The Mentor Connection

Strategic Alliances within Corporate Life

Michael G. Zey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000679823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic Theory
• Index: Economics

In the past several years the concept of the mentor has become a part of the common parlance. There is a widespread interest in the pivotal role of mentoring for the success of individuals. Research has made it plain that mentors play a major role in career development. Now human resources and organizational development groups have come to appreciate the role of mentoring on the donor as well as recipient, for the career of the helper no less than the person(s) being helped. Michael Zey, in this study based upon interviews with over 150 executives in Fortune 500 companies and smaller firms, provides a major exploration of the sociological dynamics of the mentoring relationships, locating this phenomenon in the fields of career growth, job satisfaction, and social mobility. In doing so, Zey offers a framework for the understanding of corporate culture, an approach that raises this volume far beyond the usual self-help literature found in this field.

1

Mentoring in the Modern Corporation

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Under the guise of a single name, two parallel organizations exist. They act alike, speak alike, look alike, answer to the same label, and reside in the same building. One is the organization described by charts, newspaper clippings, reports to the stockholders, and management consultants. The other is a shadow organization, an all-too-real parallel entity based on power and politics that is only faintly reflected in the organization charts. The residents of this shadow organization are sometimes called contacts, insiders, or sponsors, but usually they are referred to as mentors and proteges.

To most of the corporation, the mentor relationship is a rumor. If the members of the firm know what that relationship is, not many know what it does, how it works, why its members become powerful, or how people gain access to it. This is not unlike the view that many citizens have of the dynamics of power in the government and society in general. They see bankers meeting in Geneva, an oil cartel convening in London, the queen of England horseback riding with the president of the United States, and they know that something important is taking place. But if you asked 100 of these observers exactly what was discussed, why, and how it would affect their lives, you would receive 100 different answers.

The operation and development of the mentor relationship is exemplified by the career of Dan Garner. A Harvard MBA, Garner began his business career at the Communications Corporation* as a financial analyst and was soon promoted to financial manager.

After two years in the company, Garner received what he labels “the phone call” from the president (who had met him only in business situations), requesting that he take a temporary position as the president’s “special assistant.” Considered to be both a plush assignment and an acid test given only to a bright young executive, the position involved mopping up various loose ends of corporate affairs. But more important than the substance of the position was the fact that it afforded Garner a high degree of visibility.

“It was a year of enormous and intense congressional testimony in the communications area, which I prepared and was involved with…. I was our representative in working through all the issues with high government officials.”

The president of the domestic division of the Communications Corporation, pleased with Garner’s work, promoted him to group director of planning. From that time on, the president acted as Garner‘s mentor, teaching him management skills, protecting him from competing organizational factions, and helping establish his legitimacy as a viable part of senior management. In other words, the president groomed Garner for a major policy position within the corporation.

The president eventually moved Garner up to vice president of planning and business development. Now, at a fairly young age, Dan Garner, having surpassed most of his peers and elders, is one of the eight senior people surrounding the president. In a comparatively short time he has assumed enormous responsibilities, including strategic planning and advising on all related issues regarding acquisitions, sales force allocations, and licensing.

Garner also serves as an internal consultant on issues relating to public policy in the communications field, helping to formulate corporate policy on such matters as communications law and image building among communications professionals. Available to him are a huge staff and outside resources, including a former presidential pollster and a director at one of the nation’s largest public opinion research corporations. He is now functioning in both the financial and policy areas.

Dan Garner ‘s experience with the mentor relationship is typical of the experience of the managers who appear in this book. A young female whose career languished until she connected with a female vice president, a senior vice president who for 30 years underwent a sort of sequential mentoring by several individuals, a college English major who became director of personnel at a Fortune 500 company largely because she encountered her future mentor while participating in a senior-year internship program, a high-level advertising executive whose mentor helped him realize that his real strength lay in becoming a “corporate entrepreneur” instead of remaining an accountant—all stand as solid testimony to the power of the mentor

This book, based on over 100 interviews with senior and middle managers, shows how individuals are helped in their careers by mentors who advertise and market their proteges, protect them from organizational pressures, and serve as personal counselors and supporters. The book also examines the factors that cause a mentor relationship to fail and the special problems that female proteges face in the climb up the managerial ladder. In addition, it deals with the methods that managers and others have employed to connect with mentors, and it looks at the factors within the organization that affect the mentoring process.

The book is aimed not only at managers but at the wide array of people up and down organizational ladders who are interested in improving their careers and enhancing their chances of making the “mentor connection.”

THE RENEWED INTEREST IN MENTORING

Traditionally, organizational literature has suggested a link between mentoring and career advancement. Eugene Jennings, in Routes to the Executive Suite, indicated that most company presidents have had sponsors who guided and promoted them, stating that “no one goes to the top rapidly without a sponsor.”¹In a Harvard Business Review article based on interviews with Jewel Tea Company executives, the point was emphasized that “everyone who makes it has a mentor”.²This view is supported by Orth and Jacobs, who found that business people who could not identify a mentor or sponsor were reported as being less successful and less happy in their careers.³

In short, the connection between career success and having a mentor has been far from a well-guarded secret. But in the last few years there has been a substantial increase in the number of articles on mentoring appearing in the popular press, women’s magazines, and business publications. The growing interest in the subject seems to have been generated by a combination of economic and sociological circumstances.

