Mentorship as a Catalyst for Employee Wellbeing

In this episode, we dive deep into how mentorship can be a catalyst for employee wellbeing with expert insights from Dr. Debra Heiser, founder of The Mentor Project. Dr. Heiser shares her unique perspective on what real mentorship looks like in the corporate world, debunking common misconceptions and highlighting the importance of trust, meaningful connections, and organic relationships. With fascinating stories like that of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, this episode offers practical tips for organizations looking to create effective mentorship programs. Don't miss Dr. Heiser's advice on fostering a healthier workplace and building strong mentor-mentee relationships. Plus, check out her TEDx talk linked in the show notes!

00:00 Introduction to the Nine to Five Wellness Podcast

00:28 The Importance of Mentorship in the Workplace

01:09 Introducing Dr. Debra Heiser

01:40 Defining Mentorship

02:47 The Impact of Effective Mentorship

03:37 Steve Jobs and the Power of Lateral Mentorship

05:20 Different Types of Mentorship

12:06 Mentorship and Millennial Employee Retention

16:47 Creating a Successful Mentorship Program

23:58 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Transcript

  Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast,  a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement.  I'm your host, Ayesha 

Tahir. 

 Hello, and welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about mentorship,  mentorship as a catalyst for employee wellbeing,  mentoring employees and team members helps, the employees and individuals identify how they can advance their careers. And in addition to giving them.

An opportunity for growth. I believe mentoring also helps them with, fostering wellbeing. So today I have a very special guest joining me to understand mentorship in the workplace and organizations and how it impacts our wellbeing and the  culture of organizations as well.  My guest today is Dr.

Debra Heiser. She is the founder of the mentor project, author of the mentorship edge and an applied developmental psychologist. She has been featured at TEDx, Marshall Goldsmith, a  hundred coaches. Thinker's 50 Radar List, Psychology Today, and is also an adjunct professor in the psychology department at SUNY Old Westbury.

Welcome to the podcast, Debra. 

Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

I'm so glad you're here. I want to start with the basics  when we are talking about mentorship in the organizations and in workplace. What are we exactly?  Talking about what is mentorship? 

Well, thank you for asking that.

You know, I really do believe that the term mentorship. Has essentially been hijacked by corporate American in many ways, and it's used incorrectly. So when I think of mentorship, it's not always the way that people think about it. So mentorship in the workplace is a place that means that a mentor and a mentee, both people should feel like they're in a really safe, wonderful place together, that they're working together where a person is transferring.

Knowledge, information, values, skills, expertise, all of that to someone who's like, so excited to get this information from them, and oftentimes it's not thought of that. So if it's employed the proper way, and I can give a definition of what that is,  both people feel really good about their workplace. So places that do this well have an enormous. 

Um, employee retention rate, they have happy employees, people who like their fellow coworkers, people who are not afraid to be vulnerable in front of others. And so it is something that is not used as a check mark. So really it's something that could be an absolute game changer for individuals if it's employed correctly. 

And I love how you just explained  that  it's  having a person. Who has your back, right? Who is going to help you succeed in the workplace and then also help you with all the aspects of your life and how they play around your. Work responsibilities. And I like to give the example of,  Steve jobs. Like he's my hero because I think he did a lot of things and he contributed to the world in a very different way.

People didn't agree with him. And, , I see that as a big challenge with a lot of people who are like him.  Myself included when I read , book,  about him, I was like, You know, if you dig deeper into his life, um, and the history of Apple, you see that he was not really a self made, entrepreneur and billionaire.

Actually, he had a lot of mentors  behind him  and he had, all those mentors throughout his life who helped him forge.  And that's something that we forget, right? We just see somebody's success and we're like, look at him. Like, you know, he's like the oddball or she's the oddball. And that's not the case because there are so many people behind you even talking about, well, I'm in Philadelphia and, Eagles won yesterday.

So yay, birds. But even I was listening to Jalen Hurd's talk about victory.  And he's like, I didn't do it alone.  There have been many great coaches and mentors behind me without them. I'm nothing that's huge coming from  a football player who has won the trophy and who is absolutely at the pinnacle of his career saying that, Oh, I wouldn't be here. 

Without others. So what makes a great mentor then?

So I have, I'll first define it. And then I want to tell you my Steve job story because I have a mentorship story that, um, is really pretty cool. So first of all, mentorship is something that we're built to do. It's actually an emotional developmental milestone that we hit.

It isn't something that was made up. That's a transactional thing. We're actually built. to give back to others, just like walking and talking. So first, it requires that a person is generative. And what that means is that they want to generate something from within themselves and give it to somebody else.

