Building Stronger Relationships Through Mentoring with Lisa Fain | RR75

Lisa, Hello everyone, and welcome to

relationships rule. I have a special guest with me as always,

and I'm excited to introduce you to Lisa Fain. Lisa is coming to

us from Washington, State of Washington area, and she is the

center. She is the CEO of the Center for mentoring excellence

and an expert in the intersection of cultural

competency and mentoring. She has a passion for diversity and

inclusion and work, which fuels her strong conviction that

leveraging differences creates a better workplace and drives

better business results. Now I'm going to start like, first of

all, welcome to the show. Lisa,

thank you, Janice. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks

for having me My

pleasure. So I have, I have a lot of questions.

Some of them may seem pretty basic to you, but I'm not even

going to go there yet. Where I want to start is the whole

factor that, the whole fact that my podcast is all about

relationships. I found it fascinating and very, very warm,

actually, and very, very special that your center for mentally

mentoring excellence started with your mom. It was her

vision, right? And I would love to know about that and how you a

lawyer, a mediator, how you got into this? Because to me, it's

all about the relationships and and that was a special one, I

think.

Yeah, so she was one of the very first people to be

thinking about mentoring in the organizational context, as a

practitioner instead of as an academic. And so in 1992 she

started Leadership Development Services, which became center

for mentoring excellence. And it's interesting, because that

is the year after I graduated from high school, which means

that it wasn't something that it was really in my in my

consciousness as much because I was, I was in college doing my

own thing as she was really developing center for mentoring

excellence. So it wasn't until I was a full blown adult with a

family of my own that I really became aware of the impact that

she had had on the field of mentoring. And

we must say who she is, um Lois Zachary. Was her

name, right? Was she a doctorate or doctor? Lois

Zachary, yeah, she had gone back to get her

doctorate when I was in middle school, and then formed the

center right after I graduated from high school, and I actually

ended up calling her up, because after I had I called her up

professionally. I called her up often to talk, yeah,

professionally. After I practiced law, I went in house

to a legal department, and then I ended up leading Diversity

Equity and Inclusion for that organization. And as part of

that work, our women's group wanted a mentoring program. So I

called her up and said, Mom, what should I do? And she said,

Well, why don't you, you know, bring me in and I'll train your

mentors and mentees. She said she what she had said to me is,

you know, Lisa, the key is really making sure that the

mentors and the mentees have the competency to be effective. And

I hadn't really thought about that. I'd always kind of thought

of mentoring as something that you kind of wing, you know, you

wing it, but yeah,

talk about that. So, yes, back to that. Okay. So

she said,

why don't you bring me in and I'll train your

mentors and your mentees? Well, at the time, I didn't think it

was going to be possible, because I managed a budget, and

I felt very funny about talking to my boss about bringing in my

mother. But it happened anyway. The stars aligned, and she she

was up front, in the front of the room, talking about the

power of the transformational power of mentoring relationship.

And meanwhile, leading Dei, I had really noticed the biggest

change in people's behaviors was not when they went to a training

or they went to a round table. Other those things are powerful

educational tools. The key to action is when you have a

relationship with somebody in the workplace who's different

from you in some meaningful way. So I was just really connected

the dots between what she was saying and what I had been

feeling. And we dipped our she said, you know, as we had

conversations about it after the fact, she said, Well, maybe you

want to come think about, you know, working with me, and I was

a little bit trepidatious about it, so I just dipped my toe in.

I went part time at the company I was working for and part time

with her, and meanwhile, I had also developed coaching

practice. And it worked out well. She was so wonderful to

work with, very respectful of my own expertise in this dei world,

and it really dovetailed really well with what she was doing. So

the rest from that point is history. Janice, as I said,

well, it to

me, it was just like, wow, because that is so

special that doesn't happen very often, and especially with what

you've just explained that you went and did your own thing, and

it brought you around to basically. Working with your

mom, and she'd never pushed you to join in her work, or never

done anything to lure you in before that. Yeah,

for sure. In fact, you know, we were quite

different, and I never would have thought that I would have

worked with her, not because she wasn't wonderful. She was very

wonderful, but she was a big picture thinker, and I tend to

be really logical and just have different interests. And, you

know, you talk about relationships, it was so

redefining to our relationship, to have this professional

relationship, this professional mentoring relationship, which is

simply what it was, and as well as kind of the personal, you

know, mother daughter relationship as well, it was

really redefining and really, really special.

