Andy Lopata on Mentoring and Relationship Strategies

And you're right in saying that they're good skills for relationships generally. You know, one of the things I've learned about myself and many other people, I'm sure I'm a fixer. My natural inclination is to help people. So if you tell me you're struggling with something, my first thing is to jump in. You know, I say, how are you? And you tell me, well, actually, I'm struggling with this, this and this. I'll say, well, actually, I could introduce you to so and so I could do this or what about that?

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Andy, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me, Kwame.

It is our pleasure. So how would you get us started? By telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Well, I'm a professional relationship strategist, which means that I help people think a little bit more thoughtfully about the stuff we take for granted, the relationships that we build. And that takes many forms. So I've written six books, I have my own podcast. I'm a speaker all over the world at various conferences and events, and I train a mentor coach on the topic. And I've been in this space for 25 years. So celebrating my 25th anniversary right now.

Incredible. Well, congratulations. And I think a cool place to start, Andy, would be really giving the listeners an idea. Idea first about what it means to be a professional relationship strategist. And then we can tie that into this most recent book.

Yes, I mentioned. It's about getting people to think thoughtfully about the stuff we take for granted. Almost everything we do in our business and in our career is made easier with the help and support of other people. Whether that's people giving you insights and information that you need, whether it's feedback and accountability, support, referrals, whatever it might be, influence that support can make all the difference. And it's. It's that fire, that juice that gets you to the next level. But we tend to take it for granted. We tend to just assume people will help us when people got their own things to worry about. So when I talk about professional relationship strategy, it takes what has commonly been known as networking for many years. But that word is open to so much misunderstanding that I try to avoid it. But it takes that building, nurturing and leveraging of networks and plants a strategy behind it gets you to think, who do I need to support me and how can they support me? Who do I already have a relationship with? But I'm not asking them the right questions. I'm not guiding them to the help I need. Who could help me? Maybe I need to build a deeper relationship with them. And who could help me, but I don't know them, so who could introduce me to them? So it's really making sure that you're surrounded by the right people at the right time, that they know how to help and support you and they want to help and support you, all while not feeling networked by you. Everything's authentic. You know, you're engaging with people in a human way, and they know that just as you're seeking their help, that you would be happy to help them if they needed it.

Andy, I love this. First of all, I knew I was going to love this interview because I love Ruth. She never sends me astray. And then second of all, I really wanted to make sure that you had an opportunity to outline what that means, because I think people could understand the words independently, but put together within a career, that's a completely different thing. And the things that stood out to me were just the simplicity of that revelation. Everything that we want to have professionally, and I will also say personally as well, is going to be bolstered by the quality of the relationships that we keep around you. But then also recognizing that in this world of business, we want to create these meaningful connections through our humanity and authenticity without making the other side feel networked. I think that last piece is so important. Yeah.

Because I said that networking is a word I try and avoid precisely because of that. There's probably two main reasons. One is because of all the negative connotations of people manipulating you, using you. And that's what I mean by feeling networked by someone. The other is that people hear the word networking and think of networking events, which are merely a tool in the process. They're not networking, but that's the perception. So that's why I tend to talk about professional relationship strategy. But it is networking ultimately. But in terms, you mentioned the word career, and there's a piece of research, and it's an old piece of research. It's from the 1990s, still very relevant today. And I think it is so powerful in saying why this is important. And it's from a book by an author called Harvey Coleman, and it was all around building a successful career. And Coleman looked at the different factors that went into promotion. Now, I've given so many talks to internal networks in big organizations over the years where when I've said doing a good job isn't enough, you feel someone's going to attack you because that's just not fair. You can see people staring at you, giving you daggers because they don't like what you're saying. When I found Coleman's research, that's changed the game and the way people react to it because it makes sense. So Coleman identified three factors that go into promotion decisions. Performance, image and exposure. So it's commonly known, it's very famous piece of research. It's known as PI. Performance, image, exposure. Now, everyone thinks that what's fair and what's right is if you do a good job, you get your rewards. In other words, performance should be the predominant factor. Out of those three, it accounts for 10%. Image is 30%, exposure is 60%. You put that into common English. If you do a good job, that's the basic prerequisite. I'm not saying because it's only 10%. You don't need to do a good job because trust me, if you do a bad one, more people will know about it. Exposure will. Image and exposure follow. But if you do a good job, that's why one thing. But people have to understand the value you bring to them. That's image. Why are you relevant to them and how are you going to help them achieve their objectives, solve their problems, whatever it is they're looking for. And then the right people need to know, and that's exposure. And I think you can. I use that. I open my careers talks with that. But actually I think you can transpose that into doing anything. You know, you could be the best negotiator going. But unless people really understand the value you bring and the difference you bring and where you make an impact and the right people are aware of that, you're not getting hired.

