re quite positive feelings.
While some of the women had been ‘lucky’ with their mentors and role models, others had not always had such good fortune. Jessica talked about negative as well as positive experiences of senior women as role models:
You were talking about role models, when I resigned from [one job] a number of women came and said, ‘oh we’re losing a role model’. I said, ‘you’ve got two others on the board’. They said, ‘they’re not role models’. I could actually see that. One of them cried all the time: that isn’t what women want to be. Another one used to dress very austerely and tried to be masculine. You want people who are natural women, not pseudo men. Younger women do look for role models … A lot of senior women don’t want to be role models for the younger ones, they don’t help them. There is something else actually. I know somebody who desperately wanted to have babies and couldn’t and was not at all helpful to women who came back from maternity leave or had to go for childcare reasons. It was almost like she was so envious of the women with children.
Men as mentors and role models
Many of the supporters, mentors and, indeed, role models were men, partly because there were so few women at senior positions in the organisations where the participants in our study worked – a phenomenon not confined to the UK (Indvik, 2004). Jessica, for example, could not think of a woman who had helped her in her career development. Note also Gill’s comments:
There was the one very senior woman … apart from that I can’t think of any female role models; several men who at various stages were very, very supportive. Whether you think that had a gender dimension to it I don’t know, history does not relate! … I can remember as a youngster in my twenties going to conferences and being kind of feted, if that’s the right word, by mature senior male professors … there are also ten or a dozen senior academics, and they were all men, who said, ‘I’d like you to come on this editorial board’ or ‘I’d like you to help me with this research project’ or ‘I’d like to work with you on such and such’. Now what their motive was I don’t know, but I wouldn’t call that mentoring, I’d call that sponsorship. It happens a lot for everybody in academic life.
Lillian cited two male bosses in particular who had been especially supportive, not least because they were willing to give her major opportunities:
My career at [organisation] was really very rapid and a lot of it was due to the fact that [individual] … was very willing to give me opportunities. He was getting on to the end of his career, he retired just after I left. He was a very generous man … who I think took a genuine pleasure in mentoring younger people and I was so lucky, I really was. Again when I went to the [organisation] working with [individual] – totally different kettle of fish; somebody who was always excited by new possibilities, always excited in some ways to the exclusion of common sense almost, but the perfect person for me to say ‘can I set up an entirely new directorate?’ and give me the permission to do it. I didn’t know what I was going to do or anything. So I’ve been, in those two points in my career, really helped by particular bosses.
Olivia had similar experiences and outcomes to Lillian:
I picked up a role working for someone who I had previously worked for. He was not the easiest of people to get on with but we worked well together. As a result of working with him again I then had an opportunity to move into a new role where I gained lots of useful learning and development. Working with him again put me back into his line of sight in terms of what I could do and he could see I could do a range of different things. I don’t think he would’ve considered me had I not been in that position … I think he just knew that I did what I said ‘tell me what you want me to do’ and we did it collaboratively and got on with it.
Diane went on to describe this support of senior men as ‘patronage’, but in generally a positive way:
I think largely they’ve been men who were genuinely interested in [my career], and it sounds a terrible word, but patronage. Patronage is very often seen as a derogatory term, but I think the majority of men who have supported me in my work have not been that way, they’ve been genuinely encouraging and genuinely supportive but they’ve been themselves in positions of influence so that if you are seen to be supported by them it goes a long way … I think you need those people to give you just that little bit of extra stiffening in your development.
Fiona commented that, though there had been senior women that she could turn to, she had found that she had more affinity with the men in senior roles within her sector:
I have always experienced more affinity with a number of men … than with other women … And it has been the nature of the institution, not every institution like this, but I have a number of people … who ran their institutions with energy, passion, commitment, whatever and who would talk and listen and who I’d have conversations with. And a number of women in different kinds of institutions who I just didn’t have that. That was a great sadness for me because I really hoped for the sisterhood when I got here and there’s never been a female sisterhood for me … There’ve been some great, great people … but not as a group.
Andrea even advised that having a male mentor might be the best approach for a woman:
Find a good role model and find a good mentor, because I think in both of those cases you need somebody to emulate, that you can feel, you know, you’d like to be like that … I think particularly a male mentor, someone who you can talk to about stuff that’s occurring and why it worked out that way, what happened, what you should’ve done differently.
