The Casual Mentor: A Lifetime of Mentoring Concepts and Practices

Copyright © 2015 Hank Hoppin. Hopperty Property, LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-8460-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8458-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8459-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015920286

iUniverse rev. date: 12/11/2015

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: Influential Beginnings

Chapter 2: Developing the Casual Mentor Style

Chapter 3: Culture Development and Belief System Building

Chapter 4: Management Team Networking and Partnering

Chapter 5: Corporate Controls—Issues and Answers

Chapter 6: The Mentor’s Skill Set and Importance of Storytelling

Chapter 7: Formal or Informal Mentoring—Which Is Better?

Chapter 8: Finding and Developing Talent

Chapter 9: The Line of Succession

Chapter 10: One More Thing … or Two

Acknowledgements—The Short List

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

About the Author

Introduction

Several years ago, while watching famous guests being interviewed week after week on a popular TV show, I noticed that the interviews always concluded with the same question. It was a two-part question that made the guests pause and think awhile before answering: What beliefs best describe your life’s journey and how do you want to be remembered?

After hearing the answers given, I asked myself the same question. My answer to the first part of the question is that I believe that finding happiness during my life went beyond achieving my personal goals. I was always happiest when I could take what I had learned in clearing the hurdles of life and transfer that knowledge to others to help them achieve their goals.

Regarding how I wish to be remembered, I hope to be remembered simply for my love of life and family. But I would also like to be remembered for my joy in building and maintaining friendships such as I experienced within my position as a district sales manager.

I still enjoy the friendships I made with corporate colleagues and many of the employees I hired over the years while working for a major pharmaceutical company. I’ve also valued the friendships, many still retained today, over the many years I was working as a volunteer for a variety of community organizations.

Shortly after I retired, I was asked if I missed the job and the routine of conducting company business. My reply remains the same almost five years later: I don’t miss the business or the job that much, but I do miss the people I worked with. This work-related group of business associates included those who assisted me on a mentoring project. This mentoring project was originally developed to educate our management team on mentoring. In the middle of this project, a couple of fellow managers encouraged me to share my findings about mentoring with all employees at every level within our sales division. This was what eventually prompted me to think about formalizing my thoughts on The Mentoring Project and recording everything we did.

In this book, I cover in-depth information and analysis of mentoring methods and styles I became involved with while I was a district sales manager. I’ll walk you through ideas we used in exploring concepts, developing plans, and eventually implementing a mentoring program. The purpose of this book is twofold. First of all, I hope to increase readers’ understanding of the various mentoring styles typically used by many American corporations and organizations. Additionally, through storytelling and citing the many advantages of informal mentoring, I intend to persuade the reader that casual mentoring impacts all of our lives, whether we realize it or not. The influence of this style of mentoring can go unrecognized because it often arrives in unsolicited bite-sized pieces. Because this style of mentoring is delivered casually, the recipient may not recognize the importance of the advice until it’s repeated. Recognition of importance occurs when it triggers a search in our memory banks, where past events are assimilated and checked against a stored list of relevant information.

This venture was at first a form of catharsis. Over time, however, it became a story designed to persuade the reader that mentoring is a worthy endeavor. The Casual Mentor is mostly about my thoughts about mentoring and how it influenced my belief system. Much of my expertise on the field of mentoring was acquired over my twenty-five-year tenure as a sales manager, working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. My interest in mentoring began with hands-on participation in collaborative activities early on as a mentee and then later as a mentor.

A relationship with a mentee usually occurs by chance. To help us identify a casual mentor, let’s start by listing a few of their traits, tendencies, and features of the relationship.

What are some traits and tendencies exhibited by mentors with a casual relationship style?

☐ They exhibit a nonjudgmental demeanor yet remain passionate about the advice they give mentees.

☐ They provide suggestive advice with no strings attached and no embedded self-serving ulterior motives.

☐ They remain passive, without the intent to promote their agendas, and don’t brag about their achievements.

☐ They quite often lack any identifiable anchored attachment or overtly visible connection to their mentees.

What are some relationship features used by mentors with a casual relationship style?

☐ They positively influence the behavior of mentees as role models, without issuing dictatorial mandates.

☐ They provide advice on career pathways and how to negotiate the twists and turns of a corporate maze.

☐ They promote trial-and-error discovery methods that can spark mentees’ curiosity and desire to learn.

☐ They prefer a hands-off or laid-back approach as the relationship tends to evolve at it’s own pace.

☐ They casually share knowledge through storytelling that has a positive effect on mentees’ beliefs.

☐ They remain flexible in regards to who starts and stops the relationship and whether the relationship is revived once it becomes inactive.

☐ Many relationships with a casual mentor come periodically in small doses and are usually short-lived. For example, role models, who are followed and emulated by mentees, come and go. They are replaced by new role models as mentees negotiate their way through life’s phases and career choices.

☐ The casual relationship can help the protégé to build trust and loyalty, thus assisting talent retention efforts and helping a company meet leadership line-of-succession demands.

I believe that the reader of this book will find the stories about my experiences with mentors and mentees to be uniquely valuable and useful. To whet your appetite for learning about my excursions into mentoring, I have listed three characteristics of an effective mentor, five benefits an effective mentor can provide, and four methods an effective mentor may choose to use.

Three Characteristics of Effective Mentors

1. Effective mentors are nonjudgmental and have many positive ideas. They enter into mentoring relationships without concern for titles, personal gain, or the gender, race, religion, or age of those they mentor. Success and Thinking partnership relationships are examples of where mentoring often occurs within the workplace. The mentee doesn’t always look for an experienced partner to mentor them.

2. Effective mentors are willing to share their knowledge and wisdom for the benefit of others.

3. Effective mentors readily admit that they are human. For example, they make mistakes and periodically share opinions that are not scientifically based.

Five Benefits Effective Mentors Can Provide

1. Effective mentors provide advice on decision making based not only on careful consideration and planning but also on improvisation required in specific situations that are potentially risk laden.

2. Effective mentors exhibit positive behavior. They seek to lead by being exemplary role models.

3. Effective mentors provide key assistance for networking and guide protégés through various possibilities available for career pathways. They assist talent retention efforts by helping to meet leadership line-of-succession demands.

4. Effective mentors provide inside information about appropriate and effective ways to operate within a club, company, or organization.

5. Mentors smooth the road for newcomers while providing cultural life rafts of knowledge and leadership skills.

Four Methods Effective Mentors Use

1. Effective mentors provide advice formally or informally; that is, with or without an official agreement.

2. Effective mentors use storytelling to share with others ideas they have acquired through experience.

3. Effective mentors encourage the use of reason and common sense, and they question following the herd.

4. Effective mentors share their philosophy and vision for the future, without imposing them.

The touchstone events that directed my belief system compass toward the benefits of mentoring began as a result of an invitation to participate in a company pilot program on mentoring for managers. After completing the