Think about the mentors you have in your personal support team. If you’re like many of the leaders I work with, you might find that you once had a number of mentors, sponsors, and champions around you that have faded from your life or taken on different roles over the years. You might find the mentorship department in your personal org chart quite empty. I want you to know this is normal and something I find with a large number of the senior leaders I coach. But, why does this happen?

As you grow and develop early in your career, you may find that a surplus of mentors, both formal and informal, come into your life. But, as you move into more senior leadership roles, you may find that your mentors are in the same roles that you now find yourself in and they have become your peers. You may even surpass your early mentors in your career success. Other mentors move, retire, change industries, and fade in or out of our lives as their life and career circumstances change. You find yourself in a leadership role where there are fewer opportunities to meet potential mentors that are further ahead in their career. Often, those potential mentors are senior leaders who are your boss or leading a competitor organization. The reality is, there are fewer senior leaders in the world and this means it takes longer and more effort to cultivate relationships with those mentors at a time where you find yourself with precious spare time yourself. As you look around you, mentors have gone from a surplus to scarce. This is where we find many leaders come to coaching to further their development.

Furthering your development as a senior leader becomes more difficult as your time becomes more valuable to the organization. Being absent for leadership programs becomes more difficult to have top executives away for extended periods or for regular shorter periods of time. Further, senior executives find that they’re taking less away from formalized learning yet still looking to grow their perspective and understanding from a more nuanced perspective. Coaching and mentoring becomes a natural place for this kind of development.

What’s the difference between coaching and mentorship?

Coaching is often structured and for a defined period of time focused on the achievement of specific developmental goals. The benefit of coaching is an impartial thought partner and a confidential sounding board. Your coach is an expert in leadership development and the journey of leadership and often they not an expert in your role, business, or industry. It can be an advantage to have a coach who doesn’t know your industry or business deeply so they avoid any groupthink or assumptions in their coaching with you. They know how to ask provocative questions and bring frameworks to help you on the journey of self-discovery, fulfillment, and leadership effectiveness. Coaches grow your mindset more than they help teach you specific skills. They help you evolve as a person and as a leader ensuring the skills and tactics you learn will have the right foundation to be effective.

Mentorship tends to be less formal than coaching and open-ended. A mentor offers you specific knowledge, expertise, and stories to help guide you to the right answers. A mentor supports you based on their own life and work experiences. The benefit of mentorship is talking with someone who has been there and done that. Maybe they haven’t done exactly what you have, but they know firsthand the pressure, expectations, and challenges you face. They have the war stories, successes, and failures to share with you. They tend to teach you something specific to support your growth. They also help you feel understood and not alone because they can relate to what you’re experiencing!

What kind of mentors do you need?

I often recommend the following different kinds of mentors to my clients:

• Within your organization (one to two)

• External to your organization (two to three)

• Outside your industry (at least one)

• Different gender (at least one of your mentors)

• Peer mentors (a few outside your organization)

• Next Stage Mentors who are 2 stages ahead in their career

You’ll notice that I’ve included mentors outside your organization and outside of your industry. External mentors are essential even if you plan to never leave your organization. They bring you a vastly different mindset and perspective that those you interact with most. They bring you key learnings and stories that solve similar challenges but in a different context. These people will help you develop critical thinking and systems thinking faster than if you were to surround yourself with only internal mentors. Mentors from diverse industries will push your strategic thinking further because they’ll widen your world view. Finding a mentor doesn’t have to be weird or awkward, it’s like developing any other relationship, you just have to put yourself out there.

While a coach will help you evolve and transform as a leader for the long term, you need a strong support team by your side that knows what it’s like to be in your position with the pressure, expectations and challenges you face. You can’t be your very best without both a coach and many mentors!