You're so right. You are so right. And I was, I had the biggest smile as you were saying this because I know this is going to help a lot of people. And that's great. But selfishly, Andy, I just had a meeting with a mentee and I was telling him this, but I didn't have any studies to back it up. So I feel, I feel vindicated, validated here. I appreciate it. And I think it's so important for us to recognize this, this. So we have performance being 10%, image being 30%, exposure being 60%. And I think one of the reasons why people hold back on like fully absorbing and incorporating this into their, their career strategy is because it feels like it cheapens our expertise because it can be hard to accept. But I think it's absolutely true. And once we start to. To understand this, then we can orient ourselves in the right way to get the results that we want. And I think this gives us a great opportunity to segue directly into the book, which is talking about ment. So this is one of the many different types of professional relationships that we can have. What is it that made you want to focus on mentoring explicitly in this most recent book?

Well, there are a couple of reasons. Number one is it's a natural evolution. I think it was about. It was last year, I look back at the six books I've written over, going back nearly 20 years now, and I realized they plot my career to a degree or certainly in this space, and there is a natural evolution there. And in particular, my last book in 2020 was about the power of being vulnerable and the importance of being vulnerable and seeking support. It's called Just Ask why Seeking support is your greatest strength. And obviously mentoring is a key part of that. And I talked a bit about mentoring in Just Ask. And I've trained on mentoring and spoken on mentoring over a number of years, sometimes as part of a wider topic, sometimes purely focused on the power of mentoring and how to approach that. And then over the last couple of years, I had more clients coming to, asking me to work with mentors and help with their mentoring programs. So that solidified the path I was already on. I think as I, as I finished writing Just Ask, in my gut, I knew my next book was going to be about mentoring. And I started having conversations around that with publishers and other people around me. So it was that natural evolution was one reason. The second reason, and this goes back over so many years, I can't tell you. So I've done a lot of work with what are known as ergs over the years. Ergs are employee resource groups for the benefit of who don't know. Employee resource groups, in simpler language are women's networks or Afro Caribbean networks or Asian networks, racial diversity networks, LGBTQ networks, and so forth. They're employee networks within large organizations, and mentoring has often come up as a topic within those. But people have always seemed lost as to what the next step is. And what I found is a common thread is the people might have heard of a mentoring program internally, or maybe their erg runs a mentoring program, but they don't know how to access it, or they've gone into it and no one's volunteered to be a mentor for so long, or there's not the right person there, or they go into a mentoring relationship and they don't know what to do mentors. The mentors don't know what to do, let alone the mentees. And what's really interesting is a lot of the training I've historically been asked to do is for mentees rather than mentors. That seems to be shifting, which is good because there seems to be a natural assumption that you're experienced, you're successful. If you're being asked to mentor, you know how to do that well. You might be really successful in your field, your business may be flying. That doesn't make you a good mentor. That doesn't mean you know how to approach a mentoring relationship. That doesn't mean you know how to adapt when your mentee is neurodivergent. It doesn't mean you know how to adapt if your mentee asks you really challenging personal questions, which has happened to me. It doesn't mean that you know what to do when your mentoring relationship isn't working and your mentee is ignoring you. So all of these different factors said, we pay lip service to mentoring, but we're not advocating for it actively enough. We don't understand it well enough. And we need to have a better conversation about mentoring. And it needs to be at the heart of how we help people grow and how we grow ourselves. But we only do that if we're strategic about it, if we're thoughtful about it. It goes back to those words I used earlier.

