359: Building a Culture of Mentoring That Sustains Women Leaders with Tamara Thorpe & Lisa Fain

Speaker A: Lots of folks sort of go in, well, we know mentoring is good, and we know we want a mentoring program, so let's build it without having real clarity on what they really want that to achieve. Do we want it to increase retention? Do we want it to increase performance? Do we want it for recruitment? There's lots of different functions that a mentoring program can have in an organization. And if you don't have clarity on what you want to achieve, which should come from our top leaders, our top leaders should be able to say to the organization, this is our vision and this is how we're going to achieve it, and this is how we're going to measure it. And when mentoring is fully built into that system, measuring and finding the ROI becomes really easy.

Speaker B: Oh, I love that. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker C: It's such an important point because mentoring is not the goal. Mentoring is the vehicle to the end result. And that's another reason we can't. There's no prescription like, are you looking for engagement? Are you looking for retention? Are you looking for succession planning? And what are those things? But there's another answer to your question, too, that I think is really important, Giovanna, which is measurement is really important. And the beauty of our field of mentoring is that there's actually a ton of data and a ton of research on outcomes. So if there is a program coordinator who is looking for data, uh, on the benefit of mentoring, we can help you find that it absolutely exists. But the best data are the stories and the role modeling that leaders do in organizations that show that they have invested in their own learning and they have invested in learning in others, and it's made a difference.

Speaker B: Welcome to the well Woman show, the place where women rise, lead and, um, thrive both within and beyond the systems that shape our lives. Through an intersectional feminist lens, mindfulness practices, and smart leadership strategies, we support driven women like you to make meaningful change without anxiety, self doubt, and burnout. On the show, we challenge the status quo and help you unlearn the limiting beliefs that keep you playing small so you can activate your superpowers and live with joy, confidence and ease. You'll hear inspiring conversations with women leaders about the systems they're working to change, the journeys that brought them here, and their personal growth. Growth. In our signature segment, Superpowers for Success, I'm your host, Giovanna Rossi. Mentoring is one of the most powerful levers for women's growth and one of the most misunderstood. In this rich conversation, I sit down with the two women who have dedicated their careers to getting mentoring Right. Tamara Thorpe and Lisa Faint. Welcome back. Well, woman, I'm your host, Giovanna Rossi. Tamara Thorpe is founder of Real Mentors Network, while Lisa Fain is the CEO of Center for Mentoring Excellence. Together, they pull back the curtain on why so many workplace mentoring programs quietly fall flat and what it actually takes to build a mentoring culture that helps people thrive, not just perform. In this episode, you'll discover why mentoring is the most promiscuously used word in leadership development, according to them and, uh, what it actually means. The three characteristics of real mentoring, reciprocity, learning, and co creation. Why great mentors are coaches, but not all coaches are great mentors. Why mentoring programs fail when treated as a DEI add on or a technology fix and how top leadership buy in, um, makes mentoring measurable and how to find your mentoring roi. As always, all links and information can be found at www.wellwomanlife.com 359show. This is one of the conversations I know you'll come back to. Let's get into. Hello, Hello. Welcome to the show. Lisa and Tamara. Uh, thank you so much for having us.

Speaker A: So nice to be here.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's so good to have you on the show, both of you together. And this is going to be fun because we can have a really good conversation about a topic that is really important for women and for listeners of this show. And just to kind of frame a little bit here for listeners, you know, when we think of mentoring, people listening might think a lot of different things. You might think of your own experience or lack of or your own experience being a mentor. But I'd like to frame this as, like, what does mentoring really look like when we actually want people to thrive and not just perform? So I'll just kind of throw that out there as we get started. But to get us going, I'd love to hear from you, Tamara. And then, Lisa, who are you in the world today as you're showing up here on the well Woman show?