So how much time did you have with her in that

capacity? Capacity?

Well, I started working with her in 2015 part

time, full time. In 2016 she retired in 2018 at the beginning

of 2018 when I took over as CEO. But we wrote a couple books

together. So she passed away in the fall of 2022 So all told

about seven years working together.

Yeah, that's very special. I'm sure she was very

proud of you, too. Thank you. Yeah. Now, okay, I have to ask

one more question. So you have children? How old are they? 20

and

18?

So did they question? Did they ask you? Did

that put any pressure on them? Ask me about what, whether they

the working with going to work with grandma and, you know, you

know?

No, I don't think so. I'm curious to see. It's still

early to know where they will end up. But no, they were always

really curious and supportive about it, but never any

question, never really questioning it. And you know, I

it was important to me that they recognize the impact that she

had on the world. Yes, absolutely, which isn't

something that I fully recognize. Even when I was

working with her, I certainly didn't recognize it before I was

working with her, yeah, I started to recognize it when I

was working with her, and even more so after she passed, like,

so that's really important for me to have shared with them. And

I was really conscious while we were working together, of like,

sharing what a rock star she was in that world, so that they

could really see the impact that they had she had.

Yeah, that's really good. Okay, so I want to

go back to something I said I'll come back to, which is, you know

what my definition and thought of mentoring was all about,

because I've been asked to mentor people over the years

through just the fact that I'm older than everybody else around

there, right? Whatever I was doing and and I love and I'm a

teacher by trade, so for me, it felt like teaching but, but I

think I thought that was about winging it and bringing out what

they what they needed me to help them with, and see if, if and if

I couldn't do it, I would try and find someone who could. But

your definition, what your mom built as the the business, there

is a lot more, and it's a lot more complex, and it seems to me

that, and I want you to talk about it, because it seems to me

that it's not just the mentor, the mentee has a role as well,

and in learning. Both of them have a role in learning. So can

you give me that sort of in a nutshell of of the definition

and the the way it works?

Yeah, for sure. So it's interesting, because

mentoring really is, you know, like, it's, like, the most

promiscuously used word in leadership development. You

know, he asked people like, who's your mentor? And they'll

say things you know, like Oprah or Maya or Gandhi or what have

you. And there were great role models, but unless you have

actually a reciprocal relationship with them, it's not

really mentoring, right? I'm

still glad you said that, because, yeah, I've

heard it for years, people saying that, and it doesn't make

sense to me. It's

just, it's the misuse of the word. So what is

mentoring? I like to say, I think the easiest way to think

about what is mentoring and how it's different than other other

things, like coaching, role model, teaching, what have you,

is that there's three characteristics to mentoring.

There's learning, there's reciprocity and there's co

creation. So let's get go through each of these. Learning

is the purpose, the process and the product of mentoring.

