Karima-Catherine Goundiam is the founder and chief executive officer of digital strategy firm Red Dot Digital and business matchmaking platform B2BeeMatch.
Peer mentoring can be the secret advantage that supports your journey as a business leader. It’s not just for people working in big corporations; entrepreneurs and small business owners can benefit as well, and it’s especially good for people who are finding their feet in leadership.
How does peer mentorship work? To answer that question, let’s first take a look at the idea of mentorship more broadly.
What is mentorship?
While I was growing up in Senegal, France, Saudi Arabia and the United States, mentoring was not a widespread concept in the working world, and even less so for women. If it happened at all, it was a boys’ club, helping young men to follow in the footsteps of older men. I came to Canada in 2000 and I became a consultant in 2008. As I was doing a lot of networking, I was exposed to different paths. I met a woman of colour who was navigating her way to where she wanted to be faster than others. I became curious and asked what made her different, when on paper she didn’t seem unusual. I learned that the difference was mentorship – a new concept to me. Once I realized how different it was from what I had known, I had a light bulb moment. I wanted to find mentors for myself. And I did.
In mentorship, a mentor provides guidance, teaching and advice to a less experienced person, helping them with their growth and development in a particular area. It happens in lots of different contexts, professional and otherwise, and it’s usually a one-on-one relationship (unlike, say, a training program). Mentorship can be a formal arrangement or an informal one that evolves naturally over time. It’s not a relationship of authority; a mentor helps a mentee make their own decisions. A mentor asks questions and listens when their mentee wants to bounce ideas off them.
Because being a mentor is associated with having more experience than the mentee, we often assume mentors are older and mentees are younger. While that’s often the case, it doesn’t have to work that way. Some of my most valuable experiences of mentorship have happened outside the standard template.
One deviation from the standard mentorship template is called reverse mentoring.
In reverse mentoring, a more junior person mentors a more senior one. I was part of a wonderful reverse mentoring arrangement in 2011 and 2012 when I worked with Deloitte. I was at an earlier point in my career and I had developed a keen understanding of social media and areas of digital technology. The CEO’s team enlisted me to coach him and an incoming CEO on how and why to use social media. It was a great experience, and successful. I felt valued for my expertise and challenged to convey it in new ways; I admired his humility and willingness to learn. And he learned some crucial skills that boosted his knowledge and credibility as a leader. It was a win-win.
Reverse mentoring gave me face time with the kind of people we think know everything and don’t need to learn. But sitting down with them and teaching them a new thing was enlightening. It showed me the value of humility. People at the top are often isolated and surrounded by people who say yes to them and never say no. But that means they can’t grow or learn. I started to think about how even gold medalists need people who coach them and teach them. No matter how high you climb, you still need a team around you. Reverse mentoring helped me understand what it means to be a true leader.
Peer mentoring is another non-traditional type of mentorship.
Across history, people who make an impact have alliances with their peers, who give them perspective and balance. It’s crucial to talk with people who can relate, with whom you don’t have to explain everything. And having counterparts who hold you accountable while supporting you is so important. But the higher you climb, the fewer people can relate to your challenges, both at work and in your personal life. For this reason, though it can be useful at any career stage, I think peer mentorship is especially useful for people in middle to upper management and is highly beneficial for executive-level managers and entrepreneurs.
I’ve experienced a couple of types of peer mentorship. One, in 2017, was as part of a formal women’s peer mentoring program led by a facilitator. The participants were peers in terms of gender, industry and career stage. Unfortunately, I was the only entrepreneur; everyone else was in corporate, from senior managers to directors. So there was a mismatch. I kept participating, but it was not a group that helped me – though I know it was really useful to other participants whose paths were more closely aligned.
This taught me that there is a fine balance to be struck between diversity and similarity when it comes to peer mentorship. The peers need to have enough difference in perspective to bring each other insights they wouldn’t have arrived at alone, but enough in common that those insights remain relevant.
I needed to find the right peers – not give up on peer mentorship. I have since found more success in peer mentoring between individuals, identifying people whom I see as peers and approaching them to mutually mentor each other at one stage or another. Entrepreneurship can be a lonely place and finding people who can relate can be difficult. As an entrepreneur, it’s been valuable for me to learn from others’ circumstances, hear about their experiences, seek their perspectives and listen to their lessons learned. It’s about finding solutions and unblocking ideas.
Three principles for peer mentoring
If you’re considering seeking peer mentorship, I would advise bearing in mind three principles.
- Accountability: This is what makes peer mentorship different from friendship. A mentor can hold you accountable when you say you’re going to do something, helping you commit to goals and deadlines.
- Diversity: Choose people who are sufficiently different from you in terms of background, industry, experiences and problem-solving approaches. In peer mentorship, as in business, it’s important to segment. Don’t expect to get everything from one person. Some peers won’t be able to be accountable or provide emotional support, but may be great for brainstorming solutions. With others, it’s the reverse. You may get this diversity in a group setting or by choosing more than one individual to be peer mentors, depending on which works best for you.
- Mutuality: We can learn from everyone we meet, but peer mentoring emphasizes mutuality. For that reason, peer mentorship is a grown-up phase. You have to have confidence that your peers are not your competition; you need to be able to trust others, willing to contribute positively and able to receive in turn.
Peer mentorship is a great way for business leaders and aspiring leaders to build a customized supportive ecosystem. I encourage everyone to look into it.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.