So if I had some advice or wisdom, and I said, I want to give that to Aisha, I want to share that with her. Well, you also have to want to receive it. How many people have given you advice? And you're like, Oh, please, I don't want that. It has to be that one person wants to generate something from themselves.

And the other person has to want to receive it. That's mentor mentee. It also has to come not from money or any extrinsic reward. A person has to want to do it from within. So nobody's making them. There's no implicit thing like, Oh, make sure that you're engaged in mentorship or we'll know it on your performance or,  you know, we're keeping track of that in some way. 

Um, that takes it from if you were to that icky feeling that you might have if I were to say to you, hey, would you like to volunteer your time in a soup kitchen? And you said, yes. And then I said, instead of going there, take a left turn and go volunteer time at Starbucks. That would feel different. That's the same feeling people get in the workplace.

If somebody has an extrinsic motivator, like pay or some kind of award attached to it. We also need to be meaningfully connected to the person. I have to like you and you have to like me and if we don't have that, if somebody's just meeting because they're like, oh, I've got to go get my information from this person.

That's not mentorship.  We also need to trust the person. This is a huge one in the workplace because a lot of people say, I'm not asking that person two levels above me to give me information. They'll know. I don't know something. And so, or vice versa, the mentor might say, I'm not going to tell this person I'm in finance.

They're going to take my clients and run. And we also need a goal. It can be a one time only goal, or it can be a multi year lifetime goal. Ever changing goal. So the way you can see this really well is with the Steve jobs, um, example. And I usually don't tell people who it is that I'm talking about when I give this example, but you know it now.

So  Steve is at work. And this is a real story. So he's at work and his boss gives him an impossible task. And this is when Steve is really young. So most people don't know this story. But he's at work. His boss gives him an impossible task. And Steve goes, I got it. Don't worry. Steve didn't have it, but he wasn't going to tell his boss that just like how many times have you ever been in that position where you're like, oh, I'll figure it out.

So he was like, I'll figure it out. So time is going by and the boss says, you know, this has a really short deadline. And if you don't finish it, our company is really gonna suffer for it. You know, we might not even last as a company. It's that important. So Steve says, don't worry, I've got it. Now again, he didn't have it.

But what he did have was his friend Steve. So he called his friend Steve on the phone.  And he said, Hey Steve, I've got this problem at work. My boss wants me to do something. I've hit my level that I can do with my engineering skills. Can you help me? And Steve said, sure, buddy, I'll come after work and I'll help you.

So he did. And every night it was kind of like rumple stilt skin. They were making wheat into gold. Like this job was getting done record fast. Turns out they finished it before the deadline. No one ever even knew. that his friend was coming in to help him.  Turns out they got it done and Al Alcorn was the boss who came in and said, wow, Steve, you did it. 

And Steve's helper was Steve Wozniak. This is long before Apple. This was for Atari, the first video game breakout. And that changed the world of video games. Now Steve Jobs did this. No one knew that Steve Wozniak was coming in. He was a lateral mentor. He was doing what we do for people. He was going in and helping his friend.

There was no reward attached to it. There was nothing else. So when we engage in this way at work, uh, explosive things happen like new video games or, you know, a new kind of a company, it's really explosive and impactful.  

I was just gonna say to you that Steve Jobs and then Steve Wozniak, they were like best friends.

They started Apple together too. Yeah, very, very familiar with their story, but not this part where Steve Wozniak comes in. 

Yeah, this was before Apple. 

Yeah, absolutely.  Where he comes in and, helps him with the Atari.  Great example. Something you just mentioned here. lateral mentorship.

So are there different kinds 

of mentorships?  So mentorship, most people think of it as hierarchical. You're getting help from somebody above you. And we all think of it as almost like grabbing to something above us to pull us up. And that's a nameless, faceless individual that we're Considering as the mentor, you know, the term is go find a mentor. 

Well, if we think that way, then we don't think of all the other opportunities that are around us. So imagine if you feel like, you know what, I don't want to tell my boss something, but I want to solve this problem. How can I do it? So you go to somebody you trust. Who do we trust? Our friends. Who? They're everyone around us.

And Steve Wozniak wasn't going to call his boss and be like, Hey, did you know Steve jobs doesn't know what he's doing? You know, like that it doesn't happen. So we have that. It's a meaningful connection. He trusts him. There's no money or extrinsic reward involved. Um, Steve Wozniak wanted to generate something from himself and give it to his friend.