Speaker A: Thank you for that. Big question. I think today in the world, I am, um, a woman. Really trying to figure out where I am in all the spaces at home and at work and in my life and world outside of home and work and in all of that, our topic today, mentoring plays such a huge role in it. But as I am, um, getting older, I'm sort of thinking about what this sort of second half of my life looks like. And so today, here I'm coming to this conversation really thoughtfully and really intentionally to talk about mentoring and its impact. Because for me, and where I'M at today. It really does play such a crucial role in this sort of second half of, of my life and that, you know, it really is the culmination of the work that I have done as a consultant for the last 20 plus years to build mentoring programs through Real Mentors Network and my collaboration with Lisa. Uh, so that's who I am and where I'm coming from today.

Speaker B: Okay, thanks Tamara and Lisa.

Speaker C: I love the question, Giovanna, and the way that you asked it, because there's so many ways I can answer it. You know, I think I am like Tamara, shifting to a new phase of my own life as I have two adult daughters who are one who is transitioning to the work world from school, one who is knee deep in her studies and discovering herself. So I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a keynote speaker, I'm a business owner. I, um, think first, foremost, and underlying it all, I'm a lifelong learner who really believes in the power of learning and ongoing growth as a way to fully live. And that really fuels my passion in my own relationships. It fuels my passion in my professional relationships and in the work that I do to help organizations transform their cultures and achieve the best results they can through creating learning ecosystems for which mentoring really is the linchpin. Mhm.

Speaker B: Okay, love it. Thank you both. And so you both work deeply in mentoring and leadership. And so Tamara, I want to ask you, what's a moment that really shaped how you think about mentoring today?

Speaker A: I think there's two. One of them came, I was sitting on an airplane and I had this sort of moment where I had been thinking about where does all the work that I have done in my life intersect? So I was sort of at a career crossroads and looking at the work I had done as a cross cultural consultant, as a leadership consultant, as, uh, somebody who had done a lot of work in international education, as somebody who had done a lot of work in my faith, community and youth leadership development. And I was looking for the intersection where do all these things I've done at different stages in my career or in different facets of my life intersect? And as I was sitting on an airplane sort of taking notes about that intersection. Mentoring just came really clearly to me as this sort of consistent pattern of either experiences that I had had of having incredible mentors or experiences that I have had of, uh, mentoring other people in the work that I do. So that was a real epiphany. And I think once I started to study the scholarship of mentoring, which happened when I attended the first UNM Mentoring Institute conference here in Albuquerque. It just was revelatory to me that the way that I had experienced and, um, mentoring as a mentee and mentor was, um, just the tip of the iceberg. And what was available to me in my understanding about mentoring that has now really shaped and informed the Last sort of 10, 15 years of my work.

Speaker B: Oh yeah. And Lisa, when did you realize that mentoring wasn't just kind of like a nice to have sort of thing, but really actually a lever for real change? No, it's such a great question.

Speaker C: So I started my professional career as an attorney in a large law firm in Chicago. And um, you know, like many new lawyers, had this just total realization that despite three years of law school, I was entering a profession, that I was very, um, ill equipped. I didn't know anything. And also at the time, less true now, 26 years later. But at the time it was quite true that there weren't very many senior women, uh, partners at these law firms. And so our firm had a mentoring. And for those who are watching and see my air quotes and program, um, and the reason I'm using air quotes is because what they call the program is what, uh, Tamara and I now call pair and pray, meaning kind of pair people and pray that it succeeds. And their instruction to the one woman who they found to mentor me was take her to lunch. So every month we went to lunch, really interesting conversations about lots of different things and some really good meals. But we didn't talk about my fears about becoming a lawyer or my aspirations of balancing my home and, um, my work life or what lit me up or what drained me or any of those things. And it wasn't until there was another attorney who really took an interest in me, who saw what lit me up, who saw what drained me, who asked me questions that really required me to reflect instead of them to tell me about the journey. That I really started to feel invested in my own career and to feel like maybe I can actually do this. Maybe I'm more equipped than I thought. Um, maybe this is a, uh, place where I can belong in a field that I can contribute to. And there is a way that I can balance my interest in the public interest with the profession of law in a way where I'm able to do well by doing good. So I saw that dichotomy between what wasn't really mentoring and what was real investment in my development that was mentoring. And I saw the way that it affected my own confidence, my own competence, and my own Fulfillment in my own career.

