FountainBlue’s mentorship and coaching program works with growth-minded enterprises and start-ups to recruit, retain, advance and promote leadership and innovation. FountainBlue regularly works with start-ups through our advisory services, and with enterprises through our coaching, training and mentorship program development activities.
To become a corporate partner and participate in monthly programs and our annual mentorship awards event, e-mail us at info@whenshespeaks.com.
Friday, November 17, 11:50 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Fourth Annual Mentorship Best Practices Panel
Online Program, Hosted by ASML
If you have a dedicated, hard-working, and intelligent staff at any level, Mentorship becomes THE difference-maker. Sure, education and experience matter, but Mentorship can frame that education and experience and make them into learning opportunities.
Sponsorship is important, but without Mentorship, it’s hard for the sponsor to make a business case.
Culture is important, but mentorship helps mentees (and mentors) succeed and even thrive in existing culture. Indeed, mentees and mentors can together even shape the culture so that more people benefit.
This year’s mentors and mentees will share their strategies, advice and best practices.
with opening remarks and panel participation by Robert Socha, ASML Fellow, ASML
FountainBlue’s November 10 When She Speaks program, on the topic of ‘Mentorship Best Practices’. Please join me in thanking our hosts at Coupa and our esteemed panelists. We were fortunate to feature pairs of mentors and mentees who spoke passionately about the personal benefits and the business value for mentorship relationships. Below is a compilation of best practices. Thoughts About Mentorship
Treat mentorship like a two-way street where all parties learn and benefit.
Consider mentorship an opportunity to learn about the past and learn about the future.
Be open to mentoring those around you formally or informally.
Pay it forward, in return for all those who paved the road for your own current successes.
Suggestions on How to Support Your Mentor/Mentee
Shine the light on what she/he is doing/can do.
Provide opportunities for her/him to stretch into new ways of thinking/speaking/working.
Help your mentee/mentor leverage their past experiences to succeed with current challenges and opportunities.
Work with your mentee/mentor to strategically create and expand a network of contacts and supporters.
Be humble, personable, vulnerable, and practical as you work with your mentee/mentor to better address their questions and challenges.
Be specific and plan-ful about the logistics so that the mentor/mentee relationship can be fruitful.
Share colorful stories about your own challenges and opportunities so others can learn from your experience and perspective.
Keep Reaching for Stars – as an individual and as a mentor/mentee
Always listen and look for opportunities to grow and expand.
Challenge yourself to keep raising the bar and learn from all around you.
Be constantly open and curious.
Get good at giving and receiving feedback.
Model the way for others around you, in front of you, behind you, for you never know who’s watching and learning from you!
Advice about Creating and Growing a Mentorship Program
Make the business case to secure resources and funding.
Recruit an executive sponsor who is passionate about mentorship and influential within and outside the organization.
Invite a wide range of people from diverse backgrounds to participate, for the benefit of all involved.
Collaborate with HR and L&D and ERGs to deliver excellence in the mentorship program.
Consider helping mentees transition to mentors, and sponsor mentors into stretch roles with the support of coaches.
The bottom line is that we must all make the time to mentor and support others around us, for that is what helps each of us to learn and grow.
If you have a dedicated, hard-working, and intelligent staff at any level, Mentorship becomes THE difference-maker. Sure, education and experience matter, but Mentorship can frame that education and experience and make them into learning opportunities.
Sponsorship is important, but without Mentorship, it’s hard for the sponsor to make a business case.
Culture is important, but mentorship helps mentees (and mentors) succeed and even thrive in existing culture. Indeed, mentees and mentors can together even shape the culture so that more people benefit.
Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue
with opening remarks by Niki Armstrong, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary, and Chief Compliance Officer, Pure Storage
Successful mentorship programs benefit not only the mentors and mentee involved, but also the team, the culture, the organization. For our second annual mentorship best practices program, we will feature both mentors and mentees, and invite the full panel to share their best practices on:
Establishing a successful ongoing mentorship program
Motivating mentors to participate
Problems-Solutions-Results delivered through mentorship
Networking and Resources for Mentees and Mentors
We will also invite each Mentor/Mentee to ‘roast’ her partner as we honor their successes together.
Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue
with opening remarks by Buffie Main, Global Executive and Leadership Development Senior Program Manager, Micron
Mentors:
Amber Barber, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, Global chairperson, Women in Global Operations ERG, Lam Research
Nancy Mason, Supply Chain Manager, NVIDIA
Gayathri Radhakrishnan, Director Venture Capital – AI Fund, Micron
Sandy Yu, Global Director, Product Strategy and Success, Oracle
Mentees:
Megan Cibula, Industrial Engineering Supervisor, Lam Research
Bambi Delarosa, Healthcare AI Principal Investigator and OHSU collaborator, Micron
If you have a dedicated, hard-working and intelligent employee, Mentorship becomes THE difference-maker. Sure, education and experience matter, but Mentorship can frame that education and experience and make them into learning opportunities.
Sponsorship is important, but without Mentorship, it’s hard for the sponsor to make a business case.
Culture is important, but mentorship helps mentees (and mentors) succeed and even thrive in existing culture. Indeed, mentees and mentors can together even shape the culture so that more people benefit. For this year’s first annual When She Speaks Mentorship Program, leaders from the FountainBlue community will shared their best practices and advice in an interactive discussion. Please join me in congratulating FountainBlue’s 2019 Mentorship Honorees, .
Facilitator Linda Holroyd, CEO, FountainBlue
Panelist Amber Barber, Sr. Manager Business Operations Management, Lam Research
Panelist Kavita Shah, Senior Director, Strategic Marketing, Nova Measuring Instruments
Thank you to Lam Research for hosting this launch event and to Erin Yeaman, Managing Director of HR, Lam Research for her introductory remarks and to Mike Snell, Vice President of Operations, Global Operations, Lam Research for his sponsorship, leadership and remarks.
Below are notes from the conversation.
Our mentorship awardees this year had a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, but each had much in common:
they each valued the input of the mentors from an early age and on an ongoing basis;
they worked with their companies to create a program which support dozens and even hundreds of men and women;
they each continued to mentor others as they themselves advanced in their careers;
they are each committed to continuing to mentor others, on top of their immense work responsibilities, community commitments, and the day-to-day joys and challenges of a busy family.
Our panelists agreed on the short term and long-term benefits of mentorship. Mentors can help solve current problems, but they can also help with longer-term gains building confidence, expanding perception, providing support, especially when times are tough.
There are many reasons to become a mentor. Not only is it personally satisfying, but also supports the professional development of mentees, but also the team and organization as a whole. Mentoring is a great way to give back – to your team, to your company, to your community, to the next generation.
Below is a summary of mentorship best practices.
The mentoring relationship is a dynamic one – the needs of both mentors and mentees change over time. Clear communication from both sides help ensure productive interactions between mentees and mentors.
One goal from a mentorship relationship is to develop a ‘thicker skin’, so that the mentee is more resilient and confident even if an environment is less than ideal.
Mentors can successfully mirror behavior or attitude of the mentee, so that she/he can better understand how others are responding to them.
There are many different kinds of mentors and mentoring relationships. Just because you have a technical mentor doesn’t mean that you don’t also need a mentor to help navigate a new role, for example.
Mentors can help filter messages and information, so that you focus on what’s important and use your time most wisely.
Mentor people at all levels, not just those designated as ‘high-potential’. Even if the mentee never gets into management levels, that mentee would have more influence and more confidence in whichever level they’re in.
With that said, make sure that both mentors and mentees are willing participant. It doesn’t work to mandate a mentor-mentee relationship.
Have specific criteria if you’re matching mentors and mentees, and have direct communication to ensure that both parties continue to benefit from the connection.
Every speaker remarked on how important it was to develop our people, our relationships, and how mentorship is a critical tool to grow everyone at all levels at scale.
Of course it’s not an either-or. You need BOTH great mentors and great sponsors to advance and succeed. We talked for the last two posts about mentors, and they are GREAT. Most people can’t advance without them. But based on my decades of direct and indirect experience, the TRUE differentiation is around sponsorship.
Below are some reasons why I think that’s the case.
Sponsors, by definition, have the influence, ability and power to nominate, vote for, and hire into key positions.
Sponsors can be coaches and mentors as well, but they also have the ability to support the advancement into a higher level within an organization. Generally coaches and mentors are not also sponsors.
Coaches and mentors might help someone shift into a new role, industry or level, but a sponsor helps others to offer new opportunities to hard-working, energetic and unproven people.
Coaches are more likely to have received training on how to coach. Mentors are more likely more experienced and intentional in their mentorship goal.