Learning is the purpose, the process and the product of

mentoring, meaning that if it's not a learning relationship, it

may just be a great relationship, but it's not

mentoring, it can might be excellent lunches, it might be

scintillating conversations. It might be something, you know,

that's that's a great way to spend time and build

relationships. But it's not learning unless, excuse me, it's

not mentoring unless there's a learning presence. So that's the

first thing. The second is reciprocity, and this is why

your relationship with Oprah. Or is not mentoring unless you

really know her well, which is entirely possible. But is is

this idea of reciprocity, mentors give and mentors get,

mentees give and mentees get. And people often think about

what mentees are gaining, but the truth is that mentors gain

as much or more from the relationship as mentees do, and

the data really supports that they become better leaders. They

gain more cultural competency, they have more career

satisfaction. And this goes on and on and on and on. And

similarly, mentees give and mentees get, right. So there's

there is that reciprocity, that's the second thing. And the

third thing is co creation, which is that the mentor, let's

assume for a second a one on one mentoring relationship with one

mentor, one mentee. It's like it's the funny math of one plus

one equals three. In in a mentoring relationship, there's

the mentor, there's the mentee, and then there's the mentoring

relationship that they co create together. So they're both diving

in and determining the the parameters of that mentoring

relationship. So that's really unique, right? Because there's

not very many other relationships in the work, in

your professional lives, even in your personal life, where you

can have that kind of co creation

in the same Yeah. Okay, so that's really

developmental learning, reciprocity and CO creating. So

those are the three parts to mentoring. So would you say,

then that that's just so different from, say, teaching,

because teaching, it's more one way.

Well, in teaching you, you as the teacher, are

driving the learning, right, right? Not the student, yeah,

and it's not that as a teacher, you don't get some sense of

self, of satisfaction and teaching. I mean, great teachers

gain a lot from it, but the purpose of that relationship is

not for you as a teacher to be gaining. It's the purposes for

the student to be learning, right? And you and in most

teaching relationships, you know, particularly, you know,

let's think about it. Student in school, they aren't co creating

the terms of the relationship. They're showing up, yeah. And

their behavior may dictate the way you teach, but you as a

teacher, are setting the rules of the

classroom. So that's teaching, and then

there's coaching, yeah?

So that's what gets that's the, probably the most

common question that I get is like, what's the difference

between coaching and mentoring? And I have sort of two answers

for that. So the first answer is, all great mentors or

coaches. But not all great coaches are mentors. So coaching

is a skill that great mentors use. You can be a great coach

without using mentoring as a skill. That's that's number one.

Number two is that the reciprocity isn't there in the

same way. Again, it's not that coaches don't gain something

from it, but it's not designed in the same way. Coaches also

bring the tools mentors there. I've seen some amazing mentoring

relationships where the mentor has zero familiarity with the

context in which the mentee works, but really it's a

successful mentoring relationship because they're

learning together. They have a great level of curiosity, which

will I know, we'll talk about it a little bit, and you know, they

really can ask the right questions and help help the

mentee define when they need more tools. So they're

definitely interrelated. That's the answer number one. Answer

number two is, we may get too hung up on what the difference

between coaching is, because the skills are very similar, not

identical, but the skills are very similar. So

I'm just trying to think, you know, if, if in

situations where I've been a quote mentor, whether I've

messed somebody up or not, you know, like I'm thinking, you

know, I mean, because you I know that I always learn from the the

people that I'm mentoring when I've done that, but hopefully

they do too, and and and more so. So I know that you look at

this holistically, and what does that mean to you? Because I know

it's, I think it's very important to the work that

you're doing, right?

