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Leadership Lounge: Staying Sharp at the Top: How CEOs Can Use Mentors to Sustain Performance
00:14:37
The demands of the CEO role don’t stand still—and neither can the leaders in it. Yet while many executives benefit from mentorship on the path to the top, far fewer maintain it once they arrive.In this episode of Leadership Lounge, Emma Combe sits ...
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- [00:08]
A
Welcome to the Leadership Lounge, a place to kick back and listen as our experts dissect some of the biggest questions leaders face today. I'm Emma Coombe, Leadership Advisor in our London office. Today we're talking about what it really takes to stay effective as a CEO over time and the role mentorship plays in making that possible. The demands of the CEO role don't stand still, and that means you can't either. In order to make decisions you've never made before, you'll need to continually invest in your leadership and constantly evolve. So how can a mentor help you sustain your performance over time? In this episode, we'll explore how CEOs can use mentors and trusted advisors to challenge their thinking, maintain perspective and and stay effective in one of the most demanding roles in business. Before we dive in, remember to share any questions you want our experts to Answer by emailing redefinersusslernolds.com It'd be great to hear from you. And if you enjoy listening to our episodes, leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. And if you're looking for practical advice on how to navigate high stakes moments in your leadership journey, whether that's becoming a new CEO or board chair or or looking to drive more impact in your role, check out our brand new By Design Thought Leadership hub. We'll share a link to it in our show Notes. I'd like to welcome today's guest to the Leadership Lounge. Suzanne Bozmalik is a Leadership Advisor in our London office and leads the Russell Reynolds Mentor Program for Europe. So I'm sure she'll have lots of valuable insight to share on this topic. Suzanne, welcome to the Leadership Lounge.
- [01:46]
B
Thanks Emma. I'm delighted to talk to you today about mentorship.
- [01:50]
A
So Suzanne, let's get started and pick your brains on this topic. Our research found that Almost half of CEOs said mentoring they received in the lead up to being named a CEO was key to their ultimate success. But why do relatively few CEOs have mentors once they're in the role?
- [02:08]
B
On one level, there's an element of perception that they should have all the answers because they're the CEO. Now that they've arrived and the idea that they may need any improvement, development acceleration from that point is seen as remedial. Whereas you and I have talked about this often, we would make the argument that this is an opportunity for new CEOs to reach their potential faster. And in addition to that, Emma, as we know, one of the reasons that lots of new CEOs don't have mentors is because they're so busy in the role and they don't carve out time for mentorship.
- [02:38]
A
So what do you see, Suzanne, as some of the common areas that CEOs seek advice or guidance on?
- [02:45]
B
I think it will come as no surprise that for CEOs one of the areas that comes up most often is how they deal with their board. About 25% of a new CEO's time can be spent dealing with board matters, which I think comes as a surprise to most CEOs. I think they think it's going to be a huge percentage, but that's even higher. In an ideal world, the board is a fantastic support structure and indeed leads on stewardship for the company. But with personalities, there also come challenges in how to harness the board most effectively. And I like to think of it as this CEO sits at the center of the hourglass of the board in the V above and the organization in the V leading down from the center of that hourglass and figuring out how to translate the messages to and from the board and translate that into the operational delivery in the organization and through the top team.
- [03:33]
A
And I see other topics coming up quite frequently, often around that top team selection. These are some of the hardest calls that you have to make, particularly if you're internally promoted. So mentors giving advice, typically pushing for faster decision making is so powerful it seems sort of obvious. But for example, how do you allocate your time to each of your direct reports? And actually, it was a bit of a revelation when a mentor explained to me the methodology around you don't give equal time to everybody. Actually, the high performers need a very light touch. The group in the middle that can be coached, you should really focus on. And then there's the tail where you need to make some really tough calls around whether or not you keep them. And Suzanne, another thing that we know mentors can really help with is navigating key career moments or pivots. We heard a wonderful illustration of this point from Ruth Porat, who served as CFO at Google and is now their president and chief investment officer. She shared on Redefiner's, our Sister podcast about how a conversation with a mentor really helped her think clearly about her next chapter.