Sponsors aren’t necessarily trained to be sponsors. And may not even realize they are sponsoring someone. They are focusing on solving a problem – connecting the right people to the right organization/problem set.
Sponsors are more often likely focusing on higher-level problems, including proactively building a leadership pipeline, bringing in ideas and talent which would stretch business and technology edge cases, and facilitating collaboration across people, technologies, and teams.
Sponsors, are generally more results- and business- focused rather than people-focused (although of course, they care about the person they’re sponsoring).
Coaches and mentors touch people at all levels within an organization. Sponsors generally focus on advancing people into higher levels within the organization.
Coaches, mentors and sponsors can each impact those early in their career, but coaches are more likely to help with current and short-term needs whereas sponsors are more likely to look at the longer-term needs of the new-hire as it overlaps with the longer term needs of the company.
In general, coaches and mentors look from the bottom up – helping the mentee/coached navigate the corporate challenges and opportunities from their own point of view. Sponsors however, help their sponsored employee take a longer-term, strategic, top-down approach about the needs of the company and the value they can bring to the table in the near-term and for the long-term.
Your mileage may vary. Your thoughts are welcome. E-mail us at info@whenshespeaks.com. Join us for our December 13, 2019 Second Annual ‘Men Who Open Doors’ panel discussion, featuring some outstanding male sponsors.
FountainBlue’s September 1, 2019 Blog: An Ode to Mentors, by Linda Holroyd
Mentors come in many shapes and sizes, from many backgrounds, with different interests. But in my experience, the best mentors have some key qualities.
All great mentors have the type of broad and deep experience, preferably in a range of products/services/industries/markets. This doesn’t mean that every experience that a mentor had was successful, just that there are learnings from every experience. Indeed a mentor can’t effectively share their suggestions and insights with wisdom.
Successful mentors generally have their own successes in business and in life. ‘Success’ is loosely defined, but suffice to say that the mentee must respect the mentor as ‘successful’ in ways which are important to him or her. Indeed, it would be difficult to respect a mentor unless the mentee respects the successful experience of that mentor.
Mentors are viewed as ‘influential’ in specific ways, as defined by the mentee. The mentor might be influential for specific niches of people, or across broad groups of people, depending on the needs and interests of the mentee.
Although there have been good mentors who are less than humble, I find that those who are humble are more modest, more unassuming, more clear about their contributions and abilities, while also being more open to helping others also succeed.
Most successful people, including successful mentors, are focused and goal-oriented. A great mentor knows how to make the mentee more focused and goal-oriented, while helping her or him keep an eye on the longer-term objectives, and helping him or her feel supported and balanced.
Great leaders have displayed perseverance and commitment, often overcoming extraordinary circumstances to achieve outrageous goals. Great mentors help their mentees to do the same.
Great mentors are principled, honorable and respectful leaders who teach others how to conduct themselves in the same manner.
Great mentors are Self-Aware – they know their weaknesses and strengths and appreciate the strengths and weaknesses in others. They encourage and support others in being increasingly more self-aware.
Great mentors make a point of including others in projects, successes and challenges. They know that added new and different perspectives will better benefit all participants.
Great mentors are Life-time Learners who relish the opportunity to keep learning, and help mentees and others around them to embrace those learning opportunities as well.
Thank you to all great mentors who have touched me directly and indirectly. You helped me to better understand myself, and raised the bar so that I can be a better version of myself.
Last month’s post was an Ode to Mentors. None of us could be where we are without them. It celebrates who mentors are as people and why they are so inspiring and necessary for those around them.
This month, we will build on the topic, and discuss What the Best Mentors Teach Us. Again, these are my thoughts from decades as a mentor, mentee, and bystander. I’ve learned from the best, and even when they weren’t any good, I learned even more about what works for me and why.
I’ve organized my thoughts in three areas:
Personal qualities: versatility, resiliency, emotional intelligence, resourcefulness, ‘hungry’
Communication qualities: clarity and directness, empowerment, mediation/moderation
Network/Connection qualities: empowerment, grow and establish network/community
Your thoughts will vary, but I hope that this summary is thought-provoking.
Personal Qualities–
1. Versatility –
The best mentors teach us to be versatile, to adapt to different people, cultures, technologies, industries.
The more you adopt an open and embracive mind set, the better you’ll understand others around you, the more likely you are to succeed on a grander scale.