And they had a goal. I mean, it really is that simple. And so if you're in the workplace, You shouldn't be looking at just up and down. You should be looking left and right. It should be like a giant spider web of people that you're connecting with. And you should never have just one mentor. You should be having a whole host of people, like a little black book of everyone who's a potential mentor or mentee to you so that You can have all of these connections because when you are meaningfully connected at work, you want to go into work.

You're around everybody who you see as a resource for you. You're around everybody that you're like, yeah, that's right. My job is great because of all these people who help me out when I need that help.  

 So I was reading some statistics and  millennial employee retention came up. And I'm part of the millennials. So I, I totally like relate with it. What is happening in the workforce?  And according to Forbes, 75 percent of the workforce is going to be millennials. This year we are known as job hopper.  True.  Because of the lack of connection to the company. 

So  I'm thinking there's a,  direct connection here between mentorship and establishing a stronger connection, establishing a stronger relationship with the organization. How do you think mentorship can help us with that?  

It's an anchor.  It, it allows you to know that, you know, imagine the first, you imagine yourself at the first day of work, you go in and it's like the first day of middle school in the cafeteria.

It's scary. You go in and you're like, oh, my gosh. I don't know the lay of the land. I don't, who are the people that I'm going to connect with? It's, it's a lonely experience oftentimes when you start something. Now, if you come in and you can establish for yourself, a group of people that you feel connected to, you're not going to want to leave that.

That's like leaving a warm, fuzzy blanket on a cold day. It really is something that grounds you and allows you to remain as an anchor. And then, you know, you're wanting to help other people. And so, That meaningful connection becomes a thread that's woven and hopefully for most people, 10, 20 people at least, so that it's like a fabric with that you're wearing around and people don't want to leave that. 

Yeah. The don't, that's the true.  How can mentorship  create a healthier workplace?  

When people feel meaningfully connected to others and that they can trust them and they feel valued, um, you feel valued. When you are mentoring someone and they say, thank you. I, or they're, they're receiving that and doing something you feel valued, validated, you know, we, we need to think not just of the mentee, but the mentor and the amazing feeling that you get when you are giving to somebody else that leads to good wellbeing.

If you feel like you're liked and you're connected with others that is connected actually with. Physical longevity, and it's also connected to better mental health outcomes. So if you're doing it at work, you're also likely doing it in your home life. We don't usually shut off and then become a different person when we leave work in terms of how we interact with people.

It's likely that you're going to be engaging that way at home, too. And so this is just a really good way that we can engage in this sort of thing in both places so that we have better health and mental health outcomes.  

Absolutely.  I love the fact that you mentioned not just the impact on mentees,  but also on the mentors, because the satisfaction you get from imparting wisdom and sharing your life story or sharing your experiences  that really empowers the mentors as human beings, as people who are now fulfilling their purpose in life. 

And then if you just flip the picture and look at the mentees, you're going to see that  mentees are now experiencing not just the fact that somebody's sharing wisdom with them, but also they're grateful  because how many people do that? No, not many, right? If you have a good mentor in your corner,  I know that you are. 

Experiencing the benefits of gratitude right there. Oh, for sure. Right? So, it just creates this  support cycle   in which,  personal growth is taking place on both ends. 

Yes.  

Yes.  And once we start growing personally, that's directly. Related to our, as you said, longevity and health benefits because that brain body connection that we don't necessarily think of a lot is there  a healthier brain, a healthier mental state is going to lead to a healthy body.

That's so good. You know, I just made that connection and I'm so happy about it. 

 How can organizations. Create a successful mentorship program in your experience. If you have seen at organizations, okay, these organizations did this so well. These are the organizations where there was room for improvement.

Do you have like two to three tips? To create a successful mentorship program,  

there are several  that I give in the book, the mentorship edge that I wrote. But in terms of just the overview of how that looks, it should be organic. It should be something that a person is not forced to do.

It's not like, do you have a mentor?  No one even needs to know that you have a mentor. That's between you and your mentor or your mentee. Um, so by making sure that you, if a company can make sure there are opportunities for people to connect some places that have done it really well are through things like informal lunches.

Imagine if you're a judge, right? And you don't know what you're gonna do for your next case. Most people don't think of that, but imagine that now.  That judge can't go to somebody else and say, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you help me? That would be like, you know, career crushing. So, but what you can do though, and this was done in one state where they had federal judges that sat on, you know, high level cases, they had an informal lunch this way.

Somebody could turn and say, Hey, Jim, have you seen that kind of case? What did you do in that? That's a different thing than saying, I don't know what I'm doing. You're asking informally somebody to help you. So by setting up those informal things, lunches, retreats, the, the water cooler, the, you know, that sort of thing for an in, for, um, people who are on zoom, setting up informal events that people can.

