The Importance of Mentoring
By Ellie Eckhoff, Vice President, ClearRock
Part of my role at ClearRock is strategic business development. Over the years I have had mentors who have helped me develop the skills to do my job effectively. As the Mentoring Marketing Chair for The Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA), I have been able to pay it forward by helping to mentor other business women.
In the 10 years HBA has offered mentoring, over 800 women have worked together to discover how opportunities and challenges in their careers today encourage them to set career goals for tomorrow and take real steps to achieve their goals.
In 2015 we kicked off a program titled, "Leaders as Multipliers." The groups received the book Multipliers-How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman.
Throughout the eight-month program, the Mentor Circles discovered just how powerful mentoring is as a multiplier of talent. Through peer coaching and mentoring, over 100 women benefited from the advice and experiences of their peers.
The HBA developed a Competency Framework that lines up well with the disciplines of Multipliers. For example, one characteristic of the multiplier leader is being a Challenger; someone who makes people stretch ... HBA calls this "facilitating change." One of the best things mentoring can do is to lay down a challenge and generate a belief in what is possible.