Athena Leadership: Mentoring Both Women and Men

Congratulations to this year’s Athena Award recipient, Kristin Wells, who is an attorney for Reed Smith.

This is the 30th year of Athena Awards in Pittsburgh and the women who have won this prestigious honor have all shown remarkable leadership and success in their roles and have provided guidance and mentoring to many others.

When it comes to mentoring at this time of the Athena,  we typically think of women who sponsor and support other women or men who serve as allies to women in helping to advance their careers.

We rarely consider, however, how women help to advance the careers of men. This type of leadership is rarely highlighted in the workplace and while women may hold fewer senior leadership roles, many women hold leadership roles across their organizations. Providing mentorship and coaching to capable women and men not only helps advance careers but drives business success.

Some may fairly ask about whether we must focus on men receiving mentoring by stating that men “already get enough focus on their career from other men” and that this kind of thinking will once again shortchange women. Some researchers, however, suggest that this focus is not only fair, but is essential in creating  gender equity in the workplace by increasing the legitimacy of women leaders and also “normalizing” the perspective that helpful and effective mentors can be found across your business.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the importance of women leaders mentoring men. Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, groomed her replacement, Ramon Laguarta, and Home Depot’s retired CFO, Carole Tome, made sure Richard McPhail was prepared to assume his role. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, men from startup businesses reported that their women mentors provided critical and actionable steps they could take for greater business success and they did it with empathy in a way that provided a higher measure of influence than they received from male mentors.

One young leader stated that one of his woman venture capital leaders provided feedback that was as direct as her male counterparts, but was done with empathy and understanding, that provided encouragement and the resilience to carry on in their businesses. We reached out to a few women leaders we know to gain their perspective on how they think about mentoring men.

• For most of them, they don’t think differently about mentoring men from women. They did find that women tended to seek out their guidance more than men and as a result, they had to be intentional about ensuring that they are developing their male leaders.

• One leader emphasized that good mentoring was her focus regardless of whether it was a man or woman. Her organization needs strong leaders regardless of their gender, so she looks for the spark in her direct reports and others and finds that energy to be the first sign of a leader who could benefit from her counsel.

• Several leaders expressed the idea that their mentoring focuses on issues related to stage of career, experience in the business and the particular competencies needed by that manager. They shared that their male mentees had not received mentoring from women, significantly, in the past and that they were not always certain about how to approach these women for coaching.

• One leader reported that while she focused on specific business-related skills to support her team members and that she also addressed the essential skills such as listening and how to build collaborative relationships, she found that her male mentees had no idea that they were talking over their women colleagues or that they made discounting statements. With a little bit of her coaching, she was able to help remedy that situation.

• Finally, and perhaps most interesting, one senior woman leader shared that she received much appreciation from the wives of the men she mentored. One wife made her a hand-stitched piece of art while another told her that it changed her marriage because her husband became more emotionally aware of how he behaved at work and at home and that she saw that he had gained more respect for women in general.

This year’s Athena finalists bring their spirit of energy, ideas and action to the workplace every day. They display their leadership skills in how they make decisions and how they inspire their team members. Their exhibition of success propels their businesses forward and finding a way to gain some of their wisdom would be a gift for any employee, so if you are working for one of their companies, we suggest you pick up your phone and make a call. We bet their mentoring will change your career.