Yeah. I mean, look, I think you we need mentors at all

stages of our lives. We need many mentors throughout our

nightlife, not just this kind of one. Mentor myth is something

that's really outdated so and mentoring is really context

specific. So a lot of times, organizations will come to us

and say, like, just tell me what it is we need to do in order to,

you know, get a great mentoring program. And I say, I can't do

that until I know more about what's the context in which

you're operating. What are the outcomes that you're looking to

achieve? What are some of the constraints that you're seeing

as an organization and so forth? So mentoring, you know, you can

have a mentor. You can have a personal mentor. You can have a

professional mentor. You can have, you know, I'm a small

business owner. I'm also, you know, a thought leader. Or

whatever that means, you know, I have a mentor in that realm. I

have a mentor in my business sense, I have a mentor, a

personal mentor who is, you know, helps me think through

parenting issues and all these things or did when my kids were

younger, anyway. And so if you think about the all of the areas

of your life, learning is critical in all of the different

areas your life, and so it's really important to think about

this holistically. It's so

interesting. You say I have a mentor for this and

a mentor for that. I always hear people say they have a coach for

this and a coach for that. So in your case, now do I mean this is

a business, I have a coach. Oh, okay, so you see them

differently, and mentors are they typically paid or typically

not paid? So you

and I are operating in North America, right here in

Canada, and I'm here in the US, and my answer is different here

than it is in Europe. So in Europe, there is much more of a

burgeoning industry of individual paid mentors. My

mentors here are unpaid. They're, they come to me from

very, you know, maybe met them at a networking event. Maybe

they're a friend of the family. Maybe, you know, they're and

they're, some of them are mentoring moments, you know, as

opposed to kind of like retracted mentoring

relationships. But so typically in the States and in Canada,

what we're talking about when we talk about mentors are unpaid,

although there are some people who you know are paid for their

mentorship, I would argue, in those instances,

it changes the relationship, doesn't it changes

the relationship. And it's not that it's a bad thing.

It's just that the way it's done is not really traditional

mentoring, and the way that I tend to think about mentoring,

yeah, right. So yeah, it changes the

relationship, and tends to be more of that coaching, I would

think relationship instead, yeah,

it often veers in that and that's, you know,

that's where it's like, okay, is it a distinction without a

difference? I'm not sure, but I do know that it changes the

dynamic a little bit, yeah.

So you and your mom wrote a couple of books,

bridging difference for better mentoring, bridging difference

for better mentoring, and a new version, you have a new edition

of the mentor's guide. Can you tell me about the bridging

difference for better mentoring? Is that to do with the DEI

piece?

Yeah. I mean, it's really, you know, we wrote

bridging differences for better mentoring, because one of the

things that we were finding is, you know, we keep talking about

the importance of inclusive of mentoring as a tool for

inclusion, and the importance of having inclusive conversations.

But people were really curious about, how, how do you, how do

you, how do you create authentic conversations? How do you hold

space for authentic sharing? And it really is designed to help

mentors and mentees create that space. It's built on the same

basic learning centered model of mentoring, which is a four stage

model of mentoring that we talk about in the mentors guide, but

it's really focused on differences. One of the things I

love about that book is we came up with three composite case

studies based on the people that we'd work with. And they, first

of all, they were great fun to put together, but they have

really helped kind of relate the principles that we talk about in

the book to particular situations and and it's really

designed to be to be applied. And then the mentors guide, you

know, I only had the privilege of doing the third edition.

First and Second were written by my mom, Lois Zachary, and they

it. It really is one of the best selling mentoring books of all

time. It's out there all over the world. It's been translated

into several different languages, and we hear over and

over again that it's like a Bible for people who are

mentors, there's lots of great tools in there. They can take

some of the worksheets and use them in their mentoring

relationship. So our version added dei component. It talked

about hybrid and remote work relationships, which wasn't

really contemplated when the second edition was written

incorporates the global code of ethics for mentoring and a few

other topics that weren't in the second edition, but we're really

proud of that book.

That's great. Sounds okay, so now you work

with people all over the world. Are you setting up programs for

them in their organizations to mentor people within their

company? Do you also do like one? Do you? Are you teaching

like entrepreneurs to be mentors and things like that? Like, is

it or is it mostly corporate?

Um, it's corporates associations, NGOs. Those

government organizations, universities, but it happens in

most of what we do is in the organizational context. We're

actually, we get requests all the time to do kind of public

train, the trainers, and we're actually working on that

offering now, but yeah, or we are hired mostly by

organizations who are looking to, you know, create mentoring

initiatives so we help them kind of soup to nuts.

Awesome. Okay, so you alluded to the curiosity

question, so I'm going to throw it in right now, because if

you've read that that I it's my favorite word, and I'm always

curious to know what other people think so. Do you think

that curiosity is innate or learned? And part two would be,

what are you most curious about today?

I love that question. I do think we have an innate

curiosity. I mean, you think about children who are always

asking questions. I think we're all born with a curiosity, and I

think we are taught, probably implicitly, to stifle that

curiosity, not be nosy. Curiosity killed the cat, right?

All those expressions. And I also think curiosity can be

learned. So I think I The answer is Option C, is it a and eight?