Speaker B: Hmm. Okay, I have a lot of questions. Uh, just, let's just back up and kind of big picture about mentoring because, you know, working in women's leadership and policy and supporting women, as I've done in my career for so many years, I see a lot of attempts at mentoring where a lot of the work is sort of an add on to someone's other job. And folks who, um, I feel like they're not compensated a lot of times for the work and it's like this extra thing that they're supposed to tack on to everything else they're doing or the mentoring program is sort of shoved over on the side in like a DEI program that, you know, the budget gets slashed and so is it fair to say it's sort of like, you know, pushed aside and not really given the, the value that it should have. And so where are we with that? Like, what's the big picture with mentoring right now? How is, how are you thinking about that, Lisa?

Speaker A: I'm going to let you start with that. Okay.

Speaker C: Um, so the first is, you know, I like to say, only half jokingly, Giovanna, that mentoring is the most promiscuously used word in leadership development because it really is so misunderstood. And underlying your question about why aren't people compensated for it or why does it get pushed aside, it's because it's approached in a way that's about, uh, I'll use a tech metaphor. It's not about copying the files on the hard drive. It's about expanding the operating system. And too often we think about mentoring as just knowledge transfer. It's an extra lift because I have to help Tamara get up to speed so that she can become capable and she can learn the things that I learned. And it's all about her learning. But in fact, what we know when mentoring programs are set up effectively and mentoring competency is built in as part of leadership expectation that it is a, uh, reciprocal relationship. That's a triple win. It's a win for the mentee because they get exposure to new ideas. They have a sounding uh, board and a safety net and a laboratory of a place to learn and to grow. It is a, uh, win for the mentor because they get uh, not just the feeling of giving back, which I don't want to diminish that because that's really important. But it's sort of the least of the benefits. The most of the benefits is they become better leaders. They get a greater cross cultural and cross generational competency. They become more Satisfied in their careers, they get new ideas, the communication skills, I mean, on and on and on. And then it's a win for the organization because you have a place where people are more engaged, people stay for longer, the business results are better, and again, so on, uh, and on and on and on and on. So the first thing is defining what mentoring is. The second thing is integrating it as part of, uh, competency that is expected of leaders so you can have that triple win as an organization. And the third is celebrating, acknowledging the wins as an organization so that you can really nurture mentoring and have it become part of this kind of learning ecosystem in what you're doing. I'm not passionate about it at all. Can you tell?

Speaker A: And another thing, I love that.

Speaker B: And so would you add anything to that? Tamara?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think to add to your point of why often is it seen as something that is an add on or an extra or a, uh, nice to have is because people think of mentoring in a very traditional, hierarchical, and perhaps very outdated way of thinking of mentoring. Right. Of this idea, Lisa said of knowledge transfer, that there's sort of this wiser, more skilled, more knowledgeable person who's going to have to pour their knowledge, pour their energy into this sort of empty vessel of a person, um, to get them to be at the same level of this person, or at least a level at which is going to make this person's job easier or something that happens quite informally or naturally or organically. And so while lots of mentoring relationships, and often success will do happen naturally and organically, when we go into mentoring relationships with intention, with clarity, with purpose, the outcomes, as Lisa articulated, are so much greater. And when those mentoring relationships are gone into, with a sense of mutual respect and reciprocity, and with the belief that both mentor and mentee are coming into this mentoring relationship with their own equitable set of learned experiences and knowledge, then it's about creating this sort of learning ecosystem in the relationship rather than this, you know, top down relationship. So one of the shifts that has happened in mentoring in the last 20 years is a shift from that top down to a more equitable reciprocal relationship. And when that intention is laid out in how an organization might, uh, define mentoring or set up their mentoring program, it becomes a far more robust contribution to the organization as opposed to somebody sort of being given this additional task without any training, without any preparation, without any purpose, which, as you know, we've seen with many DEI programs, when somebody's given the task to run DEI without any structure or clear purpose or Support, um, those programs don't succeed. And so mentoring has sort of fallen into that same category. And I think one of the things I've learned as somebody who has been a leadership and organizational consultant for a long time is that this sort of falls into the category of, you know, the soft skills, the nice to haves. After the technical skills that I've said for years, um, it makes more sense to companies to spend money on a photocopy machine than it does on skill development or interpersonal relationships. And that is starting to shift. But that's where the better investment is, when we invest in our people and their development and their future. And we know the data could not be more clear that millennials, Gen Z, and people who are coming from underrepresented populations see learning and development as their primary, uh, hope for their job. I'm going to this job because I want to learn, I want to grow, I want to develop relationships. And when now it's not happening, they leave.