- [04:40]
C
My question that I always ask in my career, what's my highest and best use? And I had a wonderful conversation with somebody by the name of Bill Campbell. He was written up in a book called the Trillion Dollar Coach because he had actually coached Steve Jobs and Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt and others. And so I had this wonderful conversation with him where I asked that question how to think about my next chapter. And he actually was the one who said after a long conversation, the obvious answer for him was Google. And I had actually worked on the IPO of Google, admired Google immensely, and so jumped when that opportunity arose. And it's been quite a run.
- [05:22]
A
So, Suzanne, at what point in a CEO's tenure is it the right time to enlist the support of a mentor?
- [05:28]
B
I think the right answer to that is before they even take on the role. Ideally, someone's having mentorship as they even think about succession to CEO. In our Global Leadership Monitor survey, we find that 71% of CEOs wished that that mentorship had been better incorporated into their transition into the role. So I think it's key from a succession perspective. I think it's never too late. As CEOs progress through their tenure, it is still a good time to introduce a mentor. They may have been through phase one or phase two of their strategy and be thinking about what they might drive towards as their legacy and thinking about their own succession. And a mentor can also be very powerful at that point in their role.
- [06:13]
A
And I would also flag that just because you've been a CEO once doesn't necessarily mean that the next mandate will feel similar. So for example, being a CEO of a listed business and then shifting into private equity ownership, even if it's the same business, can feel entirely different. It can feel like night and day.
- [06:32]
B
We also see it, for example, if there's a significant change in growth or there's M and A. It can be a transformation of many sorts of that trigger the need or want for a mentor. It's not just because you've taken on a new organization or that you're stepping up into different type of challenge. It can be that you're in the same role, but many of the external factors have changed and that's another trigger.
- [06:54]
A
Suzanne, could you share some examples of ways that mentors have helped CEOs navigate the complexities of their role?
- [07:00]
B
One of the key ways mentors can help is by helping the CEOs themselves step back and see what they're missing in how they perform on a day to day basis. It's helping support individuals through uncertainty and we are certainly living in uncertain times at the minute. A theme that is coming through on a recurring basis is how do you take a legacy business and transform it? Almost everyone has some sort of challenge around AI. Do you add it onto legacy business? Do you have to create new sways of business and use AI to take you on that journey. And I think that a mentor who is able to support the mindset shift through transformation is incredibly powerful. Another area, Emma, where I think a mentor is really valuable, we see this in family owned businesses, for example, where it may be that for the first time a professional outsider to the family is stepping into in particular the CEO role. And a mentor there can be very helpful in helping an individual understand how to navigate the family setup. Or indeed when a family member has to set up into a role they maybe didn't necessarily want to assume or haven't gained the experience. A mentor can be very powerful in supporting them through that role.
- [08:11]
A
You make a great point, Suzanne. So often the CEO role is fraught with complexities around stakeholder management. And ahead of this I was catching up with the CEO and they were making the point that sometimes, probably because of the stresses and strains of the day to day, judgment can become clouded with emotion and actually facts and figures can be left to one side. And in this instance the mentor was really challenging that decision making, saying make sure that you are making your decisions grounded in facts and figures. And they've really appreciated, appreciated being held to account in that way. Suzanne, one topic that we quite often wrestle with is clients saying, well, surely the chair can also mentor the CEO. I'd love to hear your view on what a mentor can offer a CEO that is different to the chair of a board.
