might diminish the integrity of
the program and the success if
we make it too large (we had 45
partnerships). So that’s why in the
coming year my focus is going to be
on how we ensure that the informal
matches are just as “prestigious”
and have the support they need to
be successful.
What’s interesting is the number
of individuals who want to re-up
every single year. We tell them to
pay it forward because there’s a validation, an affirmation, around that
experience.
How do we look at the context of
the mentoring program as compared
to the general population? While we
don’t call promotions out as a reason for mentoring, a greater number
of individuals who were participating in the program are gaining promotions. We have conducted five
return-on-investment studies.
GLOVER We’ve got this process
that’s called the Business and
Technical Leader Process. Every
year, people who are current-
ly executives and those who go
through a screening process across
the enterprise globally, who are
identified as having potential for
executive leadership, go through
this process. They are assessed
against a set of competencies, and
one of them has to do with the abil-
ity to manage cross-culturally and
globally. These competencies were
recently revised to bring particu-
lar focus on this notion of cultur-
al adaptability, cultural intelligence,
ability to manage employees who
are in different countries, from dif-
ferent perspectives, etc. Leaders
are asked to evaluate their own
competencies as a part of that exer-
cise, and then where they come
up needing development, specif-
ic efforts and opportunities around
both mentor and mentee occur.
DAVIDSON Research is indicating
that peer-to-peer partnerships are
just as powerful, if not sometimes
more powerful, because people
have the ability to be more transparent around their vulnerabilities.
There are different types of
mentoring that meet people where
they are. If it’s the group-mentoring
concept or if it’s the one-to-one
experience or a new terminology or
situational mentoring, there’s more
where we can share best practices
on an as-needed basis.
POINT NO.
How Involved Are Your CEO and Senior Executives?
ALPERT We have a global CEO and
a U.S. CEO. From a U.S. perspective, we have four major businesses, and each of those have CEOs.
We have the Emerging Leaders
Development Program, which is
about 100 or so each year of the
high-talent, “minority” senior man-
agers, and they’re taken through
a year-long program. We’ve built
sponsorship into the program so
each of the individuals are given a
sponsor, and the sponsors include
the CEOs of the businesses. The
CEOs of the businesses have the
personal responsibility for select-
ing those people. Another is called
Navigation to Excellence, which
is a similarly sized program, a lit-
tle newer, for women of color. It’s
the peer-to-peer level, and they are
assigned sponsors.
DiversityInc research and interviews show that formal, cross-cultural relationships involving the CEO and senior
executives have a deep impact on the talent pipeline to the top as well as on the executives themselves, who
report life-changing experiences.
Here’s what our corporate experts had to say:
Case study: At our U.S. partners
meeting, we had a day devoted to
a meeting of women partners and
directors, but everyone was invited.
Our global CEO asked at the end
of the meeting for each individual in the room to take an index card
and write down the name of at least
one individual, preferably two, who
they were going to commit to sponsor before leaving the room. He did
