Creating a Culture of Mentorship with Ashish Kothari and Lori Crever

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspiration to help you operate at your fullest potential, integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. I'm your host, Ashish Kothari, the founder and CEO of Happiness Squad and author of the bestselling book Hardwired for Happiness. I will be your personal guide on your journey to explore the many facets of happiness wisdom, well being and flourishing, from personal growth to building more positive environments at work. In each episode, we will share powerful insight, tips and stories from our guests who are leading experts, company executives, and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge. Whether you're looking to overcome life's challenges, to go from good to great, or to enhance your team's performance through flourishing, this podcast is the place for you to find more joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Join us every week as we rewire for Happiness together. Welcome to another episode of the Happiness Squad Podcast. Here's a question for you to ponder. What if the secret to career success isn't just about working harder, but finding the right mentors along the way to accelerate your leadership journey? Today we explore this idea with our special guest Laurie Krieber, who's the author of Prodigy, a Roadmap for Mentorship and Director of Strategic Partnerships for the center for Mentoring Excellence. Lori's journey from the entertainment industry to international banking is nothing short of inspiring. She has worked as a stage manager at an ABC affiliate, pursued acting in New York City, and eventually found her calling in international banking, where she spearheaded a successful mentorship program at Wells Fargo, where 88% of program graduates reported notable career advancements. In this episode, Lori shares transformative insights on the power of mentorship and the critical role it played in her personal and professional growth. We touched on several topics on mentorship, including how organizations can foster a mentorship culture that truly supports and values it, how embedding these practices into the company fabrics is crucial for success. Lori also shared her insights on what makes an effective mentor mentee relationship and offered practical tips that anyone can harness, regardless of whether your company offers a formal mentorship program or not. So let's jump into the podcast and hear and benefit from the tips Lori offers. Hi my dear friend Laurie. It is so lovely to be recording this episode of Happiness Squad podcast with you.

Greetings. It's beautiful to be here. It's my pleasure. It's my honor.

You know, Laurie, you and I met at the Gross Global Happiness Summit in March in Costa Rica and, you know, just your light and just your jubilant spirit combined with kind of this high level of IQ and truly this commitment towards helping individuals and organizations benefit from the power of mentorship. Just like it just spoke to my head, my heart, my spirit. And I know it's taken us three months to get here, but I'm so excited that we are here and we get to share some of the real amazing jewels on mentorship with our listeners. Thank you.

I'm so pleased to be an honorary member now of the Happiness Squad.

You absolutely are. So, my friend, tell me a little bit about your own journey with mentorship and what inspired you to write Protege Power, A Roadmap to Mentorship, which, by the way, I have loved reading. Thank you.

I worked right out of college in the entertainment industry. My job while I was finishing college and for the first few years out was as a stage manager at the ABC television affiliate in my market, which is Minneapolis St. Paul. And I loved it. I worked on talk shows, newscasts. But inside, the beating heart that I possessed was to pursue acting. And so a good friend of mine convinced me I should join her in New York City and pursue acting. So the rest of my 20s, I worked in the music industry. I was personal assistant to a Grammy Award winning jazz singer. I worked at a big recording studio, we did jingles for huge multinational accounts. And then I had to grow up. Sadly, I did have to grow up. And I ended up relocating back to Minneapolis St. Paul and I landed in international banking. So maybe Ashish, we would call that a 180.

Yeah.

So my connection to mentoring, I'd say, is twofold. First off, I had remarkable managers when I started in international banking and they wanted me. I was a diverse hire because I was coming from the arts. They wanted that. I received wonderful guidance, coaching, mentoring, so that I could, while retaining myself, my creative self, my innovative self, I could also be in a style and be highly credible in a conservative, large corporate environment. Then, two and a half years into my role, we did a huge merger. I was working for Norwest bank, headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Norwest purchased in 1999. Wells Fargo. Yeah, and then we adopted, broadly, the Wells Fargo name because that brand was 150 years old. Yeah, very good decision, very good merger. And I landed in a role, communications and PR and employee engagement. And so I was tasked with starting a mentor program. And Ashish, I was so naturally highly motivated because it was real to me how I had benefited from helpful guidance and mentoring that was generously offered and offered with such affirmation Right. And so that's what I set about, was to work with a team, a diverse team of leaders to refine and steadily work on improving our design of how can we match mentees or proteges from any level in our division with their dream mentor. So that whatever it was that they were looking to work on right now in the immediate, I was pairing them with the perfect mentor that could help them with whatever was the career dilemma that they wanted to solve.