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I agree the thoughtfulness is necessary. And it's really interesting because when you say this, it's almost like there's an assumption that people understand what mentoring is. And so we say, oh, you should find a mentor. What does that mean? Or we're going to start a mentoring program. How do we do that? Well, and even just taking the time to understand those questions isn't something that is often done. And so I think a good place for us to start, Andy, is getting a really clear and robust definition about, of mentoring and what the goals are. And then let's, let's move from there.

Sure. I smile when you say a really clear definition because I think I could have given you a clearer definition before I wrote the book than after, funnily enough, because I think there's so many gray areas around this and even cultural differences. Mentoring in the uk, mentoring in the US are different. So let me start with my definition of mentoring, the Andy La Parta perspective on it, and that is that a mentor is someone who knows what you don't. They have the experience, the expertise, they've been on the journey that you're looking to go on and they can share with you along the way. Where the gray areas come in is first of all, traditionally we think of that person who's been on the journey naturally being the senior person in the relationship. It's not necessarily the case. And a really good example of this is we now have more generations in the same workplace than we've ever had before. And that's hard for people who are maybe baby boomers or Gen X to understand. The world is changing so rapidly. So there's a bigger need than ever for reverse mentoring for junior people to tell more senior people, help them understand how to engage with different generations, help them understand the digital world, particularly with the onset of AI. Help them to understand the impact of sustainability targets and objectives. There is so much, there's so many examples I could list there where a junior person in terms of seniority would mentor a senior person in terms of seniority. So actually the relationship senior to junior is based on the expertise or the experience in a particular area rather than where they are in the organization. Doesn't mean that what Ruth and I call the traditional hierarchical model doesn't exist. Of course it does. But it's not only you have reverse mentoring, you have peer to peer mentoring, you have reciprocal mentoring. All these different things can represent the mentoring mentoring relationship. The second gray area is that we tend to think of a mentor as someone that you will have a, almost a contractual relationship with, where you'll go and sit down with them once a month and they'll hold you accountable and so forth. Now I'm a big fan of that. I think it plays a really big part, particularly in terms of the accountability it builds into the relationship. But I also believe, and Ruth is adamant, and many of the people we've interviewed are adamant, that actually informal mentoring relationships are stronger. And I have 1 formal mentor, 2 if you include my mentoring supervisor. I have countless informal mentors, people who wouldn't even call themselves my mentor. But I can pick up the phone too. I can say, look, I've got this, this project coming up. I don't know how to address it. I'm starting to talk a lot more about projects in the public sector in the uk, particularly, which I've avoided in the past for various reasons. I don't have a lot of experience in that sector, even though it's where I started my working career. So I might turn to someone with experience of working in the nhs, for example, to help me with my conversations in the nhs. So I don't need them to mentor me every month, but they're for me when I'm putting a proposal together or I've got a delivery about to come up and I just want to run through some ideas. I think the downside of those informal relationships is if they don't hold you honest, in the same way that having that regular formal relationship will do that accountability that I talk. And so one of the things that we're really strong on in the book is the importance of a mentoring team, having a range of people around you who are there to support you along your way. Sometimes it will be people you know you can call really ad hoc. Others it will be more formal and there will be various shades in between. The third gray area is, and this is where the cultural differences come in, is how we differentiate. In the book, we talk about the difference between mentors and sponsors and coaches and role models. You can even throw consultants in there as well. The main area of dispute, if you like, is coaching. And a lot of people confuse mentoring and coaching. Now, my very clear distinction of the two is that a mentor knows a coach or explores. I've never used that phrase before and I quite like it. Should have put it in the book. But a mentor knows a coach explores. So I've already talked about the mentor has been on the journey before. They've got the experience. Coaches don't necessarily have the experience or the skill set or the expertise you're looking for, but they know how to work with you to help you find the answer. They'll ask the right questions. Now, a good mentor will use coaching techniques. So let's say I'm mentoring you. As soon as you tell me your challenge, I pretty much think I know the answer, particularly because I'm so arrogant, but let's just go with it. But in fact, what worked for me might not work for you. So if I just purely mentor and say, kwame, this is your challenge. Well, just go and do this. I'm doing you a disservice because I'm imposing my response to my challenge in my context on you, and yours may be completely different. So we need to go through that coaching conversation, the questioning, the reflection before we come up with a solution. And then ideally, you'll come up with a solution yourself. Now, if I still believe that my answer is the right one, I'll make sure you go away. Away with it. But if you found it for yourself, that's great. The other difference is that in the uk, mentors can get paid, and a business mentor is very much like a coach in the distinction I've shared for those listening on audio. Your eyebrows popped up when I said that, because in the us, coaching and mentoring, one of the big distinctions is coaches are paid, mentors are not. And perhaps coaches are seen as elevated, whereas maybe it's the other way around. In the uk, the mentors are more elevated. So I think there's a bit of semantics in there as well. So that's a really long answer where you wanted to. Succinct response. But I think it's really important to make those distinctions. Paints a. Perhaps a clearer picture over time.

