The Benefits and Challenges of Board Mentor-Mentee Relationships

Listen to this episode of the BoardVision^TM podcast, which features a discussion on the role and value of mentorship in the boardroom.

In the December episode of the BoardVision podcast, “The Mentor-Mentee Relationship,” Raquel Suarez, NACD senior project manager of operations and inclusion, spoke with Barbara Adachi and Lori Mackenzie about the role mentorship plays in the boardroom, what defines an effective mentor-mentee relationship, and how each party can benefit from the engagement. Adachi is a board member at Atlas Technology Solutions, Old Republic International Corp., and VSP Vision and Mackenzie is cofounder of the VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University and advisor to August Public.

Below is an excerpt from their conversation.

How is a mentor-mentee relationship valuable to boards? What are some of the benefits and challenges in nurturing this relationship?

Adachi: On the board, the most challenging part is the amount of time that you're really together. So, if you have quarterly meetings and maybe a few calls during [the year], you're not necessarily in person.

I really believe that mentoring relationships start on a very personal level, making that personal connection. If you're only together four times a year and there isn't a formal program in place to where you get connected with somebody who could be your mentor, then it's not necessarily something that comes [up] naturally, and you have to [find] a way to follow up because you're not going to see that individual for another quarter. I think it's incredibly valuable but not necessarily as natural as when you get to work with somebody or get to be together in person more often than every quarter. So, I think that's one of the challenges.

It doesn't dilute the value of the relationship, but if there's not a formal way to do it, it doesn't always just happen naturally because you're, at least for me, walking into the room as a new board member. You don't necessarily know where to gravitate toward and you don't necessarily know who you're going to make that connection with until probably at least two or three meetings in. I'm a big fan of having something more structured and more formal because then it becomes part of the culture. If it's not, it's really up [to you] as an individual to either reach out and find the mentor or reach out and find the mentee.

Mackenzie: When the [VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation] Lab joined with the California Partners Project, we interviewed dozens of directors and asked them, “What makes your board culture great? What do some of the chairs do that really make your board work both pleasurable but also really effective?”

One of the things we discovered is when there was a more formalized mentorship program, that was really effective. What we also discovered in those conversations is that sometimes mentors don't know exactly how to be a great mentor. For example, they might have known people on the board already when they joined, and so that mentoring relationship was more easily established through prior relationships, or they may not have worked with somebody who wasn't necessarily in the same role as them. As you know, there are many different ways people get on boards. They could be a go-to-market expert, they could be a cybersecurity expert. The mentor might not understand fully what that person's expertise is and how to bring that to the board.

I like the tip … of thinking about mentorship as a two-way conversation where you're both learning about each other's expertise and how to be effective on the board…. One of the most important things we discovered in our interviews was that having mentors explain the unwritten dynamics or hidden dynamics of the board, the unwritten rules—How do decisions get made? When do you weigh in? What's the best use of the board book?—those informal dynamics and explaining it, at least, over the course of one business cycle or a year is a great way for mentors to get started in thinking about how to be effective as one.

Want to hear more? The full episode is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and the NACD website.