You know, I don't believe in happenstances, and I think it is, I think the world of art, that 10 years that you spent, I think prepared you because, you know, I just was thinking when you said, I remembered when you had mentioned that to me when we met in gth, but I'd of course long forgotten about it. But if we think about the arts, Laurie, I'm thinking about some of the greatest musicians, some of the greatest painters. That field is absolutely a field where proteges, there is a whole years and years, thousands of years of learning under a teacher, but being mentored by them beyond and practicing and getting better and someday surpassing, you know, even this concept of Shu Ha Ri is so wedded. So I think as we think about very rarely in the world of business do we actually turn to the world of arts to kind of say, hey, what makes a great mentor? What makes a great mentee? So I think you kind of integrated a lot of that in your own. You know, you mentioned you were an assistant to one of the Grammy Award winning jazz players. I mean, there is so much that, you know, just in your being was ready to receive and that intelligence that you were then able to put into a program at Wells Fargo and support so many others, I think that was the missing thread for me. And I can just see how that life actually prepared you for some of the insights. Because you can write a mentorship book which is very dry, and go do this, and go do this and go do this, but that's not what your book is.

Yeah, very good perception on your part. And I think that maybe is how, and there's probably other people listening from watching what we're discussing right now that have encountered similar, or maybe you are this person inside your organization that I had perhaps a nature about me that managers knew that they could keep tossing things my way that were perhaps eclectic, needed to be done, wanted energy invested in it, but it wasn't black and white clear where it should land. So that's how my role evolved and grew. And you're right, it was ideal for someone With a strong background in the humanities and now for a couple decades, I feel that's one of my principal values is what you were hinting at is cross pollinating between the. This very important world of business and the arts and humanities. Right. That we would call.

Absolutely.

A Renaissance person. To have that breadth of interest and skill and really just to live a life of curiosity.

Yeah.

That's another important lesson from the so called Renaissance era.

Absolutely. So, my friend, tell me about who were some of your key mentors. Right. Tell me a story about the key matters and the roles that they have played in your life.

When I was in college, and I don't think I knew the word mentor, but I can easily state that I had a wonderful, amazing first mentor. During my time at the University of Minnesota, I accepted an invitation to join a nonprofit board. It was a scholarship program for young women. And every year they did a big event, like on stage event, and I was invited to join the board to take on the role of designing and producing that event. And, you know, I'm a dancer, a theater person, so I would bring in a choreographer and I did some of the choreography. I would bring in some of my colleagues from the television station. I convinced them to volunteer to do lighting and set design and stage management. And I didn't have a car at the time. And so someone else who was probably 15 years my senior, she also lived in Minneapolis. And she gracefully, kindly offered to come and scoop me up every other month, right. To go to board meetings. And we would have these rich, deep conversations. And unwittingly, one of the first goofy things I did at a board meeting was tell everyone, don't expect too much from me. I'm just a college student. And she was a very seasoned professional in health care. She was honestly the. This is huge. She was the transplant coordinator for the organ transplant program in University of Minnesota surgery. Big time, big player, big brain. Right. And she was a diplomat. And boy, she really gave it to me. When we drove home, it was just the two of us, and with a lot of love, she said, don't ever position yourself that way again. You are so qualified of anybody in that room right now. You have done more theater than anyone. So, you know, she just really helped me to put my head on straight and also to learn this important skill of discernment, to really pick and choose. What do you say out loud? Right? This is for all of us. You might think hundreds of thoughts, but you need to be discerning on which ones actually pass right through your mouth.

