I'm sitting in an airport after a very long, but fulfilling week travelling around our offices in Asia. It's time for a glass of wine but also time to reflect on interactions with both the people reporting to me and the leaders of our businesses in this region.
I'm the head of strategic operations for a research and consulting business comprising 680 people; 45 of whom report to me and require a level of coaching to help them develop and perform. I've been working in purely commercial businesses for over 20 years and love coaching a team. As I've gained more experience, I've gained a lot by having great coaching managers to report to, and also a couple of people who've been great mentors to me over the years.
But is any of this important to being a good mentor for a social entrepreneur? I'm not convinced it is.
My journey into volunteering as a mentor with UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs, really started back in university while I was studying for a paper called Technology and society. We studied the responsibility of engineers in developing technologies that have a positive impact on society and minimise the impact to the environment. The role of business in society has always fascinated me and how focusing on making an impact makes for an interesting life.
I joined the UnLtd Connect mentoring programme back in 2009, where I worked with the team to identify my motivation and skills set, as well as the type of people and organisations that I like working for. The first thing to consider for being a good mentor to a social entrepreneur, in my mind, is an active interest in social entrepreneurship and a passion for helping people become successful.
I have a real passion for the role of sport in society, and so I was delighted when the Connect team matched me with a potential mentee in this area – Kevin Mathews, founder of Fitness for your future, who runs a social venture to tackle child obesity through delivering structured health and fitness programmes in primary schools and mental health wards. Kevin and I swapped CVs and from there we agreed to meet and discuss how we could develop a strong supportive relationship.
I've now worked with Kevin for over a year, and I believe we have both gained a lot from the experience. The mentor role is not that of taking over the venture, but helping the mentee overcome certain challenges of running a successful social business based upon their passion of delivering lasting impact in a local community. What's really key is that every social entrepreneur needs capacity to deliver, but giving that capacity is not the purpose of mentoring. Instead, it is about being supportive and acting as a sounding board, providing ideas of direction, asking for attention and giving time.
Kevin and I have discussed and developed themes around cash flow as opposed to profits, networking as opposed to selling, ownership as opposed to employment, and many more. Each area has been interesting for both of us and we've shared experiences relevant to the building of Fitness for your future and a new avenue – InClassFitness. Most of mentoring is about active listening, suggesting a structure for conversations and offering past experiences as examples when asked. I believe the key to a successful mentoring relationship is understanding which subjects are important to discuss.
Finally, not all social entrepreneurs are good mentees and not all people are good mentors. A good mentor for one mentee may not work out with another. Mentoring has to be thought of as a mutually beneficial relationship, one that both people have entered into knowing what they expect from each other. Good mentoring also often has a time horizon, and it's worth keeping an eye on whether both parties are continuing to gain from the relationship as time goes on.
I guess it is actually important to have relevant experience to offer in mentoring to a social entrepreneur, but my belief is that it is about much more than that. Having a passion for adding value in a structured relationship around a fantastic social cause is thrilling.
Stuart Mills is head of strategic operations at Wood Mackenzie
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