Absolutely. This is incredible. Yeah. Just a quick synopsis for the. For the audience here. So a mentor is somebody who knows something that you don't. And I think that's so clear because people can get really hung up on the seniority type of thing, or is it appropriate for this person to be a mentor? That type of stuff. But then when you just think about it, terms of relative knowledge, then you just say, okay, I have a deficit here. This person is strong in that same spot. This is an opportunity for mentorship for me. And then thinking about how, yes, we can have some structured mentorship programs, but then sometimes the strongest mentors are informal. And I think that also gives us a little bit more license and flexibility when it comes to discovering who would be the right mentor for us in this situation. And then I like that nod to the culture. Right. Recognizing the differentiation between these different roles. But I love this fact that we're saying, yes, a mentor is kind of. And tell me if I'm off on this element, because this is a bit of an extrapolation. A mentor is kind of like a position, a title, but that mentor should have coaching skills, which are the things that they can use to amplify their mentorship.

Yes and no. I think it's fair enough to see where you come from with that and in many scenarios that will be the case. But don't forget I mentioned that I have a lot of people who mentor me who wouldn't call themselves my mentor and wouldn't even think of it. It. So it's not necessarily a position for me. It's the distinction that's more important is a mentor has the knowledge, the experience, the coach has the questioning skills, but the mentor uses coaching skills if they're going to be really effective.

I like that a lot.

Even if you phone me and said, andy, can I pick your brains on something? I need your advice. I'm an informal mentor in that sense. My best response is to say, well, how are you approaching it at the moment? You know, what sort of options are you weighing up? Rather than yeah, you should do this. Now many of us, and I probably include myself to a degree in this, we find it too easy just to say, yeah, do this. But really good mentoring, formally or informally is saying, okay, let's talk it through. Let's, let's explore.

Absolutely. And Andy, I am going to show my bias loud and proud here. I'm going to talk about this through the lens of negotiation, of course, because these are great negotiation skills because a lot of times. And just relationship in general skills too, right? Because a lot of times we are quick to give advice without fully understanding the challenge or what the person's doing or thinking or feeling about the situation. And so sometimes that knee jerk reaction to give that advice is, could potentially be one of the most damaging things you can do and sometimes slightly disrespectful because you're not even giving the other person an opportunity to fully articulate their perspective before giving that answer. And so pausing, getting curious. These same skills that we would utilize to be effective negotiators are the same skills we can utilize in this instant to be effective. Me almost said mediators. You see, I started to go on that rabbit hole. Effective mentors in this situation too.