Which ones are true, which ones are true, and which ones, even if they are true, are suited for what's needed right now.

Suited, right. Because, you know, it was like, you can be, I guess, too honest, too forthcoming. You know, we want pick your times of when you're going to be vulnerable. But I didn't even know who I was addressing. It was a very early board meeting. So we would have. Then, you could imagine, for the next two years, just all these rich conversations, really helping to groom me and mature me into being more aware and skillful and professional.

Yeah.

And how I presented myself and also how to be in a board meeting. Boy, anytime you serve on a nonprofit board or a school board, such rich learning takes place.

Beautiful. I love that. You know, I had one of these mentoring moments in my life. Lori. He wasn't even a formal mentor. And we'll get into that, you know, a little bit here. Right? But it's sunny. Like, I was, you know, I was a young partner, and I was really excited about the space of packaging. And, you know, I was always entrepreneurial. So I'd reached out to this company that we didn't serve as a firm, and I always did that. I was always known for just emailing people. Calling the platform was amazing. I'm like, hey, we'd like to talk. So we got a meeting set up for 90 minutes with the CEO, the CFO, and one of the business unit presidents. And we were going to go meet with them, and I pulled in the senior partner. His name is John Livingston. He used to be the managing partner for Chicago. And, you know, John was like, listen, I'm happy to come with you. I'll support you, et cetera. He didn't know a lot about the space, but, you know, he was a fantastic. You know, I'd always admired him. I'd always known him to be a really kind somebody that everybody looked up to, and I wanted to build that relationship with him. So I was like, let's go do this together. And anyway, you know, I had really, you know, I had, like, looked at the company. I'd analyzed the company. I had all the levers, I think, that are going to help them. I had a whole thing for, like, it was holistic. Here's how you grow revenue. Here's how you get new customers, pricing all the levers on operations, some things on human capital that had put all this together. And John was like, okay, that's great, and I'm sure you're prepping. We got into a car, and he said, okay, can you show me the document. What are we going to talk about? And I literally pulled out this 160 page PowerPoint. And he's like, literally. I don't think he used what the fuck is this? But it was something pretty close to that of like, what is that? And I said, this is all the analysis. This is all the levers, and this is all the ways in which we can support them. And he was like, okay, we were already in the car. So he literally says, take these two pages out from every document. We literally took two pages out. And he said, we are here to listen. We are here to listen and connect. And that's it. And it was just one of those moments. I had spent all of this and it completely changed my approach. It made my approach so much better because all of a sudden all the prep was needed. So we knew the areas to focus on. We could ask the right questions, but we didn't need to lead with that. And that was one of those unbelievable mentoring moments that for the next six to eight years was at the heart of why I was so successful at the firm. But that's the role mentors can play for us, right? Whether they are formal or informal. Formal or informal mentors.

I love that story, Ashish. I love that he was speaking informal, but formal in what you've described from his heart, but with great clarity. Great clarity for you. And then to your credit and to my credit, in the story I shared, we were open to it, receive it.

We are open to receiving it.

So easy to say, difficult to execute.

Yes, you.

You have to be open to that feedback or that reflection and really give it space and consider, wow, you know, this is coming from someone who's clearly on my side. And you, it seems like you were able to see that.

Oh, my God, it is. Absolutely, absolutely. So listen, let's jump into it because we are touching on this element of some of the concepts that makes a good mentor mentee relationship. So there are, I mean, there are so many concepts in here, Lori. We could be talking for three hours and I don't think we'll have enough. Enough to share from here. But, like, what might be some two or three things that you have found in all of your rich, you know, 20 plus years, 30 plus years, maybe even like in this space. Lori, what are two or three key elements that make an effective mentorship mentor, mentee relationship?