Speaker B: Yeah, I hear that. And I'm curious because I have, uh, I've been to mentoring, you know, events or these kinds of things where people sit down and they. They just say, well, what advice do you have for me? And so I'm curious, and I'll throw this to Lisa in terms of the integration of mentoring and coaching, because I have a background in coaching as well as doing all this. And, you know, when people say that to me, like, well, what advice do you have? My response is more like, well, let's create this a space for a conversation first, and then asking them to really find some of the answers for themselves. Because I think, and this goes to the whole point of this show and this, well, woman community, which is that we need to support women to trust their own inner knowing and their own knowledge before just, you know, asking for, like, external advice and pieces of information. I mean, sure, there are definitely times when we need a specific piece of information. Right. Or, like, a specific skill upskilling something. But, um. Yeah. What would you say about that, Lisa? After I've just.

Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot in there. Right. So the first thing is that, um, you know, I could give you a whole diatribe on kind of the mentoring events, which isn't really mentoring. It's not that there's not value in them. There's some great value in that connection, but it's not mentoring per se. So let's talk about, first, the definition of mentoring, which will lead us into this dichotomy. It's not even a dichotomy. Into the relationship between mentoring and coaching. Right? So I like to say that there are three characteristics of mentoring that will help you understand what mentoring is. One is this idea of reciprocity, right, that mentors give and mentees get, but also mentees give and mentors get. Uh, there really is this reciprocity. So that's thing one, thing two is learning. Learning is the purpose, it's the process, it's the product of the mentoring relationship. So you have reciprocity and you have learning. If you don't have learning, it's just a great cup of coffee or a really delicious lunch. It's nothing. It's not really deeper than that. So reciprocity and learning. And the third characteristic, and this gets to the difference between coaching and mentoring in a real way, is this idea of co creation. In a mentoring relationship, the mentor and the mentee are co creating the relationship. It's really an important distinction because there's really very few others, if any, other relationship in the workplace where this, there's this idea of, um, equanimity of setting the parameters for a healthy learning relationship that happens by both parties. So I like to say that all great mentors are coaches, but not all great coaches are mentors. Really good mentors use those coaching skills. And you and I know as coaches, Giovanna and Tamara as well, that those are asking questions like appreciative inquiry, right? Those are leading with curiosity. It's recognizing that the learner, um, who in this case, we know there's reciprocity. So both are learners, right? Come whole to the conversation as opposed to broken, uh, to the conversation and so many other skills that coaches use. The difference is this idea of co creation. And it's much more appropriate in a mentoring relationship than it is in a coaching relationship to share your own experience as a tool for learning. Let's like contrast that for a second with coaching. If you hire me as your coach and you say, lisa, help me create a vision, and I come to that coaching relationship with no tools, no exercises, nothing, you're going to find a new coach, right quick. But in the mentoring relationship, we can talk about a vision. I don't have to have a single answer. I don't have to know. I don't have to come with a tool. I have to come with this, uh, ability to ask really good questions so that either I can help you discover it or together, we can dive in and discover it together. So it's a very different kind of modality where there's a lot of overlap

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Thank you for really laying that out clearly. And Tamara, if you have anything to add to that. But I also want to get into kind of where you all are seeing the system of mentoring and the programs really not working. And, like, how are you? Because you two are fabulous, you know, separately from each other. But now that you're working together, there's this, like, powerful collaboration that's happening. And I want to really hear about what's the problem you're fixing and what is your solution.