Gill nevertheless expressed a note of caution about men helping younger women in particular:
It’s quite difficult for some young women because they are pursued by older men. I can remember once or twice being quite concerned because, I don’t know whether this is relevant, but I think it is, because at one level they’re very helpful and supportive and give you this extra time and attention but at another level you think, well if I ever offend them by rejecting them what are they going to do to my career? So I can remember that worry.
Support and role of family
We discuss the role and importance of partners, friends and family in more detail elsewhere in the book. However, in the specific context of mentoring and role models, it is important to note the major contribution made in the case of some of the women. For example, Fiona had not really had any role models of either gender, with her underpinning support coming mainly from her parents:
I’ve never really had any role models. I think there weren’t female role models, and I have had sort of ad hoc help, which has been from men … helping with my CV or whatever, but never really a mentor. And I think that has made life very difficult … because how do you model yourself? … There was nobody, so I had no way of knowing how to be and how to dress, how to think, what a career might look like, how to manage that with difficult relationships or whatever; just no sense whatsoever of that. And I don’t think there was ever anybody that, oh except my parents … understood the world I was going in to; [they] didn’t understand university but were so 100 per cent behind me and supported me and listened to me and believed in me … that was the root of my confidence.
Support from both her husband and her godfather had been particularly important for Eliza:
Without any doubt the people that have helped me be where I am now is firstly my husband. I cannot stress enough how lucky I am … even now, sometimes I’ll be stuck on a particular project and he will stay up until one or two o’clock in the morning and he will give me moral support. I am very fortunate with him being a senior manager; he has got the skills and the acumen which does help … he has given me the courage. And my godfather; he’s amazing, he was a business man himself … I speak to him most weeks … about everything and he’s … always been at the end of the telephone, always coming up with a solution for my work … He was very blunt but again he’s like a mentor to me. He’s very, very important.
Jessica stressed how having a family – a key ‘learning point’ as she described it – had made her a better manager, especially in terms of mentoring other women:
But I think also having my daughter … made me a better manager. I was more empathetic, aware of people’s problems outside of work, aware of the fact that if they’re going through a divorce then you’re not going to get much01 work out of them for a few months, but actually if they’re a really good worker then just live with it. I used to say to women when they were pregnant ‘when you come back to work, if you decide to come back to work, you’re going to find it really, really hard, you’re going to be torn in two, but believe me it passes’. So I’ve given quite a lot of advice to people about how to manage these things … So it isn’t just looking at work environment it’s looking at the whole life. I would never have known that before I had my daughter. I do like looking at my learning points that can help others, and others’ learning points that can help me as well.
The women themselves as mentors and role models
A number of women felt strongly that there was a need for specific support and mentoring of and for women. Jessica felt strongly about this, while recognising that men also needed appropriate mentoring. She found that she was increasingly being asked to mentor people:
I’ve changed my attitude to mentoring … I used to always say ‘I don’t want to go on special women’s things’. Now I actually recognise that there are certain things that need to be handled differently. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Harvard Business Review,11 about how men speak, how women speak? I … tell any woman I come across ‘you’ve got to read this’ because I still fall into the trap of saying ‘I must be thick or something but I didn’t understand that’ … This young woman … is now mid 30s and I’ve been helping her, talking to her, whatever you want to call it, for about six or seven years now. I’ve got a couple of other young women like that. But it isn’t just women who ask for help and advice; it’s the men as well … I’m not a psychologist – I don’t know the first thing about the right thing to say -but I can say some of my experiences and what I’ve actually found … I am asked more and more to do that and it’s quite a compliment really.
For Helen, coaching and mentoring were central to the way in which she ran her business:
I always knew … I would end up there in the end [teaching] … but in the event, it’s been the most important thing I ever did, because, while my career has been in business, the thing that really directs the way in which I operate is … giving people the opportunity to realise their aspirations and ambitions. I have built workforces through training.
Maggie felt that mentoring others was a way of repaying the people who had mentored her:
One of the other things … is the critical role that a number of [people] have played in terms of role models for me and mentoring and coaching for me. In turn I spend a significant amount of my time doing for colleagues, not just women, but a range of good colleagues across the organisation who I coach and mentor and support in terms of their development. I’ve had a huge amount of support and over the last nine plus years I’ve spent a significant amount of my time supporting other people to develop.
Jessica, like many of the women, gained ‘huge satisfaction’ from mentoring others:
Gained? Being able to mentor and coach some of the younger people … I’m in touch with quite a deep stratum of people and I actually get huge satisfaction out of helping the young ones come through with their careers.