Meet up with others and break out rooms or other ways so that they can connect informally. That is not, you know, taking attendance for work. That kind of a thing. Um, and also, uh, educating the people who work there what mentorship really is so they don't come in having an expectation of one thing, which ends up being a burden for the mentor and never really works out for the mentee.

So it's also just educating them on what it looks like.  

I love both the tips, and the first one wasn't even in my awareness. All the mentor programs that I've been part of, and my mentors are amazing. If I may just say that  they weren't discreet, but I can totally see  how the discretion would have taken it to the next level. 

You don't have to be discreet, but I'm saying that a company shouldn't make it so that there's like, uh, a lot of people attach it to a performance. And they'll say, do you have a mentor? That's a burden on a mentee and a mentor.  You know, if you want one, get one. If you don't, don't.  But, um, having that as an available option is a very different field than having it as an expectation.

That's what most of us don't like is to have one more expectation put on us. Because if you're a mentor and you're getting paid, you're not a mentor. Then you're a coach or an advisor. You're just doing one more thing that's expected of you at work, which is helping somebody out. That feels like volunteering at Starbucks.

That's not a good feel.  

 Love that.  And keeping it casual too, like you said, just a breakout room or just,  an informal lunch once a month or something. Yeah. Yeah. Totally doable too. 

Yeah. You'll find Christine Wozniak  every day  if you do that.  

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's so true.

I want to talk to you about the second tip that you gave me is like the mentee is, should you understand the role. Of the mentor, like, of course, there are certain responsibilities and roles, and I want to say this lightly, but limitations to what the relationship can, accomplish or what it incorporates, what is the best way to inform both the mentor and mentees of the roles and responsibilities?

They should know it as it is that they need to want what's being offered. It should, the offering should always come from the mentor,  right? The mentor has this expertise and the mentee has to want what they're giving.  So if I, if I have something to give you, I say, I have this pen here and you say, no, no, no.

But I want that water bottle instead. I don't want to give the water bottle. I want to give the pen. We have to realize and know what somebody's offering is versus what we want, because that might not be a match. So I like to think of it as making friends. Most people think there has to be a rule book. Do you have a rule book for making friends?

No, you don't. Does every person that passes your path become your friend? No, they could be a perfectly fine individual. That's perfectly suited for friendship for somebody else. Just not you. They might be somebody that you can be an acquaintance with and say hi to or whatever. We think that everybody who passes our path, Is a potential mentor and we're going to snatch him up and that's going to be our, our, our match.

And we have to realize that not everybody is our match, right? That that you may be offering something that somebody else just doesn't want. There could be that, you know, you don't like my personality. So, so much or that it could, there could be a million different things. So what we really have to focus on is understanding that mentorship isn't a forced relationship.

Yeah. It's one that we get. We have the power to choose it. Both the mentor and the mentee. Neither one is held captive by this relationship, and it's never a failure. It's just that it wasn't mentorship. So people will say, Oh, I had this person and they they didn't, you know, they just weren't meeting my needs.

That just wasn't mentoring.  That's all. It just wasn't mentoring. It's like if you met somebody and you said, you know what? I tried to meet up with this person and it didn't work. Well, then you're just not friends. That's all. It just, you didn't have a friend breakup. It never happened. So these are the kinds of things that we need to think of with mentorship.

We put too much pressure on it. 

 I like the analogy you gave of friendship. Not everybody can be your friend. Like, you know,  you have a certain personality and you have to find someone who actually,  is a good match for that personality and you both feel comfortable,  sharing stuff. You know, not just for your work, but beyond, because as you said, you don't leave yourself at work the way you're showing up at work is probably the way you're showing up at home and vice versa.

Right? So that is amazing. When I talk to employers. They're always looking for ways to improve outcomes of their departments and their employees, especially their employee well being. So fostering relationships between seasoned professionals and then the employees  is always a good option.

Thank you so much for shedding light on mentorship. And I do want to say something. Debra has an awesome TEDx talk on this topic. So make sure you check it out because I just checked it out before our interview and it's amazing. So I'm going to drop the link of the TEDx talk in our podcast episode so that you guys can just click on it and land on the, talk.

Debra, where can our viewers and listeners 

find you? You can find me at mentorproject. org. You can find me on LinkedIn, debraheiser. com. And you can find my book anywhere you buy books.  It's an audio format too, if you like that.  

Nice. Awesome. So check out her book and check out her website. She's a wealth of knowledge.

Debra, thank you so much for finding time in your busy schedule and talking to us.  Thank you for having me. It's been a great time. Thank you.  And thank you everyone for joining us today. Bye for now.