Mentoring - A Promising Experiment in Minnesota

The Department of Labor's Report on the Glass Ceiling Initiative identified women's lack of access to mentoring as one of the "organizational or attitudinal barriers" that contributed to the glass ceiling. In our interview with Jude Sotherland, Executive Assistant to Labor Secretary Lynn Martin, Sotherland told us emphatically that mentoring was something the CEOs of the companies studied in the report "would never allow to be imposed". Sotherland seemed convinced from this that developing mentoring programs for women and minority men would not work as a method to eliminate the glass ceiling. According to this argument, mentoring is just one of those tools that works only if it is informal and unstructured. There is an interesting experiment going on in Minnesota right now, however, that may shed some light on the question.

The "Minnesota 100" is the brainchild of Gayle Holmes, President of the Minneapolis-based Gayle Holmes Consulting Group. The program brings together one hundred "outstanding women" with one hundred business leaders in a year-long, one-on-one relationship. Although most of the women participating are sponsored by their companies, approximately 10% pay the $660 annual fee out of their own pockets, and another 5% pay half the cost. (One woman paid for herself after her own company's Human Resources Department told her they wouldn't pay for the program because it discriminated against men.) Mary Mahoney, Vice President of Marketing for Gayle Holmes Consulting, told DataLine that the program "easily" signed up the participating mentors and had to turn away many applicants for the one hundred "mentee" spots. Half the mentors are men and half are women, although Mahoney said this was not planned. She also commented that most of the male mentors signed on with minimal interviewing and investigation, while the female mentors typically spent more time thinking about it and had greater concerns about the effect on their own careers of participating in the program. This was not out of a reluctance to help other women, Mahoney stressed, but merely a greater concern about the effect of any extra-curricular activity, especially one that could be perceived as activist or feminist, on their own careers.

The basic requirements of the program include a "leadership assessment" of the "mentee", including confidential interviews with her manager, peers, and subordinates, followed by a minimum of 14 hours of one-on-one counseling with the mentor. (Participants are free to spend more time in individual mentoring sessions, but commit to the 14 hours.) The Minnesota 100 also provides a total of eight days of training for the "mentees", and "mentoring guidelines" for the mentors, with the advice that mentors should basically use their own experience to guide their "mentees".

Companies participating in the Minnesota 100 as mentors or "mentees" include many of the largest and best known companies in the state. So far, according to Mahoney, feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive, and many mentors have already signed on for another year. Cross-company mentoring may actually work better than intra-company mentoring, Mahoney said, "because there are no mixed agendas for the mentors. They have a single desire: to end the stalling of women in middle management.

Holmes and Mahoney sought support from Charles Durenberger, Republican Senator from Minnesota, and got it. They also wrote to Lynn Martin, who declined to speak at the kick-off meeting of the Minnesota 100 or to give any support. DataLine hopes that Martin is watching this innovation in the Midwest, and will at least keep an open mind about the usefulness of creating mentoring programs to allow women and minority men true equal opportunity in management development. We also hope she will bear in mind that such programs are not affirmative action or remedial in any way: If mentoring were as available to women as it is to men, programs like the Minnesota 100 would not be needed.

For more information about the Minnesota 100, call Mary Mahoney at (612) 885 5880