A number of the women also spoke about their own role as role models. Maggie in particular took this responsibility very seriously. For her it was both an important element of her job satisfaction and a major benefit of her being successful:
I do it through public speaking, I do it through my behaviours, I do it further afield. I’m also very conscious that it’s very powerful to have a senior woman … being out there in the public eye. I don’t do it for my own goals and aims; I do it because I’m passionate about other people developing and reaching their goals and dreams … It’s not the recognition itself that’s important, it’s everything that sits behind it … I actually get greater satisfaction from seeing other good people succeed more than I do myself.
The importance of networking
A number of the women in our study stressed the importance of networking (see also Kumra and Vinnicombe, 2008). For Bella, networking was not necessary in terms of ‘wanting support’ so much as being ‘needs based’ or ‘how things get done’. Nor was it a gender-specific process or activity:
It’s through establishing relationships with people, it’s talking to them, understanding what their agendas are, seeing how you can work with them, identifying common objectives and common goals, working in that collaborative way. I don’t think that’s because I’m female I think that’s just what makes for a successful initiative, a successful project … so I guess that is networking but it’s not sort of artificial networking – you know ‘oh I’ve got to go and grease a few palms here’. It’s just that’s how things get done in this particular job … I’m always very pleased to speak to women, it’s always a real pleasure; but then it’s a pleasure to meet with some men.
Jessica felt much the same as Bella about networking:
I always networked and in fact I used to get told off for it. I believe it’s absolutely imperative … Because I love reading and I’ve got an enquiring mind … I’ve always networked. I’m pretty well known across the industry but that doesn’t mean I’m on the circuit talking all the time. Somebody rang me up last week and said ‘we’ve just lost a speaker, will you speak for us in two weeks?’ Fine, OK. I don’t speak that often but I do believe in happenchance … I’ve met people I haven’t seen for 20 years; last week and the week before I saw two of those and it opens new corridors and new avenues. I find that absolutely fascinating so I think networks are hugely important.
For Carrie, networking was an important part of her job, and knowing a lot of people had a number of advantages. She was keen to focus on women-only networks, as discussed later in the chapter, from which she had benefited significantly, including in terms of career opportunities, although she also had ‘lots of other kinds of groups, gender-mixed’. Olivia used networks in the same ways, though she used them for ‘venting’ rather than business because of the ‘stressful jobs’ that she had. She did not have a ‘specific female network’ but did have a group of friends who had been in the same business ‘a long time’. She continued:
It’s useful to get together to compare notes about what’s going on and whether things I’m going through are things other people are going through and actually whether everybody’s in the same boat or whether it’s peculiar to you. So it’s more used as a balancing mechanism as opposed to ‘I want to get to know you because I think you’re going to help me do x y and z’.
Types of network and network make-up
Maggie gave an extensive description of a number of different types of network, their purpose and value and the way that they operated. She first referred to the kind of ‘informal networks’ described by Olivia. Some of these she used to help put people in touch with each other, especially if they were looking for mentoring or coaching. ‘I won’t necessarily do it but what I will do is signpost them and join them up, bit like a dating agency’, she commented. She then also talked about ‘formalised local networks’ which were located in her case within the region in which she operated and finally described the national – mainly professional – networks of which she was a member. She summarised the role of these various groupings:
It’s about helping support individuals and get the best out of people. But the main benefit of any proper network is getting the best to support the organisation’s goals.
Olivia also talked about a number of different networks, which might be female (or male) only, depending upon the context and the purpose. However, while she described these groupings as ‘mixed’, the female-only groups (made up of ‘female work friends and colleagues’) seemed to be key, in that they were used for ‘comparing notes on what’s happening in the business and then a bit of a support network moan kind of thing and also socialising’. One very successful women-only network of this kind in the UK is the Through the Glass Ceiling group,22 a formal network for women in higher education that has been running since 1990. Its aims include networking, supporting, providing information and providing training, as well as drawing attention to and addressing the structures and cultures that work against female progression.
Jessica’s networks were mainly mixed in terms of gender, though there was a high proportion of men in the groups because of the nature of the world in which she works. Lillian had the same experience, though found working life easier when more women entered her sector:
My peer group and people just above and below that peer group have been disproportionally male. I must say when more women came in it was great; suddenly I had new dimensions of easy closeness. I was going to say it’s a lot easier to ring a woman up and say ‘could we meet at lunchtime to talk about it?’ but … when I was operating as a woman in a male environment, they networked and I didn’t, except in environments where you’d drop in to see somebody in the office or you’d meet in a professional group. When I got into a more mixed environment I discovered the freedom of saying to somebody ‘well if you’re staying over there and I am, why don’t we have dinner together?’ I found I could say that to a man just as easily as to a woman.