Well, one important concept I've just touched upon, and I would say, if you are looking to be mentored, have a good idea of what it is that you would like to be mentored on. And very simple. I call that your right now overarching aim regarding your career. So it's the, it's the thing you want to tackle in the next six to 12 months. You know, you may have a five year vision, you may have a 10 year plan, that's great. But to get someone to mentor you, you, you have to put some filters in place for yourself. And I think sometimes we might imagine or you might even get matched. You might be matched as a university student within a alumnus and they just threw a match together like a generic. Let's just get you a mentor that I do not see as being nearly so effective as you as the would be mentee or protege. Identifying. Okay. I've just started a small business. I don't have a background in finance and I know the taxation schedule in my state is complex. I think I need to do a class and probably also find a mentor who is in a small business space and really knows a lot about cash flow and organizing the accounting for a small biz. Okay, great. Now you've just narrowed it to like, okay, now you know what you're looking for. It's kind of like when you're the mentee, you're the consumer, right? So you want to identify, okay. What you know, sometimes I say it's like appetite. All right, you know, you want to go to a restaurant, what type of cuisine, what are you in the mood for?

So I like it, make it specific, you know, versus I'm looking for a mentor. Okay, for what? So that it's not like for what there is one mentor who can help across all. You might have multiple mentors, but at one point choose and be really specific about something that is near term, that is specific and really think about what are all the things. I love that. So that's number one. What are some others?

The other is really the spirit of my book is you don't need a formal mentor program as we discussed earlier. Yes. I in my job ran a very formal 12 month long career mentor program within my division over the years. Ultimately 900 people went through it. We had great results, great success. I was like your dream concierge at a luxury hotel. I knew everybody. I maintained year round a rich database of leaders I knew and seasoned professionals willing to mentor. That is so wonderful. If you have access to that either through your organization or through your college or university, maybe a business association you're part of. But I wrote my book for someone who doesn't have access to that My book is diy. You can do it yourself with some self knowledge and some moxie and putting it through a filter of like, what are you looking to work on and develop about yourself? You can find a good mentor and there's even a whole chapter of how do you recruit them?

Yeah, how do you recruit them? And I think that's such a powerful message, Laurie, because, you know, I think in all the work that I do around flourishing, and this is at the heart of it, growth and development is at the heart of it. And you know, there's so many people say, yeah, my company doesn't support it. Yeah, my mentor didn't show up. Yeah, they like, like, no, like, it doesn't matter. I love this notion of we are autonomous, we have agency. And I love how practical tips you have. And I would love to call chapter on how do you recruit a mentor. Right. And by the way, you know, you didn't mention it, but you do mention it in the chapter. We didn't mention it right now. And friends, if you are looking for a mentor, just like compassion, right. I don't think it is oftentimes we say, like, why would Lori mentor me? Like, what do I have to offer? We all have such amazing things that we can offer. And frankly, even if you don't have, you are offering yourself as a way for Lori to provide to others, which is one of the biggest sources of joy. Back when we look at the science of flourishing, we receive more than we give. So even if you have nothing to offer, which I would say everybody has something to offer, we can learn from each and every one. There is a life lesson. There is a stage where you are where you could give something back. But even if none of that, you are providing an offer and an opportunity for somebody to serve.

That is so well observed because I commonly think both men and women, we simply are not aware of the richness, the vastness of our knowledge. Especially if you are seasoned in your industry, you probably are not aware of how much of the secret playbook you have. And so just to be a safe sounding board for an individual who's newer in the industry, hearing some of their dilemmas, there's a strong chance you have been there, done that, and you may be, you know, tripped on yourself when you encountered a similar dilemma.

Yeah.

So you can help them by saying, I hear this. I went through something similar. Let me share something that I learned, and let's see if it's applicable to your situation. Guess what? It is going to be applicable. And through that dialogue, and discussion, you can help to reduce the instances of a person going down a path that will not serve them. Yeah, that's what I think a good mentor can do. It's be like you could do that, you know. But my caution is or was something I want you to think through, reflect on this. Right, because think about Ashish, how many times you have observed it or maybe had this yourself where you make a great big decision at work and then the there's unintended consequences that you didn't forecast. After that's happened a couple times, guess what? You get good at thinking through what might be unintended consequences of this. And so to help somebody else be able to develop those muscles, mental muscles, I mean, just that alone so valuable.