And you're right in saying that they're good skills for relationships generally. You know, one of the things I've learned about myself and many other people, I'm sure I'm a fixer. My natural inclination is to help people. So if you tell me you're struggling with something, my first thing is to jump in. You know, I say, say how are you? And you tell me, well, actually I'm struggling with this, this, and this. I'll say, well, actually, I could introduce you to so and so I could do this, or what about that? And I've learned so many people don't want that. They just want to be heard. I mean, I still do it. I've known this for time, but it's habit changing. It's a deeply ingrained habit. But that skill set of when someone shares that asking questions rather than jumping in is so key. And it's a mentoring skill. It's a relationship skill. As you say, it's a negotiation skill. I'm no negotiation expert. I'm sure you're streets ahead in money there. But I have to negotiate for my business. And if someone wants to start negotiating with me, the worst thing I can do is say, well, okay, we'll go here. Then, you know, I need to say, okay, well, what are you thinking? What are you trying to achieve? What's in your mind? How would you see us meeting on this? And by throwing it back to them, by having the conversation, you find out where they're at, and you get to a better resolution that both parties are more comfortable with because they feel heard.

And the key word there is feeling heard, because hearing is the first step, but then making sure that the other person feels heard during the process, that is a very important and often overlooked step as well. And we talked about the skills that a good mentor needs. What would you say are the skills that a good mentee needs?

Well, the first one, which is common to both, but I'll focus on the mentee, is humility. Our ego is probably one of the biggest obstacles to effective mentoring. And as I say, it's both parties, egos, but from the mentee perspective. Perspective, you want to impress your mentor. You want. You know, very often there's someone that you want to think highly of you, which means that you don't open up completely. You're not fully vulnerable. And if you can't open up and share where you're truly at, what's really happening, your mentor can't help you as effectively as they might otherwise. So I would say that humility is. Is absolutely essential. The second you can interchange these, you put them in whatever order you want. They're both essential. Is commitment, you know, not just turning up to a mentoring session, not having thought about what you want to achieve from it, not having a mentoring session for, say, 60 minutes and then closing your notes and going out and never opening them again until the next mentoring session. It's about thinking about what you want before you start a mentoring relationship, communicating that effectively, agreeing objectives and how you're going to measure them, reflecting and revisiting those along the way and reviewing them them. It's about having clear takeaways from each mentoring session and then going back to your mentor and saying, I did this, this and this. And by the way, another factor, and I don't think we talk about it in these terms in the book, but another factor that was really essential, I mean we do talk about it, but not in these, these terms, is independence, independent thought. And that's maybe counterintuitive, but let's not make the assumption that just because your mentor has the experience that their answer is going to be the right one for you. And it's up to you to decide. And you know what, it might be the right one, but you may not feel it's the right one for you. And ultimately it's your career, it's your life and you have to make the decisions that are right for you. I share in the book a story of someone I mentor pro bono. She was at the time a 16 year old schoolgirl. She's now a 17 year old schoolgirl, so there's not much difference there. And she is a black girl who had gone to a boarding school in the south of England, far from home, where she was down the only person of color there and she was bullied heavily. And when I met her, I met her at an event at Oxford University where people, experienced, people in business came and we interacted with a lot of students of different ages. She asked me if I'd mentor her and I found out a bit about her story and I was bullied at school. So an anti bullying campaign, which is what she was, was looking at, was resonated with me. She moved back from the boarding school, she was back in North London where she's from and she was at a sixth form college there. She was loving life. Now the really sweet thing about this story is the side is she talked about. So her goal was to write a newsletter. It's now evolved into a podcast, as probably most newsletters have. It's evolved into a podcast but it was at the time it was to write a newsletter which is very relevant to the story that she wanted to distribute throughout six forms, which is the pre university level, the senior year I guess in American terms as schools across North London. And she mentioned three boroughs and based on that I said what sixth form college are you at that? And she named it and it's where I went wow, that's like 600 kids. So. And I had, I went from an environment where I was heavily bullied to that sixth form college where I loved it and I. It was transformative for me and it is first. So that was a really nice aside, but here's where that independence of thought came in. She's a born again Christian and very evangelical with it. Now, my religious thoughts don't really matter on this, this. I'm not Christian, I'm not religious, but that's not really relevant to this. The question was when she was planning this newsletter which was to create consciousness, awareness, conversation around bullying and then other social issues for senior year kids across North London and then beyond. She wanted to put a Bible quote in the middle of every page, dead center. And my advice was this, as soon as you do that, you're going to lose a huge number of people you need to reach because they will see it as an evangelical publication which might not appeal. It won't have as widespread appeal as something that's just focused on the social issues you want to talk about. And I knew how important her Christianity was to her or is to her and to her mother, who I'd spoken with when we started the relationship. And I said, you don't have to give me an answer now. Talk it over with your mum, think it over and then next conversation come back to me, me. She went away, she thought it over and she came back to me and she said, I hear you, I understand what you said. But her Christianity is about spreading the faith, it is about evangelizing, it's about going out and converting more people. So this is. She has to share the word of God in everything she does. And so for her, she decided to stick with it. Now that was quite uncomfortable for me because it goes against my personal belief, but that's fine because they don't come into this. But it goes against, against the advice I gave her that I feel strongly she is limiting the impact of what she could do, which I feel it could be really powerful. But I still mentor her because I respect her decision. And the reason I respect that decision is not because I agree with it, but because she has listened to my advice, she has weighed it up and she's come to her own decision. And that to me is absolutely fine. And you know what? To a degree, she could do that. Every single piece, with every single piece of advice that I give, as long as she's weighed it up and weighed it up carefully, that's fine. You might get to the point where if she decides against everything I say, you might say, am I the right mentor? Maybe I still could be because I'm forcing her to think this stuff through. So I'm providing the devil's advocate role from a position of knowledge, of strength, if you like. But that's why I say independence of thought. I think that that mentee, that a 16 year old at the time can push back against an experienced, you know, international speaker, published author, however you want to say, what I do, I think shows an independence of thought that is something that I can respect.

