Episode 20 : What about Mentoring -- Doing and Receiving

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall”. Your weekly 10 to 12 minute podcast and making your nonprofit more effective for your community. And here is your host, the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. 

Thank you for joining me here on “Around with Randall”. I am recording this a little more quickly than I do normally because of an article I saw this morning that caused me to stop and think a little bit and thought it was worth a conversation here.

The article was from AFP, Association for Fundraising Professionals, and it was a study done about mentoring. You might remember if you've listened that I have spoken about this idea of relationships and supervisors in a couple of different ways. I did a specific presentation on managing up. On how someone can help themselves with supervisors, managers, bosses, who may not even be related to philanthropy and some of the things that can be helpful in that relationship development.

I've also spoken about it with a request from a listener about how I got to where I was at and the people that made a difference. What caused me to stop and think a little bit was the aspect or the data coming out of this particular research around how bereft mentoring is today. That caused me to really think about what is the responsibility of leaders to mentor, and how do you help younger people realize the value of it and define mentors.

So mentoring in the widest perspective is helping someone get to their goals, to help them better understand what they're involved with and some of the greatest opportunity for mentoring has nothing to do with our profession, but I think about what Dr. Tom Osbourne founded in the concept of Teammates, which is a mentoring program for young people, particularly below the age of 18 in middle school and high school. They are signed up and partnered with someone who's an adult because maybe they don't have the adult interactions that are necessary. The results of it are phenomenal. Kids are in less trouble. They are more likely to be productive. They are more likely to have a plan after they get done with high school so much so that they then ventured into the idea of Teammates being for those who have never had an adult that they know go to college, pair with a mentor during the college process. 

In our profession, it's about getting younger people to better understand what fundraising is really all about. Some of the stats from the study were just kind of staggering. This was a large study, just short of 5,000 individuals across the United States and Canada, where 1,000 of those studied were between the ages of 24 and 35 so about 20% of the study. What they found was number one that only 21% had mentors or had some type of talent development process as part of their job, which means 80% did not. 16% had training that helped them in terms of understanding different generations, that meant 84% didn't and only 14% had some type of affinity group or connection to things that would connect them inside the officer and their profession, which means 86% didn’t. Only 8% were part of a mentoring program. More importantly, these young people indicated a real struggle with the idea of being prepared to ask people for money at any level, only 16% said, I think I can do this. Understanding and working in major gift work someday, only 14% said they understood it. Finally, 9% indicated they had any concept of what real strategic planning involved. 

So what are the values of mentoring? Why is this important? Well, let's start with money. Those that have gone through a mentoring program or have had formalized mentoring in some way, shape or form, see an average salary in comparison to their contemporaries in the same time, place, job in the marketplace, an increase of salary of $6,100 a year. They are more likely to stay with their jobs longer. They're more likely to be more productive. When we talk about mentoring in the wider perspective, what is the value of it? What we know is that, and these are all from academic studies, which I am not going to go into great detail with, but there are behavioral outcomes that there's greater academic performance and job performance when we have a mentoring process that add new tool outcomes are much stronger. They're more likely to engage in the types of activities that their mentors do. And if their mentor is a good, that's good things around how they view themselves and how they view their workplace and their opportunities that aren't there in front of them.

Health-related outcomes. What we know is that there's emotional and direct health positive outcomes that come from mentoring. Things like self-confidence and self-esteem and even things like being more engaged in physical activity come with participating in mentoring programs. Relational outcomes -- they have stronger, healthier, more productive relationships, not only in the professional world, but in the home world when you have mentoring. Motivational outcomes, the ability to feel as if they can accomplish something and set goals for themselves is more likely in mentoring and finally career mentoring is associated with better career opportunities, possibilities, and outcomes. All of these are in academic studies that you can find as a part of this process.

I think the other thing that I wanted to take from this, in general mentoring is important, but few people have one. Mentoring lasts about 3.3 years on average and is about four hours per month, in terms of activity and time. 56% of people said they've had a professional mentor in their career, which leaves 44% that haven't. And when you tie that to the AFP study, that means there's a lot of young people that are in the majority that haven’t. We have, in the nonprofit world, a potential crisis coming if we don't find a way to take younger people who are enthusiastic and driven and believe in what they're trying to do and make a difference in our nonprofits, if we don't embrace them in a way that goes beyond just the standard evaluation. The responsibility is twofold. Number one, that of the leader, the people that are in a position to help others. The second is those who are seeking to increase their opportunity in this profession or any profession. I want to address in the tactical, those two elements. One is going to be very short, the other just a little bit longer, but what I know is that from a tactical perspective, if you are someone who is a little more senior or who has a little bit of experience and maybe has had some success along the way. This is a question that I would like you to contemplate. What is your responsibility to do something for someone else, to help someone else younger than you or less experienced than you are to get to where they want to be? And in part, make your non-profit, your efforts more effective. 

In the podcast where I talked about how I got here. I mentioned four mentors. None of them were formalized. They were all people that I kind of found as I went along, who embraced me and have given me more than I could ever give them.  I find myself in my business doing a lot of coaching, a little bit to get paid. A lot of it just because I feel like I was giving something back. I hope I'm good at it. And a lot of it is part of client work. It's so enjoyable to be able to help someone get somewhere and to see the success and the spark in their eye and knowing that maybe they can do more than they even thought they could.