2. Resiliency –
The best mentors teach us that nothing worth having is easy, and also that the best lessons are often the hardest lessons. They help us pull ourselves up by our bootstraps especially when all seems lost.
With a combination of humor, wisdom, strength, advice and connections, they help us pick ourselves up, shake ourselves off and ask ourselves, ‘What’s next?”
3. Emotional Intelligence –
The best mentors help you understand what you’re feeling, what others are feeling, the reasons for these reactions, the motivations of yourself and others etc.,
Understanding your own emotions, and that of others will help you be more compassionate while also being more likely to produce better plans and better results.
4. Resourcefulness –
The best mentors help you be more creative, more flexible and more adaptable around problem-solving.
Seeing the problem from a larger and different point of view helps mentees better address opportunities and challenges.
5. Hungry (Lifelong Learners) –
The best mentors know that life is a journey, not a destination. They teach us to ever reach higher and wider, never settling, never accepting complacency.
Going out of the comfort zone and embracing new learnings make life a more interesting, satisfying and entertaining journey.
Communication Abilities
6. Clarity and Directness (of Communication) –
The best mentors help their mentees better understand their own communication styles, and that of others. They challenge us to be more clear, more precise, more inspiring, more diplomatic, more gracious, and more transparent in our communications.
There are so many ways to get communications wrong. Mentors help us head off communication traps while helping us better understand how we are coming across to others, and improving the results of our communication overall.
7. Empowerment –
The best mentors empower their mentees to solve their own problems, to reach for more than they think they can reach. This is not just a confidence builder, it also opens up a broader, larger view of possibilities for their mentees.
As mentors empower their mentees, they, in turn, often consciously or unconsciously empower others around them.
8. Mediation and Moderation –
Network and Community
9. Network –
The best mentors know how to grow their network, and support mentees in growing theirs.
Having a broad and deep network is key to all the other qualities taught by great mentors.
10. Community –
The best mentors help their mentees connect with the people closest to them, and also to the community around them.
The challenge and joy of building close relationships and community helps us all feel fulfilled, challenged, accepted, and understood.
The Inter-Connectedness Between Mentorship, Sponsorship and Coaching
From our decades of experience working with executives, entrepreneurs and organizations, it is our belief that there is an inter-relationship between Mentorship, Sponsorship and Coaching programs.
At our client companies, executive sponsors are opening doors to great opportunities for the best mentors, and then providing coaching support to the sponsored professionals to increase their likelihood of success.
Namely, we work with and advise our corporate clients to
Bridge Successful Mentorship Programs into
Successful Sponsorship Programs, then into
Successful Coaching Programs.
The Best Mentorship Programs
The Best Mentorship Programs:
Are self-driven
Are led from the bottom-up, funded from the top-down
Measure and report on metrics
Celebrate successful mentors and mentees
Build ongoing communities of participants
The Best Sponsorship Programs
The Best Sponsorship Programs:
Have a consistent process for selecting sponsored leaders
Have engaged executives with the influence and resources to make a difference
Measure and report on metrics
Build on program successes
Build ongoing communities of sponsored leaders
The Best Coaching Programs
The Best Coaching Programs:
Work with sponsored leaders to accelerate growth in stretch opportunities
Build additional networks, relationships and leaders with the help of engaged executives
Make coaching contagious
Build ongoing communities of mentored, sponsored and coached leaders
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If you are a mentor or a mentee, find out more about FountainBlue’s coaching program or sign up for a complementary 15-minute call with no obligation. Below are some testimonials from happy coaching customers since January 2005.
Effective, Life-Changing Results
Linda helped me crystallize my value-add and strategize with me to find my fit and then grow first myself, and then my company.
I’ve worked with hundreds of corporate executives at all levels, but Linda’s business savvy, creative ideas, collaborative style and results-orientation make her stand out. My company and I continue to greatly benefited from her energy and expertise.
Linda has this amazing ability to subtlety guide you on a path, leveraging her confidence in your abilities. By the time you realize that ‘you can do it and do it well’, you see Linda has been right there with you all along.
Linda is incredibly intuitive with an amazing ability to quickly connect the dots and reach for those opportunities which better fit my values and my vision.
Coaching Style
Linda is equally impressive at articulating the vision I’m seeking, and setting things in motion to make it happen. She is scary smart and equally kind and compassionate.