Is it B, learned C, both of the above. You know, I think you can

stoke your curiosity. I think you can practice asking

questions. I think you can practice finding something you

want to learn about more and more, and I think it's an

essential skill. I mean, you probably just because I know how

much you care about curiosity. You've, you know, probably seen

the research that says it's like the biggest predictor of

excellence in leadership is curiosity. It's just, it's

really, really fascinating.

Well, you know what you just said? I think

that, yes, you can practice asking questions, and you can

try, if that's such a thing, to be more curious. But I think the

key that you just said, also, and I've seen it in in somebody

I know, is that they have to have some kind of passion for

it, or they're never they don't care. And that's what I see. If

someone is naturally curious, they know that it's easy for

them to ask questions about anything but the person who

isn't naturally curious, but gets to use your word stoked by

something that that lights them up, that that's a different

being, different animal, totally. And you know what

strikes me as you're talking Janice is like, I know

you talk a lot about relationships, right? Like the

more you establish relationships in connection with somebody, the

more curious you're going to be, because you care and you want to

know, right? And it's about kind of creating the safe space like

this. The more psychologically safe you feel, the more curious

you can become, and the more open to somebody else's

curiosity and receptive their curiosity you're going to be. So

there's really this nice interplay with how important

relationships and connections are, well, and

it was just interesting. When I was

preparing for our interview, I was I was reading the material

that I had, and I was looking at your website, and I was

listening to you on podcast, but what kept coming to me first was

the relationship with your mom, because that's just, that's my

curiosity, and that's where I had to start. It's just, I don't

care if it's not about your business, but that to me, I

mean, it was in your case, but that's just where I go, because

I can't help myself. So okay, so what are you most curious about

today? Um,

oh my gosh, I have so many things that I'm curious

about is I am, in about a month and a half, I'm going to be an

empty nester, and so I'm curious about all sorts of new hobbies,

like I What's it going to be for me? I'm not, I'm still just, I'm

still curious about that, but maybe I'll join a master's

rowing team. Maybe Maybe I'll brush up on my Spanish. You

know, curious

to that is, do you really is your is your child

that's going away to school, I'm assuming, going away, away

away, 3000 miles away.

Oh, where are they going?

Actually, 2000 miles away to University of Wisconsin

at Madison, Seattle, Washington. So,

okay, so, so you will have more time.

I will have more time. Yeah, and, right, you

still have one at home. She's my youngest.

I have an older one who's already in Washington, DC.

Oh, got it. And then my youngest is going away to University of

Wisconsin really so we'll have a lot of, you know, yeah, thank

you. And you know, I, I'm also really curious about what you

know, it's something we've been spending a lot of time thinking

about at Center for mentoring excellence is, you know, what is

i. First of all, what's AI going to mean in terms of mentoring?

Really curious about the impact of artificial intelligence, and

I'm also really curious about, how are organizations going to

accept this reality that we're in a hybrid workforce, and use

mentoring as a tool for that, like right now, you know,

there's all sorts of return to Office mandates and things like

that, and I think that they're going to be relatively short

lived. So how are organizations going to change their leadership

behavior to embrace this hybrid workforce? And are they open to

using mentoring as a tool to do that? I don't know. Yeah,

that's interesting. Like, first of all,

are they open to it would make me think it depends on the

actual organization, whether they're forward thinking with

everything else or not, right? And and also the that probably

feeds into the age level of the management, you

know? Yeah, sure, for sure, it's, you know, I honestly

think that the requirement to come back to work of certain

amount of time is a shortcut to, you know, our tradition, the way

that we, we at the who we, who are, who we, who are, of the age

of leaders, of leadership and organizations, learned how to

lead in person. And I think you can learn to lead in a hybrid

work environment, but it requires new skills. It requires

learning how to embrace communication. It requires

learning how to engage people authentically. It requires

learning how to create space in a virtual world and all the

things. And so that's an up leveling of skills that has to

happen. And I don't know necessarily that we have to be,

look, I love being in person. I love getting energy from people

in the same room and not suggesting that you we replace

that. But do we have to mandate that? I don't know.