Speaker A: So one of the things that we are seeing as organizations buy into mentoring and want to integrate mentoring, as we kind of suggested earlier, is a failure to invest in the resources and to invest in creating and fostering a supportive culture and full integration into organizational system. Right. So they'll, you know, sort of pick someone and say, hey, you're now in charge of our mentoring program. Let us know what you need, as opposed to thinking more systemically, more sustainably, and instead of thinking about where their investments really are best going to be suited, um, depending upon what their actual organizational needs for mentoring are. So as a result, a lot of energy will get poured into a mentoring program without that sort of designated mentoring program coordinator really having the tools and resources they need to have something that's sustainable and fully integrated into the systems and supported by a culture that really, uh, appreciates and fosters a culture of mentoring. And so, um, which, you know, let Lisa speak to that culture of mentoring, because that is such a crucial part to mentoring programs being such sustainable. But to answer your question very succinctly, we're seeing a failure of investment into sort of what it's really going to take to build something that's effective and sustainable by really failing to provide mentoring program coordinators with the tools, resources, and environment they need to run a successful program.

Speaker C: M. Yeah, that's spot on. The only thing that I would add to it is, um. Well, I guess there's a couple things to add to it. The second problem that we often see is that organizations will invest in technology and then say that that's going to solve our mentoring problem. There is great technology out there, and there's many that Tamara has worked with and that I've worked with, um, and happy to talk to folks about what we recommend, depending on culture and all of those things. But technology is not an end. Technology is a beginning and a facilitator of scaling mentoring without integrating it into other leadership competencies, without having leaders who hold people accountable for investing in their own learning and in the learning of others without measuring success, without having ongoing support, without integrating it with other learning initiatives. You know, like, we've seen organizations that invest in the technology and their, you know, then they dedicate financial resources to making that happen and all of the things. And they have a totally separate learning curriculum, and the two don't speak together. And then they wonder why either there's not more participation in mentoring or there's not more participation in the learning initiatives that they've invested so highly in. So this sense of full, um, creating a learning ecosystem within their organization and integrating into what they expect of leaders, it can be so transformative for organizations. And instead of being another spend, it can help utilize and maximize the spend that they've already had to get the results that they're looking for.

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think if we have, like, employers or leaders, you know, listening to this show and they're like, yeah, I totally get that, um, what can they do about it? And I know you're offering a program that folks can join, but what are they going to do? Like, what is the solution and what are they going to get from that?

Speaker A: So one of the solutions that Lisa and I both, I mean, individually, collectively in our work, our hope is that organizations seek support as soon as they have the idea, right? As soon as they have the idea, we want to have mentoring program, seek support and get the guidance from someone like myself or Lisa or us combined that says here's the pathway forward and here's where technology could be useful after, you know, at a certain point in that pathway. Um, but what we are finding is that a lot of organizations have already started some level of initiative and assign that work to a mentoring program coordinator who is now trying to figure out how to run this program effectively and sustainably without, um, without training and support. And so we've created the mentoring program Success Lab to create, uh, two things. An opportunity for mentoring program coordinators to learn more about building sustainable mentoring programs by having a monthly, uh, meeting where we are focused on an aspect of, um, mentoring programs and what makes them successful. But two, by. Also by having a learning community, a learning community of peers who are all in the same boat, trying to do the same thing, perhaps in different spaces, in different industries, but really trying to achieve the same thing and learning from one another so that they are, um, you know, because one of the things we've noticed that there's a real sense of isolation. Right. I'm the only one in this organization, organization trying to make mentoring happen. And I don't know what I'M doing and I don't have anybody to really learn from or get empathy from. And so we have, through the mentoring, um, program Success Lab, tried to build that community so that there's this learning community as well as that, infusing that with opportunities to learn, the practices that are necessary that they can build and integrate into their programming so that it can be as effective and sustainable as possible.

