Discover the mentor in you!
Oliver Stohlmann’s Corporate Survival Hacks series draws on experiences of working in local, regional, and global life sciences communications to offer some little tips for enjoying a big business career. This column reflects on great mentorship in the business world and how to inspire, ignite, and pass on your passion, experience, and know-how to next generations.
I’m typing these notes in-flight to Newark, NJ. What makes me rush there is a retirement reception hosted by Johnson & Johnson’s CEO to celebrate the career and accomplishments of Bill Hait, my former business partner, inspiring leader, and personal mentor.
Retiring from the post of chief external innovation and medical officer and, before that, a highly successful stretch as the corporation’s pharmaceutical R&D chief, is no mean feat. And that came on top of a 40-plus year-long career as a medical oncologist and founding director of the New Jersey Cancer Institute, the state’s first specialised clinic for people suffering this most dreadful of maladies.
Learning from the great
Across my career, I was fortunate to learn up-close from truly outstanding leaders and human beings. Of course, there’s also the opposite in everyone’s workplace: mediocre ‘role models’ providing plenty of memorable examples of how to not build, lead, or ‘engage’ teams, demoralising them and missing business goals as a consequence. Those leaders you are happy to leave behind.
However, this blog post is about the former. Those truly impressive business leaders and mentors. The ones who invest in you. The ones who provide open, honest feedback, not driven by selfish motifs, but a genuine desire to help you grow. The ones who have your back when you mess up. The ones you’d go miles out of your way for, to not let them down. Those ones.
Have you ever thought about striving to become a truly remarkable leader and mentor yourself? In my view, the strongest legacy a people leader can leave behind are the people they touched. Inspired. Engaged. Helped to prosper, thrive, and succeed.
It starts with a vision
What my cadre of outstanding mentors had in common is that each of them put out an aspirational, clear, compelling vision that I could get behind and help deliver. A sustainable vision that didn’t change with every new business cycle. Nothing crazy, unfeasible, or overdone; nothing so polished that it reeked of a slick marketing campaign. Just a simple, tangible, meaningful vision that inspires and makes you want to be part of it.
They helped me understand what distinct contributions to make to help deliver on that vision. In doing that, they agreed with me clear, specific goals – yet, gave me the freedom to decide my own approaches to reaching them. They didn’t micro-manage.
What makes a great pharma leader?
My friend Nikolaus Krall, EVP of precision medicine at Exscientia, recently summarised the answer well: “A knack for attracting, inspiring, and developing great talent, an analytical mind, the ability to implement impactful strategies are all traits required by successful leaders in every industry, including the life sciences. However, what makes this industry unique is the enormous breadth of topics that we need to navigate as leaders of modern pharma and biotech. They range from medicine, biology, and chemistry all the way to AI, data science, software development, plus regulatory and commercial considerations. This requires enormous versatility.”
“To lead in an industry where projects more often fail than not, one needs a naive and infectious excitement for innovation and the belief in a better future despite all the odds. This optimism, however, must be paired with a healthy strategic sobriety and execution power to not only inspire teams, but keep them laser focused on the ultimate goal of putting a drug onto the market.”
Bill Hait role-modelled all the qualities above. In addition, he had a knack for mentoring people in the most unselfish ways.
Mentorship is different
What differentiates a mentor from the usual suspect business or personal coach? A coach typically aims to help you from an impartial, external perspective. They lead you to think through tough challenges, desired improvement, achieving ambitious goals through a series of questions and interventions. The purpose of the conversation is to help you think differently and try out new ideas to resolve previously unresolved problems. However, a coach is practically never intimately familiar with your business environment; they won’t know the realms at your workplace, the players, nor will they know you, really.
Mentorship is different. It best comes from a person deeply embedded in and familiar with your work environment; a person with experiences of relevance to assist you in solving your challenges. Someone who knows you, your strengths, and struggles. Someone committed to helping you grow and succeed. They would advise from their perspective and expertise, provide examples, share thoughts, and recommendations. A mentor is not impartial – they have your interest in mind! They will advocate for you, hold up the mirror right into your face, critique you constructively. They’re like a well-meaning parent – but with a healthy detachment, who knows when to back off and leave you to draw your own conclusions.
They are close enough to know what makes you tick. Yet, distant enough to respect your personal space and decisions.
Integrity matters
Call me old-fashioned: it does matter to me how a person conducts themselves, their business and personal relationships, and how they treat people. The saying “People don’t care about how much you know, until they know how much you care” rings true.
As Nikolaus added: “Integrity and humility are key. The responsibility that comes with putting new molecules into patients is enormous. In particular, when we consider how complex the human body is and how little we still know about its biology.” Period.
Effective mentorship, too, is grounded in integrity, humility, and mutual trust. Nothing destroys trust faster than unethical behaviours, arrogance, pulling rank, other improper conduct, or inappropriate decision-making. I found mentors most effective who I could look up to and rely on to make ethical, fact-based decisions, weighing all aspects, but eventually going by data, not favours.
Listen up
Although mentorship can be about sharing own experiences, opinions, and guidance, it’s usually helpful to listen first – a lot. As it’s hard to offer helpful guidance before knowing what the exact situation is and all contributing factors. How can you help reach a meaningful outcome based on an incomplete picture?
To establish a good basis, the mentor needs to ask relevant questions. Looking at a situation from diverse angles is essential as the mentee often isn’t in a position, alone, to reflect on their problems in an impartial, 360-degree manner. Or they probably wouldn’t seek mentorship.
And sometimes, to break pre-conceived patterns and conclusions, and to open new paths to successful resolution, it can be critical to intervene strongly. A good mentor, however, will only unpack that direct intervention ‘tool’ sparingly. As they know that sustainable action is best triggered – and followed through – when it feels sound from the mentee’s own perspective, not anyone else’s push or pull.
Top tips to engage in impactful mentorship
- Learn from outstanding business leaders, not average or mediocre ones
- Strive to become a remarkable mentor yourself
- Leave a legacy of talented people you touched, inspired, engaged
- Set a clear, compelling vision that people can get behind and help deliver
- Help people understand their distinct contributions
- Agree specific goals, but don’t micro-manage along the way
- Mentor people unselfishly – it’s about their growth, not yours
- Keep your mentee’s interest in mind, have their back
- Hold up the mirror, yet critique constructively
- Be close enough to understand, but distant enough to respect
- Integrity, humility, and mutual trust matter
- Make ethical, fact-based not favour-based decisions
- Listen carefully
- Ask relevant questions, looking at situations from diverse angles
- When justified, intervene strongly, but know the mentee will only follow through sound actions from their own perspective