The heightened interest in mentoring as a method of achieving career success can first of all be viewed as a product of the demographic realities of our time. Members of the baby boom generation, having experienced overcrowded high schools, colleges, and dorms, housing shortages, and fierce job competition, are finally reaching the age at which individuals expect to assume an occupational position of authority and responsibility.

But according to Michael Wachter, this group is still haunted by the specter of shortages and overcrowding—this time in the area of career advancement.

The baby boom children grew up in an atmosphere of continuing increases in real wealth and per capita income. Their aspiration levels, therefore, were affected not only by their parents, but also by the idea that upward mobility was a feature of American life. As they entered the labor market, however, they found conditions very different from those they had expected. Competing with a large group of entry-level workers, the baby boom generation found their relative wages down and their promotion possibilities reduced.⁴

According to a poll recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, a high proportion of the baby boom group expect to get their most immediate and meaningful life satisfaction from their jobs.⁵Part of job satisfaction lies in promotion, which has traditionally been contingent on education and ability. However, if Wachter is correct, education and ability, if unrecognized by the employing organization, will be insufficient for satisfactory upward mobility. In fact, many recent articles have reported that even the MBA degree is losing its effectiveness as a key to business success. A recent New York Times article reported that in 1982 over 58,000 men and women received their MBA degrees, compared to 21,000 only 10 years earlier and an average of 5,000 in the 1960s. The article indicated that within 20 years more than 1 million MBAs might be trying to reach the upper rungs of the business world.⁶Moreover, in addition to MBAs, countless others with claims of ability and experience will be trying to climb the corporate ladder. But there will just not be that much room at the top, so that methods other than obtaining educational credentials will have to be utilized to achieve success.

The New York Times article also claimed that “middle managers are getting squeezed out.” Because many companies must run leaner operations, they are forced to lay off many middle managers. At times they even reach into the higher ranks to find dispensable employees. The auto and steel industries were singled out in this article, but such conglomerates as Allied Corporation in Morristown, New Jersey, and Scovill, Inc., in Connecticut, were also mentioned. The appearance of numerous executive placement firms and outplacement services also testifies to the fact that laid-off executives have to seek professional assistance in finding their next job, expecially since the companies to which they apply are probably undergoing their own middle-management squeeze.

Adding to the executive’s woes has been the mushrooming of mergers and acquisitions. According to one account, almost 2,400 corporate mergers occurred in 1981 alone, possibly because, as with U.S. Steel’s acquisition of Marathon Oil, it is far easier to buy a good company than to expand one’s own. In much the same way that cutbacks imperil middle managers, mergers wreak havoc with the lives and careers of senior executives. A recent study of executives involved in corporate takeovers found that 52 percent of the “acquired” executives were fired within three years after the takeover.⁷There are two reasons for the devastating effect of mergers on executive careers. First, executives who opposed a merger while their company was still independent may be unwelcome in the merged organization. Second, and more common, executives may become redundant if their functions are being performed by persons in the acquiring company,

Complicating the situation of middle and senior managers alike is the recurring recessionary condition of the economy. Even companies that are not contracting operations may still not be expanding to any great extent, and this lack of growth signifies a stagnant opportunity structure in management. In these circumstances those managers who are gainfully employed cannot expect an organizational expansion that would provide the executive slots necessary for upward mobility.

So a variety of factors obstruct managers’ chances for career growth: an oversupply of equally qualified members of the same age cohort, the elimination of managers who already populate the upper-middle executive rungs, mergers that eliminate positions at the top, and economic conditions that have generated a no-growth corporate environment.

For these reasons managers have become increasingly interested in a method for achieving success that transcends the standard routes to the top. Since during low-growth and recessionary periods there is a surplus of managers with quality credentials and experience, the inside track on career success provided by the mentor connection has become particularly important to managers. This book is devoted to exploring (and advising on) this mode of achieving upward mobility.

HOW PREVALENT IS MENTORING

Though much has been written on what a mentor is, what the benefits of having a mentor are, and how to acquire a mentor, there is very little hard data on the extent of the mentoring phenomenon.

Probably the most thorough quantitative study of mentoring was done by the international consulting firm Heidrich and Struggles. The study focused on 1,250 senior executives mentioned in the “Who’s News” section of The Wall Street Journal, with questions centering on whether a person had ever taken an interest in the careers of these executives, guided them, and sponsored them for jobs.

Overwhelmingly, the respondents answered in the affirmative, two thirds claiming that at some point in their careers they had been mentored and one third claiming that they had had the allegiance of two or more mentors. The great majority of mentoring relationships had begun in the first 5 to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Preface to the Original Edition
• 1 Mentoring in the Modern Corporation
• 2 The Fast Track
• 3 Promoting the Protege
• 4 The Benefits Are Mutual—The Mentor and the Organization
• 5 The Female Protege
• 6 The Negative Side of Mentoring
• 7 Establishing the Mentor Connection
• 8 Mentoring and the Future of the Corporation
• Notes
• Appendix A Research Methodology
• Appendix B Study Questionnaire
• Index