Oh, Andy, there is so much in here that is so good. Right? So first of all, let's home in on that word respect. I think it's a word that people use all the time, but it's a word that we often don't fully understand. And so one level of respect is treating other people the way that you want to be treated. Another level of respect is treating people the way that they want to be treated and listening enough to understand what that is. And so in these types of relationships, there has to be that mutual respect. And I think that would be a guiding factor in a lot of the decisions that might be tough in terms of how to navigate these relationships and conversations. But if you think about these different layers of respect, then that can be a guiding force. And one of the things that you mentioned about a good mentee having is humility. And really what we're showing is that in this story, a good mentor also has to be humble because it requires a little bit of vulnerability to be able to say, hey, I believe that you should do this. In my opinion, I think this is what's best for you. And then it takes a strong wrong person to be able to say, you know what? I gave that advice, they thought about it and they went in different direction. And I am still here for you. And so that mutual respect and mutual humility, I think those two elements are crucial for any of these types of mentoring relationships.

Completely crucial. And I said when I talked about humility that it was both parties. And there's another. As you've opened that door for me, there's another way in which humility is important for the mentor as well as the mentee. And that is just as the mentee wants to impress the mentor, let's face it, we're all human. Many mentors are going to want to impress their mentee just because our egos mean we want to impress anyone who's in front of us. We learn from people's mistakes. We learn from people's challenges and how they've overcome them. So I think there's as much learning in a mentor saying, I did this and I got this wrong, but this is what I learned from it. This is how you can avoid my mistakes. Weeks as the mentor saying, I did this brilliantly and you can do the same. There's another side to that or another angle to that, and that is that in both. Just asking. The Financial Times guide to mentoring. I quote a Harvard Business School or study into the power of vulnerability in the way people engage with our message. And they ran various experiments. This research team and the one that I always talk about was the final experiment. And it was, we say Dragon's Den. Our program was Dragon's Den. You have, I think this. The Shark cage, where people pitch to the investors. It's Shark Cage, isn't it?