Linda’s coaching style is authentic, direct, resilient, empathetic, amusing, and effective, and her professionalism, industriousness and leadership shines through with every conversation.
I feel a sense of calm when I get to see Linda. She helps me think that everything is OK, no matter what shenanigans are going on in my life.
There’s never a problem too big, or a problem too small. And there’s *always* a path forward and upward. Meeting with her is generally a highlight of my day.
Linda listens more deeply and more broadly than anyone I’ve ever met. And when I finally stop talking, she asks the questions which make me start talking anew. When I finally stop talking, I am exhausted and energized at the same time. It’s an amazing and invigorating experience.
Linda’s integrity, energy, enthusiasm and persistence made her a great to work with and hard to keep up with.
Linda is the most empathetic and trustworthy person I’ve ever met. She’s got my back, no matter what should happen.
Linda embodies servant leadership at all levels and adds value to every conversation she facilitates.
Other accolades for Linda’s Coaching:
Linda’s calming presence, open and non-judgmental listening style, and amazing intellect and creativity combine with her practical, action-oriented side to help me create immediate win-win results. I consistently leave our meetings more positive, more constructive, more hopeful, and more grounded.
Linda’s compassion and experience help me to see why people around me do the things they do, to accept what’s happening to me and around me, and then to change what I think, how I speak and how I act because of it.
Linda Holroyd is a master communicator also adept at working with you to craft and execute on your brand. She brings out the best in each of others, and helps us spread the wisdom to others around us.
Linda is someone who listens at the deepest levels, gets the business and personal implications of what I’m sharing, and helps me re-frame my thinking, words and actions. It’s amazing how she can do that for such a broad range of people, myself included!
Linda is a fountain of creative ideas for moving forward in one’s working life with more joy and better results.
Linda is an extraordinarily kind person of deep goodwill and desire to improve the lives of those around her. You are lucky if Linda turns her attention to your challenges. She knows how to help!
Linda walks her talk – she’s as pure and authentic on the inside as you can get – her integrity is beyond reproach. Her focus is always on others, and raising the bar for the good of all. But just as powerful as her compassionate side is her capacity for strategizing and growing a business – a rare combination indeed, and much needed in the new economy.
I have greatly benefited from the sage and practical advice of Linda Holroyd. It has helped me hone my leadership skills, and deliver results for myself and for my team and company.
Linda’s excellent people skills and her amazing creativity enable her to create opportunities for each person’s maximum benefit based on an exquisite fit with their skills and the quickly-changing market needs – and in record time!
Linda’s intuition, compassion, depth of experience and remarkable energy and bandwidth allows her to coach a client at exactly the level that they need, whether they are new to business or a serial CEO.
Being coached by Linda is like drinking water from a fire hose. It is stimulating, exhilarating and exhausting – she inspires you to reach for stars, and stands behind, beside, and around you until you do.
Linda Holroyd has helped me change my life and my impact, one choice at a time.
I know that Linda will always be on my side, through thick or thin. She gave me the strength to accept my weaknesses and my past, and rise above them to be a better me.
Linda’s in-depth listening and understanding provides a gift of clarity, delivered with a bounty of compassion. She gave me the strength and courage to create a path forward and deliver tangible results that I am proud to call my own.
Linda is a very kind and thoughtful human being who leverages her amazing gifts and talents to serve and empower others. Fortunate are those who have been touched by her.
Many are the lives transformed by Linda’s unique courage, intellect and strength, including my own. I remain in her debt.
Linda helped me crystallize my value-add and strategized with me to find my fit and then grow first myself, and then my fit within the company.
I have never seen anyone so deeply listen, so quickly get it, and then work with me to apply it to practical ways to build momentum for myself and for business.
In a room full of strangers, Linda makes me feel like I’m the most important person in the room, the most important person there is. And when you talk to her, she confirms that this is so.
Linda challenged me in the gentlest way to remove my masks, find my calling, and rise to a level I never knew existed.
Linda is a powerhouse of information and ideas, and full of compassionate, non-judgmental understanding and support, while insisting that we deliver tangible results.
Linda keeps me reaching for stars, while also helping me feel that I deserve to be there.
Linda is one of those rare people who is as human as she is brilliant.
Linda taught me how to see beyond the gender, the role, the circumstances and the numbers and build alignment between my passion, my skills, and the needs of the customers. I am forever changed, and in a good way.
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