On the other hand, Ruth worked in a female-dominated profession so that her networks had more women in them, though she did have ‘male friends and support groups too’. She also stressed the importance of professional associations for career development:
I … had to learn to do things like after dinner speeches which at the time was the worst thing I had to do -to offer up your opinions when you’re fairly young … you learn about process and about working with people and so on, but I also think that you learn a sense of professionalism; that this isn’t just a job, it’s about standards and ethics and so on. I’ve also received support through difficult times … so I’ve gained a lot and I like to think I’ve given something back … it’s all about learning and synthesising those ideas that you might get from a variety of sources.
Diane described the value of the women-only group of which she was a member:
I’ve always tried to find these kinds of groups to go and share with … I’ve found always tremendous support in working with other professional groups or other women that share similar circumstances. And you get lots of ideas as well that way you know if you’re in a fix there’s always somebody you can ring up as well. I like that.
Gill said much the same, especially when comparing generic and gender-specific groups:
In terms of doing the job … I’ve got a huge number of networks that are mixed. They’re just random networks … the word network didn’t exist before; it’s a recent thing, so it’s still a funny concept for me … external support networks would be more women than anything … We are just so supportive of each other in this difficult role. It’s very obvious that the women behave in a different way to the men … There’s a lot of this male clubbery that goes on which is why we have a women’s clubbery. Men I think are fine, individually they’re all great more or less, but sometimes when you get a group of them …
On the other hand, Helen had particularly strong views about the benefit and value of women-only networks:
Conclusion
This chapter has focused on mentoring, role models and networking as three key elements of professional and personal development and career planning and progression. We began by looking at the particular importance of good mentoring and good role models – and a perceived lack of the latter in some instances – for women aspiring to senior roles, not least because of the particular internal and external challenges that many of them faced, as discussed in previous chapters. We then analysed the key traits of the individuals described by the women as especially important in their development, whether as mentors and managers or colleagues and friends. It was noticeable that a number of these people were described as ‘leaders’ with strong coaching skills. We also noted that these senior supporters had been prepared to take risks on appointing, promoting and supporting the women. The chapter then considered men as mentors and role models. Many of the women had experience of being coached and supported by men, not least because there were far fewer women available for the most part. In some cases, this experience was deemed to warrant the term sponsorship or even positive ‘patronage’ rather than mentoring as such. Many of the women had used men as role models – both good and bad; some of the participants in our study counselled caution with regard to more senior men as role models and mentors.
We observed that some women had been given much support and even mentoring from their families (described as a key ‘learning point’ by one person), either as well as or even instead of from within the workplace, with a number of women not having had role models of either gender. A number of the women felt that it was important to be mentored by a woman and many now acted as mentors to other women – and also, in some cases, men. We looked at their approaches to mentoring others, a key aspect of their approach often being relating their own experiences as part of the process. Mentoring and coaching a next generation of women and men was clearly a very satisfying aspect of the women’s work. We also noted the ways in which the women acted as role models themselves.
Finally, the chapter looked at the importance and value of networking for senior women. It was clear from our study that most of the women valued the networks of which they were a part and informal ones in particular. There were differences of opinion as to whether or not women-only networks were of most value; the importance and relevance of networks varied depending upon need and context, though the majority of women did seem to find female-only groups especially useful, whether personally, professionally, or both.
References
Indvik, J. Women and leadership. In: Northouse P.G., ed. Leadership: Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004.
Kumra, S., Vinnicombe, S. A study of the promotion to partner process in a professional services firm: how women are disadvantaged. British Journal of Management. 2008; 19:65–74.
Monserrat, S.I., et al. Mentoring experiences of successful women across the Americas. Gender in Management. 2009; 24(6):455–476.
Morgan, L.M., Davidson, M.J. Sexual dynamics in mentoring relationships – a critical review. British Journal of Management. 2008; 19:120–129.
1Tannen, D. (1995) ‘The power of talk: who gets heard and why’, Harvard Business Review, September-October, pp. 138–48; available as reprint 95510 at: http://www.pa-awis.org/useful/tannen.pdf (accessed 31 July 2010).
2http://www.glassceiling.org.uk (accessed 31 July 2010)