We hope you're enjoying this episode. If you'd like to start building habits and integrating the hardwired for happiness practices into your life, come check out Rewire our program on the Happiness Squad website. Rewire contains 35 minute micro practices that can help you truly build habits for a happier, healthier life filled with more love and meaning. The program uses the science of habit formation and the power of community to support you in moving from knowing to doing to being. Now back to the episode. Yeah, absolutely. I mean we all have so much to offer and we have so much to offer even if, as I said, like even offering a chance to help others serve. So tell me about, share a powerful story from me, from, you know, from Prodigy Power that really illustrated that brings to life this transformative impact of mentorship.

One that comes to mind. I think it's very common where a person who is a super strong individual contributor over a period of time, maybe three or so years, let's say they get promoted to manager. They may have zero managerial skills, but this is traditionally who gets promoted is people that are hitting home runs, right? And then we think, oh, they could lead everybody. So we had someone like that in our division and she was floundering badly though she was a strong individual contributor. Right. And of course it was psychologically just doing so much damage as well because she was flummoxed. How could I be so rock solid as an individual contributor in the international credit space, which is very complex. And now I've got this team and she had a couple young children at home and she would complain, my direct reports are more unmanageable than my preschoolers. So that really didn't help. So came into our program and listening to her, I would always do we call it an intake interview, ask a couple of key questions I recruited a female senior leader who was very calm, very even and dare I say beloved, dare I say revered as a manager. People that worked for her, loved working for her and were very loyal and she retained top talent, you know, for decades.

Yeah.

So quickly what the younger manager learned is that the younger manager was listening to her direct reports problems, absorbing them and trying to solve them. And if you've got suddenly overnight, seven direct reports, all in different regions, guess what? That's a lot of problems to solve. No wonder she was pulling her hair out. So the more seasoned leader, as she got to know these dilemmas, she taught her how through skillful listening. And honestly, this is kind of a Zen concept, but create a container of psychological safety with that direct report so that they know you're keenly listening to them, but you are also expecting and giving them space to solve their own problems. You could maybe help a bit. You can nudge, ask some more probing questions. Right. But fundamentally transform yourself into the type of manager that is genuinely empowering and improving the confidence in each direct report that they can be their own best problem solver. At a minimum, come into that meeting with your manager stating the problem, but also at the same time giving what you believe is a solution and then iron that out with your manager. Those types of techniques. Of course, this didn't happen in one session. As I said earlier, these individual parent, you know, the pairings have worked together for 12 months. But this changed the younger manager's life, changed her life, changed her physical health. It was so great. It was so great. So she needed manager skills, thus working with a successful seasoned manager. It was just beautiful.

