Why has Mentoring grown so much in Brazil and around the world?

The Mentoring Journey

“What is essential is invisible to the eyes” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “The Little Prince”

The demand for Mentoring has grown in the Brazilian market and also in the global environment. Every day, we receive messages at Luzio Strategy from people interested in understanding what Mentoring is, how it differs from Coaching and why it is growing inside and outside companies.

Mentoring is a journey of developing the ability to think strategically and make better high-impact decisions. It has a high degree of effectiveness in training leaders, preparing them to deal with the numerous challenges of the contemporary world and fostering proactivity in the sustained advancement of their careers.

We have seen a progressive and significant increase in anxiety among leaders and potential successors, due to various factors. Among them, the proliferation of uncertainties caused by multiple regional and global crises, and by profound transformations accelerated by disruptive technological innovations, such as the advance of Generative Artificial Intelligence. This provocative context intensifies the fog that prevents the formulation of a strategic vision for the present and the future. Mentoring adds special value to this task.

Mentoring sessions via the web (Teams or Zoom, for example) have been intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic and have made the practice even more attractive.

What should you look for in a Mentor?

A Mentor is someone who has extensive experience in the core competence of interest to the Mentee; accumulated multidisciplinary knowledge; mastery of practical methodologies and tools; multicultural experience in different organizational profiles, countries and sectors of the economy; experience in overcoming crises or in processes of structural transformation of companies; and great sensitivity to act as a private interlocutor for leaders and entrepreneurs under pressure for time and high performance. In short, someone who has actually traveled long roads and has a solid personal track record of success to offer security and confidence.

It's also important that the professional has experience in actual mentoring, because that also makes a difference. Personally, I've been a Mentor since 2014. And every person I've had the pleasure of supporting has brought me more knowledge and sensitivity. That's why I'm making this recommendation, because I myself know how much spending hours at a time alongside transformative leaders over the years, following their daily challenges and overcoming them, has actually made me a better-prepared Mentor.

Who needs Mentoring?

Mentoring has been applied to the development of Managers and Executives; the training of Potential Successors; the training of Internal Consultants in companies to conduct processes and activities of strategic reflection and innovation; the preparation of Entrepreneurs who feel distressed by the accelerated growth of the business that has become greater than their capacity to deal with organizational challenges; as well as updating to vitalize the competitiveness necessary for the relocation of professionals in the career transition phase.

What is the essential difference between Coaching and Mentoring?

Coaching requires the professional (Coach) to be neutral and to hold back on opinions, leaving the Coachee and Coachee to make the decision themselves. Mentors, on the other hand, must be prepared to position themselves in the face of the dilemmas and doubts that Leaders face in today's environment of uncertainty, ambiguity, hyperconnectivity and borderless competition. People in management and leadership positions have less and less quality time to structure the thinking that will clarify the best decision, seek out the necessary knowledge and hone their analytical skills to draw up a good hypothesis tree to make the best choices - and not choices.

What does a Strategic Mentor do?

Mentoring activities and practices are diverse, due to the intersection of multiple knowledge and multiple experiences. A few are worth highlighting:

1. It uses the best methodologies and tools available in the world today, teaches and helps to structure the strategy of the Company or a Unit. Many Mentors need (or want) to act as Internal Consultants or Facilitators of strategic reflection activities. These people are afraid of making mistakes; they are afraid of not catching the subtleties of the methodologies; of not noticing mistakes in the application of concepts; or of not being able to guide the correction of generic propositions with no practical effect; among other problems typical of a lack of specialization. Mentor shares the tips and secrets of someone who has experienced processes of this nature for over 20 years.
   

2. It follows the professional development of the Mentee and together they draw up a development plan that guarantees safe transit on their avenues of professional growth.
   

3. It helps to solve problems by helping to trace the causes and designing a more structured way of thinking in order to see the best ways forward.
   

4. It delivers a good curation of content for each Mentee, offering contact with new knowledge and trends in evidence in Brazil and around the world. This way, you don't waste your mentee's time with low value-added content. One of the things that causes my clients a lot of anguish is the lack of time to read and keep up to date. And they get lost in the abundance of publications that provoke the fear that they are missing out on relevant knowledge (FOMO - Fear of Missing Out).
   

5. It works to improve mentees' skills in diplomacy, conflict management and negotiation. He helps the mentee to think holistically about the situations that arise, analyze risks and find the best alternatives. It's someone they can talk to without fear of judgment. It helps protect self-esteem, which naturally takes a beating in the heat of everyday life.
   

6. It shares archetypes and cultural codes that can help discover and better deal with tensions and myths in the organizational culture, in order to unleash the full potential of the Mentee and the Organization. Managing strategy means managing change, and the cultural barriers are diverse, as are the levers that can be harnessed to mobilize the necessary transformations in the company.

What are the fundamental characteristics of a good Mentor?

Each professional has their own peculiarities, different backgrounds and personal attributes that favor the practice of Mentoring. One point that I consider important: the Mentor's life story develops the capacity and sensitivity to understand the diversity of situations and variables that the Mentees experience in their daily lives.

In my experience, I have found that there are five skills that I believe are vital:   

1. Having a keen radar and being aware of the trends that can be exploited in a positive way, the Grey Rhinos and Black Swans that have appeared in the path of companies, in Brazil and anywhere in the world, and which require strategies to protect against them;
   

2. Ability and competence in connecting dots and structuring the other person's thinking;
   

3. Generous listening skills and humanity, which are fundamental to the genuine exercise of empathy;
   

4. Knowing how to ask good questions, so that the other person can find the answers and decide, since there are no right answers, but evidence that helps us decide;
   

5. Accumulated knowledge translated into practical tools and methodologies to empower mentees on a daily basis.
   

And finally...

The biggest challenge for the Mentor is to help remove the veil that often prevents the Client from seeing what is right in front of their eyes, but which for various reasons they can't - or don't want to - see, giving them a positive shock of the invisible reality.