Speaker C: It's a bit meta, isn't it? Right. Because we know that mentoring, you know, we've talked sort of so far implicitly, Giovanna, about mentoring being this one on one relationship. But there's other forms of mentoring as well. There's peer mentoring, um, there's masterminds, there's group mentoring, there's complimentary mentoring, which is when someone more junior mentors somebody, uh, more senior. There's all sorts of modalities. And what underlies it all is that when we learn in community, whether it's one on one, whether it's in groups, we learn more effectively, we have a greater sense of belonging, we accelerate our results much faster. So what Tamara and I have created is a peer mentoring community and a learning community for mentoring, um, program coordinators so that they can share best practices. They have two experts in the field to learn from, but also peers to learn from and with, uh, together. So we're super excited about what, uh, that looks like. There's a second piece to your question though, that is related to the mentoring program Success Lab, but separate from it, which is that in order for organizations to be successful in creating a mentoring culture, there are two things that have to happen. One is organizations have to have the systems and the structure in place for mentoring to succeed. That's a capable, supported mentoring program coordinator. That's the technology that it needs. That's the integration with its learning curriculum and all the other things that I talked about. And the second thing is it has to foster individual agency and ownership over learning. Tamara knows this better than anybody as somebody who studied generations that Millennials and Gen Z have a very different expectation, uh, for learning. And they expect the organizational system piece. Organizations are expecting the individual agency piece. So how are you equipping both the organization and the individuals to create that high level, those high levels of learning and that success in mentoring? And that's one of the things that we help with in the mentoring program Success Lab is helping to build individual capacity for mentoring, um, for mentors and mentees, and helping to set or helping organizations set the structure and systems in place.

Speaker B: And are you mostly seeing that it's larger organizations that have the time and capacity to take this on or are smaller organizations also good targets for you?

Speaker C: I love that question.

Speaker A: We design the program for a range of targets.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because we know that there are lots of what are considered mid sized organizations that are really sort of proactively in their systems and structures, building and mentoring, but also have mentoring program coordinators need support. We're seeing a, uh, need also in higher educational institutions as well, as well as some of um, folks in the larger corporate sector.

Speaker C: It's all over the map. And the truth is that a mentoring culture is critical in organizations of any size and any, any industry. The path to it is different depending on the context of the organization, but the skills that are necessary for mentoring program coordinators to create that are similar. It's just the application of the context is different. So there is no prescription pad. If there were a prescription pad to a successful mentoring culture, then Tamara and I would be in a different line of work. Um, it is all about understanding context and it's applicable across industry, across size of organization. It's just applicable a little bit differently.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it seems very much aligned uh, with, you know, I do a lot of work in workplaces for employers to understand, you know, if they can create a workplace culture that supports their employees. That could include a mentoring program. Right. But uh, it includes a whole lot of other things that they will, um, they will do better as a business and their employees will thrive. And, and we see that across industry, across size of organization. It really just actually comes down to is there someone in the organization who's championing it, who's going to track it? And then what happens when that champion leaves? And are there things built into the programs that you're offering or the things that we offer in the family friendly workplace culture? Um, are there data points or data systems built into that to show the return on investment? How do you deal with that? If people are like, well, I really want to do this, but I've got to see the return on investment. Like, how do you respond to that?

Speaker A: Um, I'll start by saying, because what came to me was a story about, um, Utah, uh, State University has a really impressive campus wide program. Um, I have had the opportunity to meet with the leadership there and interview and talk with them about mentoring and they've published a lot of their work about how they've built mentoring into the culture of the university there. And um, because of their structure and the culture there, how critical it is. And I remember um, when I was Going in to talk to the, uh, head of the university about this program, you know, I was going a bit skeptical. I've spent a lot of time talking to CEOs and leaders who usually don't know much about these sort of initiatives, and, you know, kind of say, yeah, we do this thing, and I support it. But I remember seeing that conversation and being blown away at how invested the top leadership was in building a culture of mentoring into the university's overall culture and recognizing how important that was. And so to answer your question about measurability, it really comes from being able to say, does our top leadership really believe in this? And how is the top leadership building, um, markers and measures into all, you know, KPIs for employees, outcomes for students, you know, or employees, whatever it is.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But the leadership has to be fully bought in. Leadership has to be driving it. And that allows for those measures to be put in for it to be built into the expectations of the roles of leaders and managers, to be built into, uh, expected outcomes for employees who are going in as mentees. These all become really critical. And so when we're really investing from the beginning, right. It's. It's always that sort of starting with the end in mind. If we know what we want the mentoring program to achieve, then we can start building a mentoring program. Lots of folks sort of going, well, well, we know mentoring is good, and we know we want a mentoring program, so let's build it without having real clarity on what they really want that to achieve. Do we want it to increase retention? Do we want it, you know, to increase performance? Do we want it, you know, for recruitment? There's lots of different functions that a mentoring program can have in an organization. And if you don't have clarity on what you want to achieve, which should come from our top leaders, our top leaders should be able to say to the organization, this is our vision and this is how we're going to achieve it, and this is how we're going to measure it. And when mentoring is fully built into that system, measuring and finding the ROI becomes really easy.