Shark Tank.

Shark Tank. Shark Tank, yeah. You wouldn't put sharks in a cage. You go in a cage with the sharks. But yeah, if you don't put sharks in the case, the water leaks out. Shark Tank. So it was a Shark Tank type scenario where you had a business owner pitching to an audience about their business. And there were two different scenarios where in which they pitched the first. They talked about their success and how brilliant their business was and how everything they've achieved, achieved. In the second scenario, they shared exactly the same successes and achievements, but they also shared where they had fallen along the way. And they measured two types of envy, what they called malicious envy, I want you to fail, and benign envy, I want to be like you. And where they shared their successes, only malicious envy was high. Where they shared their successes, but with their, their challenges along the way and mistakes they'd made, benign envy was high. So when we are, we have enough humility and vulnerability to say, I got it wrong. And this is an important learning point. Not only does that help people learn, it makes our message more resonant.

Wow, this is great, Andy. You know, I could talk to you forever. This is. This is incredible. I really like this and this last note, talking about how we talk about successes. I mean, if we're going to use just common slang to describe this, this is a way to ward off the haters a little bit.

Isn't there, isn't there a negotiation tip here as well? I mean, when I'm talking to my clients and my prospects, I'm open with where I'm at. You know, people say, how's business? If it's not great, I tell them. I tell them from a position of strength and Certainty. But I say, well, look, the last quarter hasn't been the best, and this is what's happening, happening. You know, going back to that Harvard study, I think that resonates with people, and they engage with me more and they want to work closer to meet me where I'm at. Maybe I'm completely wrong or they're taking me for a sucker, but I don't believe that's the case.

No, absolutely not. I agree with you 100%. Because the thing is, we understand that no human is perfect. And so when somebody comes off as perfect, we know that something isn't right, and we don't know what that is. And so it actually diminishes trust. But if you can be strategically vulnerable, which I know you're familiar with because you literally wrote the book on it, where you're being vulnerable while at the same time recognizing and holding yourself accountable, saying, okay, yeah, this is a challenge, and this is what I have done to work through it, or what I am doing to work through it. People can connect with that because everybody can connect with trying to accomplish something, running into obstacles. And we've all been in that position. And so when you can share a story like that and be open, it actually gives them license to also be humble and share their own humanity, and you deepen the relationship through that vulnerability. So, absolutely, this is an opportunity to connect to people through this vulnerability, while at the same time, if we want to look at it through the lens of negotiation, you're building more trust. And oftentimes deals move at the speed of trust. And by being a little bit vulnerable, you can amplify that trust exponentially.

I do love that. Deals move at the speed of trust. I love that.

Yeah. I cannot take full credit. There was a book. I cannot cite it.

We'll put.

Put it in the show notes, but after. After we put in the Financial Times Guide to Mentoring. Of course. Andy, this was a pleasure. Before you go, please remind them about the book and the podcast and how they can get in touch.

Of course. Well, so the book is the Financial Times Guide to Mentoring. As you've kindly just said, the book's website is mentoring guide.com and we've got a ton of resources there. I'm sure that this podcast will appear on there as well, and you can download a first chapter there if you're a try before you buy kind of reader. But it's also available or will be shortly in the state at all or the normal outlets. And the podcast is the Connected Leadership Podcast. So our premise on the podcast is that if you the professional relationships underpin executive success and I'm sure very much like yours. We have a range of people from subject matter experts to people just amazing stories. Broadway actors, Nastra astronauts, symphonic conductors. There's so much we can learn about professional relationships from all different stories and I have some some great conversations on that as well. So where you normally get your podcast, just put my name in Connected Leadership Podcast or podfollow.com ConnectedLeadership Amazing.

Andy, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.

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I'll catch you later.