For the professional, the leader, my question is why aren't you doing something? How are you helping someone? For those who are looking to be mentored, who are looking for guidance, I think there's some key things that you can look for that might be helpful. These are more attributes because mentoring comes in all kinds of different forms and fashions. There's no right size, right time frame. Mentoring can happen when you're young and mentoring can happen when you're older. I still have, even though I'm a little more senior in this industry, have a couple people I look at, that I use as a sounding board. They're my mentor still to this day. 

I think there's five common characteristics of things that I look for in the people that I've been wanting to be mentored by. And maybe things you can look at if you're trying to figure out who to be mentored by and how to do this. And the last piece is maybe how to ask. The first is accessibility. You can have everything else, but if you don't have accessibility, meaning you have access to this person, the average time was four hours a month. If you don't have access to the time that that person can allocate, then this is all a waste of effort. Accessibility is number one, will they commit? And 1A, if you're looking to be mentored, you may have to fit into their schedule, not your schedule, because it's more challenging. They're probably a little busier, to be candid, unless they're retired. You're going to have to work with that. 

Number two is, is authenticity. Are they real? Are they interested in helping you or are they interested in looking good? The great thing about the work that I do is I get hopefully to try to be authentic because I don't want any of the credit, if a client raises money and most of them are, I don't want to take a bow. This isn't about Randall Hallett or Hallett Philanthropy. This is about them. Same is true in mentoring. If it becomes a line on a resume that they're mentoring a whole lot of people, then are they really doing it for the benefit of you? Authenticity means they're in it for you and your journey more than they are in it for themselves.

Objectivity is number three. Can they be objective? Sometimes that's constructive criticism. Sometimes that's a swift kick in the backside. Sometimes that's a literal or figurative hug. Sometimes that is just being logical and seeing through the emotion of a challenging situation. Can we be objective in the feedback? And I would say positively objective. This is not meant to be a “big hat, no cattle situation”. I.E. big head for the mentor -- I'm just here for me. Are they objective? And are they helpful in what the mentee needs?

Number four, they're a continual learner. They're intellectually curious. They're always reading something. They're always trying to get better because that's the model that you want as a mentee. Somebody who's smarter, more well-read, who offers a wider perspective. How can you find someone who continually is trying to get better and improve? They don’t have to have a formal education. They could read constantly, but they're always interested in something new. You learn something new every time you talk to them.

Lastly is about values, right, wrong or indifferent, and I'm not going to establish what values should be, but I'm going to say, do you have the same values as the mentor you're looking for? Do they exhibit the kind of behavior that is a positive for themselves, for the nonprofit that represents their family, that represents everything that's good? This doesn't mean they're perfect. Good grief. There's nothing that's further from perfection than me, but are they trying, are they making an effort to be a good person, a good leader, a good soldier and they do generally the right things? That value piece is important because if you don't have it, eventually people tend to get caught if they don't have good values. And, you know, because you'll hear the stories, find the values that match what you're looking for. 

The last piece of this is how do you, once you find someone say, “gosh, can you help me?” I want to get to someplace, can you help me? I just had a client who's entering into the first stages of a campaign and we were on the phone. And I said, we need to get to the CEO to talk about some options here. And the Vice President of Philanthropy says, I'd like this person to come with me on this call because I am  young and I was left out of these conversations and I want them to hear the things I missed and I thought that is great. That's cool! That was an informal way of being mentored. There's nothing wrong with saying, can you help me? I’d love an hour, two or three hours a month where we could talk about how I might grow. And if you have a little bit of experience, I hope you'll be open to that. Because the other option is that I do the coaching. I'm a free enterprise, for-profit person. I'll get paid for it, but I frankly think the best relationships, many times if not most, are more that aren't for financial gain. They're based on the fact, that you're wanting and willing to help someone and the person who's on the other end is receptive for that kind of help. 

Just a couple of quick reminders.

Don't forget about the website. You can check out the blogs. We're posting constantly, including something on the Supreme Court and how it's going to affect issues involving anonymity in non-profits and gifts, all kinds of interesting stuff there. Check it out at Hallettphilanthropy.com. And of course, if you like this podcast, share it, subscribe to it, leave a comment. I'd be appreciative. I want this to be helpful to those who are trying to figure out their way through the nonprofit world. 

This is a great profession. I love what I do. I say it every time. I don't mean to be repetitive, but I think it's really important. This is great work. If you're doing this, I hope you wake up thinking I'm making a difference. I am helping people and changing people's lives in direct ways or indirect ways. That's what nonprofit work, philanthropy, love of mankind should be about. We should be wanting to make a difference. And I wake up every morning thinking, gosh, this is the coolest thing in the world. I get to do something great because I love it. I'm not sure it's all that important, but I love it. I love the people I work with the clients that I serve. And I hope you feel like you can feel the same way about the donors and the people inside the organization that you work with. Don't forget. Some people make things happen. Some people will watch things happen. Then, there are those who wondered what happened. We are people who make things happen many times, if not, most, for people who are just wondering what happened, something's happened in their life and a nonprofit makes a difference. You're a part of that. I hope you can think about it for a second and smile and know you've spent a day, today, yesterday, tomorrow doing good. As always, I appreciate your time here on “Around with Randall”. We'll see you next time. And don't forget to make it a great day!