I think it's such a powerful story and it so resonates. I think it actually touches also on a different element about formal mentorship or not. You know, I was a miserable manager. Like really? No, no. I mean, I'm like, it's, it's, it's actually, it's. I was miserable to others and I was miserable myself my first year as a, When I first got promoted to a manager, you know, I was, that I could always get stuff done faster than the others. I was a great problem solver. I had great relationships with clients. Relationships came naturally. So it was like this perfect mind and, you know, left brain, right brain, mind and heart. And, you know, there's a, you know, from an early age I had this huge bar for like, I have this story, this deep driving need and fear that had driven me, which was about, if it is not perfect, I won't be loved and only Perfect counts like hundred and you never know till the thing is done if it's perfect or not. So that just means you suffer your way through. If you're not suffering enough, it's not perfect. You haven't given it your best shot. Right? So you can imagine, like I, in my first year as a manager, I don't think I've ever said this on this podcast, but I literally used to almost every day have stress headaches because I was like, I'm like, this is not good enough. Do people care enough about me? And then really be like, let me solve everybody. All of a sudden, you know, there's enough work to do. When you're doing large programs beyond a work stream to now problem solve four work streams, including client, you're just, it's impossible. So this notion of really being able to support people to solve their own problems, being able to give up control, being able to ask the right questions, you know, And I also used to be really hard on people who were not kind of being able to solve it or their work didn't kind of quote unquote meet mine, my expectations. And you know, I, I had one of my. Somebody who was junior to me once asked me because he knew how much I, he loved my impact orientation. He also knew I cared deeply about people, that I wasn't an asshole, right? Like, I was not trying to be like harsh, but like I was showing up that way. And he asked me a question which changed again my whole way I led and he asked me this question. He said, ashish, you're so harsh and so hard on people who are failing in your eyes to meet the bar. And for people who are there, you're like so like high five. And you know, you give all kind of leeway and your love and they really know they're in your favor. And these people are not. Let me ask you a question. Who do you think is working harder to meet your bar? Not who is exceeding your bar or not. I'm talking about effort. You think it's those guys who became easy to. Or do you think it's these guys who might not be as good but are making up, working 30, 40% more and failing and you are all they're getting from you is this is not good enough and, and work harder. And it literally, deep in my heart I was like, holy shit. You know, it is so true. They are more deserving of my love, my care and really an orientation of how can I help them. Rather not good enough. Not good enough, not good enough. And Again, was like a big thing. And it was came from a much junior, junior associate. In fact, you know, he's now the president of one of the largest divisions. One of our core clients of mine is the. Is John Zip. And, and I, and I. And it changed my life. Right. And changed the way I led, the way I manage people.

What a wise soul.

Oh, he's amazing. He is, he is, he is.

And that took courage to offer that to you.

Yes, yeah, absolutely. So talk to me a little bit. You know, Lori, like what we are talking about. You touched on psychological safety. You know, you talked about creating an environment. You talked about, you know, this vessel where people can show up and it's OK to fail, but still, you know, you show up with answers. How can organizations, if you're an organization leader, right? And we have a lot of like business unit leaders, CFOs, CEOs, who listen to this podcast. How can they, as leaders, create a culture that supports and really values mentorship, Supports mentorship in terms of safe spaces and values it in terms of making it a real priority.

I think it's some of these things that we're speaking to right now is if you can identify for yourself one or two transformative moments in your life and your career where a mentor, however informal, really like hit you between the eyes, you know, like made you gasp, then that is a well of passion on which you can draw. The mentor program that I operated with was the brainchild of the then head of our division who spent his entire career at Wells Fargo. So started out as a teller or personal banker right out of college, and then ended up 44 years later retiring as the head of international and insurance services. Probably was over $3 billion of revenue per year for the last chunk of his career.

He.

Never, this is his own words that he would share at our mentor events. He never would have left his safe, secure banking branch and moved into the commercial banking space ever, except a mentor, a mentor who believed in him and said, you have so much ability and you need to know reach that capacity. You've been doing this for too long. I think you should move over in the commercial space. It will just be so dynamic for you. You can do it. No, I can't. Yes, you can. You know, so got him to do that. Then subsequently, years later, a different mentor said to him, you are way too comfortable running your region of commercial banking. Guess what? Wells Fargo is going to start an international division. You love other cultures. You are so trusted and respected. This is your stretch. This is what you need to do next. No. Yes. No. Yeah. So it really took a mentor, you know, can be someone who's like, a little more than a cheerleader, maybe more than we would think of it as a. Someone who's your track and field coach to get you to the Olympics. Right. That is just going to say, I see that the first chapter in my book is what does you know your capabilities through someone else's eyes.

Yes.

