Whether you are a team leader, supervisor, mid-level manager or a C-suite exec, mentoring colleagues is an essential feature of your role. While different rungs of the corporate ladder involve varying roles and responsibilities, the principles of managing people remain largely the same. Regardless of the level you’re working at, you want your team to excel. However, a single-minded focus on productivity and results can engender a toxic work culture, which will ultimately hurt your team and company. So, on the one hand, your job is to goad people to do a stellar job, while on the other, you want to ensure that your team works in a conducive climate. How do you strike an optimal balance between being exacting and empathetic?
A Mentor’s Dilemma
In 10 to 25, psychologist David Yeager describes the mentor’s dilemma, a term coined by Geoffrey Cohen, that refers to two significant tasks that all leaders contend with. How do you provide critical feedback while also motivating a person? A popular technique is the sandwich model, first popularized by Mary Kay Ash, which involves inserting critical feedback between layers of positive comments. But Yeager notes that young people especially don’t respond to the sandwich as the positivity doesn’t necessarily reduce the sting of the criticism.
Instead, Yeager and Cohen along with their colleagues propose giving “wise feedback,” which entails giving critical feedback along with a statement that makes explicit your belief in that person’s potential to meet your high standard. In a study conducted by the researchers, students in college were given critical feedback on an essay they had submitted. Half the students, the wise feedback group, also got a note from the professor saying that they were giving comments because they believed that the student was capable of meeting their high expectations. In contrast, the control group just got a generic note saying that comments were given. While 40% of students in the control group revised their essay based on the feedback, double the number in the wise feedback group did so.
Yeager also notes that adolescents and young adults till their mid-twenties crave “status and respect.” I would wager that this need to feel respected and worthy possibly extends through the lifespan, though it may be more pronounced in younger adults who are trying to carve a niche for themselves in the world.
Three Mindsets
Bosses at work usually exhibit one of three mindsets when it comes to their subordinates. A leader who holds exacting standards but does not provide support to their team has an enforcer mindset. Managers with a protective mindset tend to prioritize the feelings of their employees but don’t necessarily hold them accountable. Leaders with the mentor mindset meld best of these two mindsets. While they have high expectations, they also provide adequate support for their team to perform optimally. Yeager envisions two dimensions of the mentor mindset. One axis reflects your standards and can range from exceptional to subpar. The other reflects the range and amount of support extended to colleagues. Support may take various forms cognitive, emotional, social or material and would vary with each colleague and task.
Yeager identifies three facets of effective mentoring. First, the relationship between the mentor and mentee is one of a partnership where they each have separate goals with the former helping the latter move towards the mentee’s individual goals while also contributing to the company. A good mentor also believes that the mentee is capable of growth and provides the right kind of support.
As a mentor, try to provide as many opportunities for learning and growth as you can. Be it workshops, training or hybrid courses, let your mentees upskill themselves. Share book titles, podcasts or articles you think might spur them with new ideas. Talk to them on a periodic basis both to provide feedback on how they are doing and to understand how they are progressing on the goals they’ve set for themselves as individuals. You may also introduce your mentees to experts in specific areas to help them get to the next level.
An Exemplary Mentor
According to Yeager, an example of an exemplary mentor is Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. In his book, Hit Refresh, Satya Nadella says that he promised employees that his top priority would be “renewing our company’s culture” when he took over as CEO in 2014. Nadella’s “personally philosophy” echoes the mentor mindset as he seeks to meld “new ideas with a growing sense of empathy.” He believes that both individuals and organizations have to “reenergize, renew, reframe and rethink their purpose” every now and then.
Cricket has been a passion for Nadella since childhood and he draws three lessons from it. The first is to “compete vigorously”, while the second is to put your team over and above your own individual success. The third take-away from cricket is that the main job of a leader is to “bolster the confidence” of their team.
According to Nadella, leadership entails “making choices and then rallying the team around those choices.” It also involves seeking “external opportunities” and ensuring that it melds with “internal capability and culture.” Rather than pursue a combative approach steeped in envy, Nadella prefers to motivate his team with a “sense of purpose” and ‘pride’ in their work. He also thinks that senior management has to walk the talk by supporting one another and their direct reports as this sets the tone for the company’s culture.
Like Yeager, Nadella advocates that empathy informs both personal and professional interactions. Right from customers to colleagues, seeking to understand and value another person’s perspective is essential to achieving excellence. Further, Nadella also believes that leaders need to model a growth mindset, a term put forth by psychologist Carol Dweck, wherein you believe that people have the capacity to grow and change for the better. According to Nadella, leaders need to inspire “optimism, creativity, shared commitment, and growth through times good and bad.”
About the Author
Aruna Sankaranarayanan is the author of Zero Limits and the co-author of Bee-Witched along with Brinda S. Narayan.