Making Leadership Mentoring Stick
By Claire Peet and Michael Iannini
A leader’s most important responsibility is to develop leaders.
70-20-10 – this is the golden rule for successfully developing leaders. We know from research that senior leaders are the most proven and powerful tool for empowering aspiring leaders to be accountable for 70% of their own development. Aspiring leaders realize 70% of their leadership development by accepting responsibility for challenging tasks, such as:
Starting something from nothing,
Fixing something broken, and
Being responsible for influencing others without authority.
By allowing aspiring leaders to work on transformative projects without the conditions of the standard ‘to-do’ list or prescriptive job description, they naturally navigate towards more creative solutions; they lean into expanding their presence, scope, and network.
The remaining 30% of a leader's development can be attributed to exposure to others through activities such as mentoring (20%) and education (10%), which can include training and structured learning activities. When explicit connections are made between these facets, you have a recipe for developing not just individual, but social leadership capacity, in a way that can move the entire community along a journey of continuous improvement. Leadership mentoring offers an excellent way to do this, yet so many schools find it difficult to make mentoring stick and reap the benefits.
Making it stick – Mentorship
Mentors can contribute 20% to an aspiring leader’s development, especially in circumstances where a project fails. Mentoring is not about protecting aspiring leaders from failure. Mentoring creates a space where the aspiring leader can reflect and professionally grow. The mentor is a guide, providing tools and advice to the mentee. Together, they decide the way forward and how to navigate the landscape.
Mentors need to regularly interact with aspiring leaders to clarify roles and expectations, keep them focused on the bigger picture and help them to reflect and learn from their experiences. The role of the mentor, though, is a distinctly different relationship than what might be assumed under a typical appraiser or manager interaction, even if the persons involved are the same.
Don’t assume, though, that all leaders make great mentors. If you believe mentorship can be the key to ensuring transformative change, then provide specific training for mentors. This will be helpful in ensuring all parties are held accountable for their responsibilities and create a meaningful development pathway for everyone.
Successful leadership mentoring initiatives can be hard to sustain and easily fall down the priority list when considering how busy schools can be, and in particular, school leaders. Eliciting buy-in from everyone involved at the outset is critical. Contracting around expectations, relationships, and specific outcomes is essential.
Because schools are dynamic places where priorities shift regularly, periods of re-contracting throughout the mentoring relationship might be necessary. It is essential to incorporate opportunities to schedule periodic reviews of the relationship and ask the question, “Is our agreement still fit for purpose?”
Making it stick – Positively Influencing the School Culture
Aspiring leaders, when empowered, will be the most effective tool in ensuring transformative and sustained change. It is the influence of senior leaders, as well as role modeling, that serves as the catalyst to ensure aspiring leaders use the knowledge, tools, and strategies to build and sustain a collaborative team culture. Such cultural impacts go beyond the direct participants of mentoring and speak volumes to the broader workforce.
Data collected from our own Leadership Development Projects indicated that relationships were significantly influenced through program participation. Over 75% of mentors participating in our program indicated that it positively influenced their relationship with aspiring leaders. All mentees agreed that participation had not only supported their individual relationships with their mentor, but changed their broader perspectives around how they relate to others. Even more encouraging, considering the strain educational leaders experienced during the pandemic, was that there was a high level of trust between all mentoring pairs.
When considering the hot topic of retention, all participants indicated that this program had positively influenced their perception of being able to effect change. On a 1-4 scale, 51% of participants selected 3 and 23% of participants selected 4. More promising was that on a 1-4 scale indicating how likely participants would stay at their school as a result of this program, 79% (both aspiring leaders and senior leaders) indicated that the program had a positive influence on their decision to stay at their school. This was further verified by participating school principals, one of whom noted that all mentees and mentors involved in the program had committed to remaining in the organization for the next academic year, despite on-going uncertainties in China.
Claire Peet is an experienced Senior Leader, Coach and Learning Professional. In her current role she supports colleagues with their growth and development, as well as oversees projects that promote consistency in pedagogical standards, curriculum and, most importantly, her organisation’s mission, principles and practices.
Michael Iannini, founder and Managing Partner of PD Academia, is recognized by the Council of International Schools as an expert in Governance, Strategic Planning, Human Resource Management and Leadership Development. He is also author of Hidden in Plain Sight: Realizing the Full Potential of Middle Leaders.