What are your capabilities? That you don't see the good stuff. Right. But someone else sees that and see this in you and can push you and trust that. Right. So trust that. So that, I feel, is part of it. The other thing that I would say, to be perfectly explicit, a lot of companies try to run a mentoring effort, Ashish, with volunteers. They say, oh, we should do mentoring. Yeah. Give it to the diversity committee, which is a group of volunteers. The chances for true results, they are low. Because guess what? When we're volunteering, our job will take priority. Of course it will. So part of my success was that it was in my job description. I said this earlier. Part of my job was called employee engagement programs. And so having a super successful, robust mentor program, I was incentivized. It was part of how I would get a raise and get promoted and. Right. So I was super earnest about it, and I was given that luxury of tackling it. Right. And I built a portfolio of employee engagement and DEI programs. We did job shadowing. We got people involved with microlending and the developing. Like, we just did so many great things. But, yeah, I had a team and it was in our job. So I would say that, too. For organizations, if you're serious about building a mentoring culture, give it to someone that it's in their job description, and then it will get done. Like, we all know the wisdom. It gets measured. It will get done. That's the energy.

So, Laurie, that's amazing that, you know, it was in your job description. But the mentors that were in your program and the mentees, of course, you know, they're looking for something. But how did you make sure that the mentors who were kind of also volunteering their time made it a priority?

What a very good question. So into the second and third year, from surveying and talking to the first year participants, I realized we needed to do more to prepare the individual mentees. And I learned this because, no surprise of that first year, of our 14 pairs, several of them had spectacular results, some of them more modest results. So, of course, I was studying and talking to the people with the spectacular Results and really distilling, like, well, what were the elements of that? And then I thought, oh, I should teach all the mentees this, right? As they're starting their mentoring relationship. So what I could always promise the volunteer mentors, which naturally were seasoned people, extremely busy, right? I would say, I'm going to send you a highly motivated, well prepared mentee. They will drive the relationship. They will get on your calendar. They will be at a high level of accountability and make this easy for you, make this a pleasure for you. Right? And that's pretty much what happened. And just kept getting. We kept refining it, refining it, Just getting better and better at this. So probably by year six, I had more willing mentors than people that wanted mentors.

Well, also, once you've gone through the program and you've been mentee that, like, you've been mentored, you want to give it forward, right?

That's right. You want to pay it forward. You want to pay it forward. So that's what I would say is mentee preparation. And, you know, sometimes I would talk to somebody who wanted to get in the mentor program and they were way too vague or they were in graduate school or they were planning a wedding or having a baby or planning to adopt a baby. And I would say to them, talk to me next year. This is not your year to get into the mentor program because this is going to be on top of your job job. And if you're building a house or planning a wedding, you will. You will not make the most of this. And then if you're in a large organizational setting, Ashish, you know what I'm talking about. This could be a ding to your reputation if you have me go out of my way to secure a talent to volunteer to be your mentor, and then you just sort of crap out after a few months because you're too busy. This is not good. It's not honorable, right? So I say, let's have this be an enhancement action in your life when you can really put your all. Now that I'm describing a formal program and I talk about that, the second chapter of my book is Informal Formal. Both can create miracles for you. You might want an informal arrangement. You might not want to raise your hand if you have access to a formal program, if you're not confident that you can give it your all and be a shining example of all the resource that is going to be officially invested in you.

So, look, I love this. And you know, there are many of my clients and friends who tell me, like, even two years In. I still talk about the firm as the. I talk about the firm McKinsey, and I talk about me because I truly love the fir. I didn't leave when I did because of, you know, I didn't like the firm. Like, a lot of people are like, yeah, I'm done. Like, no. But I think there's so many things that McKinsey does that there are so many wish. I wish more companies did. So I'll give you an example of one of the things that is a core part of the processes of the firm. One of the key elements. Every year, I think this got launched about six, seven years, eight years ago. But every year, we actually explicitly celebrate mentorship. And what do I mean by that? There's a survey that actually goes out to all associates, Ems junior staff. And there's a survey that goes out to all the partners and senior partners. And it's literally a survey that says, who are the people you're mentoring? And then there is another one that goes out to all the junior colleagues who are the people who are your mentors? And you literally show one. We celebrate the people who have lots of mentors. There are many who have, like, 12, 15 mentees. So that's great. We celebrate the ones that show up as really building the next level of bench. And we celebrate them. We recognize them in their reviews, right? They get the equivalent of stars. But you know what? It also highlights, hey, here's a bunch of people who see you as mentors, but you don't see them as mentees. There's an opportunity missed here. And the other way around, hey, here's all the partners who consider you a mentee, but you're not choosing them and saying they're mentors. A missed opportunity. And all of a sudden, you start to make these connections naturally, and you celebrate the positives rather than, wow, Lori, you're a senior manager, you're a senior partner, and you have nobody you're mentoring. Like, no, we don't need to do that. Let's celebrate the person who has 8, 12, 15. And it also highlights where somebody has too many, in which we say, hey, listen, can you really be that effective mentoring so many? You know, is there others you can pull in? Everybody goes to you because you're amazing. Let's have replicate more amazingness. So again, you know, a program that really actively. It's an example of something that is living, breathing. It's at the heart of the firm and makes such a big difference.

