Diversity
Client need: mentoring across differences.
A Fortune 100 consulting firm faced the challenge of retaining its high-performing women, and increasing the number of female executives at the top of the house. Experience and research showed that women who stayed and moved up had at least one thing in common: strong mentoring relationships, with both male and female mentors.
So we were asked to help strengthen the firm's mentoring relationships. We interviewed women leaders, who told us that the most helpful mentoring relationships went beyond advice-giving and information-sharing. They pointed to the value of more open, transparent, and personal mentoring conversations, in which they could speak candidly and concretely about their challenges and get help to grow as leaders.
Our method: improvisation-based training and actor role-plays.
We developed a one-day workshop designed to "mentor the mentoring relationship." Rather than working separately with mentors or separately with mentees, we would engage the actual mentor-mentee pairs, and work in real time on what we believe to be the primary unit of growth and development — the relationship.
The program began with the full group (about 30 people, both mentors and mentees) doing performance exercises designed to create an environment that was fun, challenging and exploratory. These "games with a purpose" focused on getting out of participants' comfort zones, making connections, and beginning to explore the communication pitfalls that plague us all in our work relationships.
We then worked in smaller groups, where each participant had an opportunity to give an improvisational "performance of their lifetime." (Sound familiar? We named our company after this unique and challenging exercise.) Participants began to see one another in new ways, beyond their professional identities and roles. Several participants commented that they started to "get to know each other as actual human beings." This was also a real-time experience and practice in working in an environment that supported risk-taking and discovery foundational components in any effective mentoring relationship.
The small groups then turned their focus to improvisational role-playing. We provided participants with mentoring scenes that reflected real-life issues in the firm, including "Giving and Receiving Difficult Feedback," "Work-life Balance," "Developing Executive Presence," and "Managing Up." These challenging conversations came to life on stage as each participant role-played opposite one of our actors, who portrayed their respective mentee or mentor.
We coached participants through the role-plays moment by moment. We worked with them on how to create chemistry in their relationships. We showed them ways to see and use their differences (gender, race, style, world view, etc.) as opportunities for learning, rather than obstacles or liabilities. We challenged the mentors to move beyond their primarily advice-giving and "transactional" approach, and to communicate more openly to ask real questions and then work with the real answers no matter how awkward that might feel. We challenged the mentees to ask for help honestly and transparently, even if that meant taking risks, exposing what they didn't know, or in some cases pushing their mentors to be more forthcoming about their own challenges.
Since 2005, we have delivered this program to over 250 of the top leaders across the US, Europe and South America. The program was then modified to enable implementation across the remainder of the firm using internal training resources.