Speaker B: Oh, I love that. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, it's such an important point because mentoring is not the goal. Mentoring is the vehicle to the end result. And that's another reason we can't. There's no prescription like, are you looking for engagement? Are you looking for retention? Are you looking for succession planning? And what are those things? But there's another answer to your question, too, that I think is really important, Giovanna, which is measurement is really Important. And the beauty of our field of mentoring is that there's actually a ton of data and a ton of research on outcomes. So if there is a program coordinator who is looking for data on the benefit of mentoring, we can help you find that it absolutely exists. But the best data are the stories and the role modeling that leaders do in organizations that show that they have invested in their own learning and they have invested in learning in others, and it's made a difference. A story from your CEO about the mentor who made a difference in their life when they were young and what they learned from them and how they're continuing to mentor other people is so powerful in beginning to create a mentoring culture. And collecting those stories can be super, super, um, effective in having that story. Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for calling that out. Actually, I really want to underscore that and I like how you framed that. The mentoring program is really the vehicle for arriving at wherever you want to go with your team, with your organization. And it can be built in so many different ways. And so I think for a lot of people listening, I would really ask you to reflect on your own organizations or your own teams and think about what your goals are. And could mentoring be a vehicle for getting there? And um, Lisa and Tamara, it's been such a pleasure talking to you today about all things mentoring. And we're going to link to your program that you've collaborated on, but just give us the little rundown on what the program is and how people can find you.

Speaker C: Yeah, so we, um, created the mentoring program Success Lab. As Tamara said, it is a community for mentoring program coordinators. Whether you're just starting out, whether you are trying to make your current mentoring program more effective, whether you're wanting ongoing support on what you've already created successfully. We all know that learning and community is really, really powerful in terms of achieving a sustaining engagement. So we've created a twice monthly meeting which is curriculum based. So we have learning objectives at different phases and um, stages of the mentoring initiative. But it's also driven by the learning needs of the participants as well. You'll get our expert guidance, you'll get shared, uh, community with others and ah, really evolving content as well for support. And we'll link to where you can find us. But, uh, we are continually accepting participants. And I think you'll find that it is a warm learning environment that models these principles of mentoring that will help if you take them to your organization, it will help your mentoring program really soar. What would you add to that, Tamara?

Speaker A: Uh, I think you cover a lot of it. And as Lisa said, enrollment is ongoing. And so there's sort of no start date and no end date. We accept new folks into the program every month. And so it's never too late for people to enroll and join because we're really excited to have this community of support for folks, um, because we are just so deeply committed and invested in folks feeling equipped to have successful programs. And so, um, that's our hope and that's our goal, and we look forward to having more folks join us.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, um, thank you so much. And we will put all of this in the show notes@wellwomanlife.com and this is Will Air, you know, on NPR and so folks can find you, Lisa and Tamara to follow up. And thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker A: Thank you for having us. Gianna.

Speaker C: Huh?

Speaker B: That's it for our show today. Remember, if you need support to live your well woman life, follow us on Instagram ellwomanlife. And don't forget, you can catch the show on NPR anytime. Just head to npr.org podcasts and search for the well Woman Show. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts and leave us a quick review. It really helps others find the show. I always love hearing from you, so drop a comment or message me on socials. Ellwomanlife. I'm Giovanna Rossi for the well Woman Show. Until next time, have a super powerful week.