You have touched upon something more than once, which is so Powerful. And that's embedding this into the culture. Yeah, really embedding it, celebrating it. You know, our program was so honoring of the mentors who were volunteering their time making that investment that it became. I almost hesitate to use this word, but it might be the right word. It became prestigious to mentor in the program. I mean, it was just very satisfying and rewarding. And sometimes I would have mentors come to me in advance of the program matching and they would say, which I loved. Hey, I've been working as an example, I've been working in foreign exchange my whole career. You know what I don't know enough about, Lori, is trade finance. If you have an incoming protege who's in trade finance, would you please consider matching them with me? Because they know organically through that 12 month relationship there'll be such rich interchange of knowledge that you said it, they'll be so good for the mentor as well.

Yeah. And you know, it's a fundamental reframe. Right. My lesson from my time at the firm, 17 years, it's just so special, you know, it's fundamentally a reframe that. As managers and as leaders, our job number one is not. I'm going to say this quite. Our job number one is not to deliver the results. Like what? No, our job number one is not to deliver the results. Our job number one is to help develop the leaders, our people on our team. It is not the job of learning and development. It is not the job of somebody else in HR as line leaders. Our job number one is to develop our talent. And the one of the best ways in which we can develop talent is, is by being good mentors. And the best way for you as a leader to continue growing yourself is to be a good mentee. Yeah, right. Both. Keep learning, keep investing in that learning, supporting that environment. And if you're not, if you do that, results will follow, results will be there. Because in the end, what connects strategy to execution is people. And it doesn't matter how great of an ideas you have, if your people can't execute and you're not supporting them in becoming better leaders, better managers, better developers of talent themselves, the whole thing stops. But if you do it, you create an amazing multiplicative effect.

Yeah, you do. And it requires a measure of humility.

Yes, my friend, this has been an amazing conversation. As we wrap up, what's the final piece of advice you might give our listeners, whether they are mentors or mentee?

I would say if you are looking for a mentor and you have identified someone that you think would be ideal. And they don't know you yet, but you've seen them speak at a couple of meetings or you know, some, some way somehow you've had some exposure to them. Ask them, approach them. Approach them to be your mentor. Giving a rationale as to why. Right? Have a mini elevator speech, whether it's in person or sending an email. Be explicit. Take the risk. Most of the time they'll say, yes, I've seen this work out a hundred times. Just go for it. It's such a compliment to be asked. And the really main obstacle would be do they already have too many people that they're mentoring or have they made a recent big transition? I think just have the courage. Listen to the tales that Ashish and I have shared like this could change your life. This could be such a high impact in just helping you to shift some perspectives. And your instinct is probably correct. Your instinct is probably correct. Who would be a good mentor for you?

Well, my friend, thank you for this generative lifting conversation. Thank you for the beautiful work that you have been doing and are continuing to do. It is a real. I'm really grateful for you to be in my life and look forward to so much more collaborations in the years to come.

I do as well. Thank you, Ashish.

Have a wonderful rest of your week. My dear friend, that wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us. Review and share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week.