Why cross-company mentoring allows freer discussion

Mentoring is widely acclaimed as an effective way of encouraging and retaining female employees. Companies in industries ranging from tech and finance to infrastructure and retail have all launched their own programmes.

These are usually internal, where one employee pairs with another. But an alternative approach is also proving popular: cross-company and cross-industry schemes. Proponents argue that an unbiased, external mentor allows women to speak more freely about the challenges they face when entering or progressing in the workplace.

A cross-sector mentoring programme at Balance The Board, a UK-based non-profit initiative aiming to help more women into senior management, pairs women from sectors as different as tech, financial services, law, leisure and entertainment, with executives who work in non-competing companies.

“It’s refreshing for somebody to be able to talk to them very openly without any of the preconceptions or the unconscious biases around that company and around that industry,” says Holly Addison, co-founder with Emma Causer of Balance the Board. Matching people from different industries means the conversation is different, as the 50 participants in its imminent 2024 programme will find.

We had some challenges in the beginning because everybody wanted the most senior person

Mentors “within your own world” are less likely to challenge practices in the mentee’s company, says Addison. “There can be ex­cus­es made for why things are a certain way.”

The benefits of mentoring are well-established, for individuals and employers — for example, in boosting diversity. A 2016 study by Harvard University and Tel Aviv University found that employers introducing such programmes reported being “significantly more diverse” at management level.

Any successful scheme depends on matching mentees and mentors appropriately. “We had some challenges in the beginning because everybody wanted the most senior person [as mentor], but that does not necessarily mean they are the best person for you,” says Causer. One of the scheme’s happiest matches was someone from a software firm with someone from a pub company.

She adds that conversations among the group have proven “eye opening for the older male mentors, because it’s given them an insight into the challenges for women”.

Liz Dimmock, founder of UK-based Moving Ahead, which has run cross-industry mentoring for a decade, says even senior, male mentors who back equal opportunities report that mentoring junior women can bring new insights. The chief operating officer of a FTSE company recently told her it was only when mentoring an ambitious, talented woman who was hitting barriers that he began to see “the microaggressions and the challenges she was facing”.

Dimmock adds that making an empathetic connection means the mentors “inadvertently are going to create change for other women in the system”, because of their new insights.

You can declare your ambition . . . without that person being concerned they might lose you

It is crucial that mentoring happens in a structured way, with everyone ready to have open conversations, she says. “You need space to be ambitious, space to be vulnerable.” Speaking to someone from outside your company or industry means “you can declare your ambition, you can be really ambitious . . . without that person being concerned that they might lose you from their team”.

At Women in Banking & Finance, a London-based non-profit scheme to promote gender equality in UK financial services, around 300 mentor and mentee matches are under way at banks, brokers, insurers, law firms and elsewhere. The mentoring programme has been running for more than 15 years, with members ranging from students to senior executives.

The cross-company programme provides mentees with “a different perspective without the politics of a specific organisation”, says Gwen Faure, member of the WIBF management board. It is helpful for someone to have both an external perspective on their particular questions, but also “an objective perspective on common challenges”, she explains. And mentors appreciate the chance to support someone else in the industry — to “expand their network, pass on their experience and knowledge, and create mentors for the future”.

You can learn a lot in school but there’s a lot of soft skills and nuances of being a professional in the finance industry

A mentoring relationship can suffer, however, if individuals “have not really understood the commitment that mentoring is — time, planning, being challenged to think differently”, says Faure.

But, put the effort in, and it can be an opportunity to hone personal and communication skills. “It’s learning how business works, it’s learning ‘soft skills’ . . . you can learn a lot in school but there’s a lot of soft skills and nuances of being a professional in the finance industry,” argues Debbie McLean, interim executive director of 100 Women in Finance. The New York-based non-profit initiative is aimed at university students and recent graduates who want to work in finance.

The 100WF mentoring programme also acts as a way to meet others who are starting out. McLean hopes the connections made will last: “As they reach mid-career, we see a 50 per cent dropout [of women] in some sectors of the industry, so developing that support with their mentor can be an ongoing relationship.”