- [08:59]
B
The first thing I'd say on this is thinking about what's the agenda of the chair and what's the agenda of the mentor. So they both hold the interests of the organization as very important, but for the chair that's their raison d', etre, that's their ultimate priority. Whereas in the these conversations the mentor is invested in the development of the CEO and their progression. And you hope that that would obviously streamline to the organization, but they have a slightly different agenda to the chair. The second point I'd make is I think we already asked so much of the chair to expect them to be incredibly capable at developing the CEO as well as everything else. So I think that it's about have a mentor can actually decrease the pressure on the chair and provide greater balance. I think it allows there to be fewer blurred lines between the nature of the relationship between the chair and the CEO by having this pressure release valve to a mentor who can provide counsel in a different way. I mean ultimately the chair is the CEO's boss and if you're lucky, your boss is also a great mentor and can mentor you in some ways, but it's a different relationship to someone that is independent of your ecosystem.
- [10:09]
A
And oftentimes the CEO might be struggling with their relationship with the chair. And the other piece, of course, is that the chair has a fiduciary responsibility. If they do learn anything in those conversations that's noteworthy, to report it back to others. Whereas with a mentor, it's truly independent.
- [10:24]
B
Absolutely. The mentor allows for the CEO to have consequence free conversations. I don't mean consequence free as in that they're frivolous. I mean consequence free as in they're not reported back. So. So in those moments, a CEO can be completely free to truly express their ideas, their concerns, to make sure that they're the right decisions.
- [10:44]
A
I think, as you said, it's a pressure release valve. It's a level of resilience that hopefully means the CEO stays longer, is more effective, drives change faster. So we've spoken about the impact of mentoring, but inevitably some relationships are incredibly effective, others less so and so. Susanna, it would be great to understand what you think a CEO needs to bring to these mentoring relationships to get real value out of them.
- [11:12]
B
I think they've got to turn up prepared and be willing to truly engage with the mentor. I think it takes courage on both sides to be vulnerable, to be very open and share ideas. But I think it's when the CEOs bring real problems, really tricky, difficult complexity to the mentors that they get the real value.
- [11:32]
A
I think your point about humility is key. The more senior you become, the rarer candid feedback is. And people around you're often managing upwards, consciously or not. So having a mentor who wants to be invited to challenge you, perhaps who's given permission to even gather feedback, anecdotally, it can really help. And a CEO can be much less guarded, as we've discussed with that external mentor. So, next question. Suzanne, as a CEO, how can you measure the impact that a mentor is having on your leadership?
- [12:05]
B
I think that it's difficult to completely quantify this, of course, but the feedback we get from CEOs who have been mentored is that it actively changes how they make decisions. They reflect more deeply, they are more prepared to challenge their leadership teams, and they are more prepared to empower them again, because they're often speaking to a mentor who has developed and led teams before.
- [12:33]
A
But saying all this, it's natural that over time some mentoring relationships will become less effective. What can trigger this, do you think? And how can CEOs respond to the shift.
- [12:43]
B
Well, I think there's a danger that either the relationship has become too cozy, it hasn't become challenging enough, it can also just become too transactional. I think when we can all relate it to our own lives and mentorship we've had, there might be a mentor who was great for the first decade of your career, but wasn't necessarily the right person for the next role that you had. And so you can grow your mentors. So it may be that indeed after a certain period of time or because of a structural change in your organization or your situation around you, that it may be a different mentor might be more relevant.
- [13:14]
A
For many CEOs, they will require different mentors as they face different challenges, and each one will naturally bring a diversity of thought and perspective. And the best mentoring relationships aren't about finding a blueprint to follow, they're about gathering different lenses on leadership and and then building something that's distinctly your own. So we're almost at the end of our time together in the Leadership Lounge. I'd like to thank Suzanne so much for her thoughtful contributions and insights. In 30 seconds, here's what we've learned. Mentorship doesn't stop being valuable once you reach the top. If anything, the need for an external consequence free perspective intensifies the moment you step into the CEO role. The areas CEOs most turn to for support, navigating the board, making calls on their top team, and managing their own energy are precisely the areas where it's difficult to seek internal support. And most importantly, you only get out of a mentoring relationship what you put in. You must be prepared and remain open to challenge. If you have any topics or burning questions you'd like us to cover in future episodes of Leadership Lounge, do get in touch. Email your questions to redefine@russellreynolds.com until next time. Goodbye.