Well, that's that makes me think of those. I'm

thinking of my daughters. I have two daughters. They both work

from home, corporations. One can handle it because she is out.

She's in sales, and she's out and about with people part of

the time, the and she's out, going to boot. The other one is

the introvert, and feel, I think it's, I don't think it's, it's

helping her move ahead and learn in because she's alone all the

time, and I just, I don't see it like she probably needs a mentor

outside of the boss that she's not real happy with, so to

speak, who's somewhere far away, But they're always on, you know,

team calls or whatever, but I think it's so different. They're

very isol. She's very isolated and and though she likes that,

in one sense, she can sort of manage her own time, I think

it's a detriment to her work.

Yeah, yeah, experience, yeah.

So I don't know. I think, like for me, I it. I'm

not in a situation where I need to ever worry about that

anymore. I'm not, I'm I'm past it. I think there was so much to

be said for being in the group environment and watching other

people's play, and, you know how, how the different levels

worked in the company, the hierarchy, all of that stuff.

You could see it in action. You can't now, yeah,

yeah, it's really, it's, it's really, really,

really, really fascinating. We're just talking with a

colleague this morning about, you know, the Surgeon General of

the US had a report on this epidemic of loneliness, right

that there? You know, I think it came out at the beginning of

last year. So we're in 2024 as we'll record this in 2023 maybe

it was 2022 a report on the epidemic of loneliness and how,

you know, mentoring is really extra important in this epidemic

of loneliness and and that the epidemic of loneliness is only

heightened by virtual Yes. So how do we create that

connection? I think mentoring is a great way to do that. I think

up leveling leadership skills for this hybrid world. Also like

the term hybrid really means mix, right? So, how can you

create without mandating two days a week in the office? How

can you create these hybrid experiences? Maybe the team gets

together every quarter. Maybe you have open office hours where

you can't talk about business, but you have to talk about, you

know, what? You have a question that you put down. You know,

I saw when, when covid was rampant. I saw a

situation where one of my girls was a different job. She had a

different company, different type of flavor altogether. But

it was everyone worked from home, and they were global, all

around the world, and it was like a 24/7 operation. Depending

is like customer support all around the world, and they had,

I don't know if it was weekly or bi weekly, activity sessions on

Zoom. And it was not work related, it was fun related, and

it helped build a culture that I hadn't seen in that kind of, you

know, because everybody's separate, nobody's goes to an

office together. And it was really good. They would send

things to the house, like to my daughter's house, that to have,

like it might have been felt, pens and a book to create

something for the event. Or, you know, whatever they, they they

did. They went all out and they, I think somebody probably

created this business right for this time in the world when it

was like that. But I think those kinds of things are so important

to build that camaraderie, to build the the team, and so

different from the company my daughter's in now. It's like

night and day. There's none of that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.

Again, I

mean, it's a skill, right? And you have to have the

intentionality to

create that. Yeah? You totally do. So I think

mentoring is such a a hopeful word, like, I love that. You

know, you can help somebody by mentoring them. You can learn

from them when you're mentoring them. I love that. And I think

whether you're mentoring or coaching or teaching, though

they all have the same satisfaction that can come if

you do it well, because people appreciate it. So it is

excellence in that sense, right? Yeah, for sure. Okay, this has

been really fun, so I I want to give you the opportunity to

perhaps give my audience, sort of your best or most favorite

piece of business advice based on from your perspective. Oh,

I know. It's great. It's a great question. So, you

know, I think this is the same answer to the question of that I

thought about it just in thinking about this

conversation, which is, you know, what's your favorite

quote, right? So, you know, I My favorite quote is a quote that

my sister in law said the night before my wedding, at the

rehearsal dinner. And it's great advice for marriage, and it's

great advice for business. And the advice is that the main

thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, you know. And

you know, obviously in marriage, it means one thing in business,

like, why are you doing what you're doing? What is the

purpose? What is what drives you each day? What's the impact that

you want to make? Keeping that focus and having intentionality

around it will make such a difference, and it's really

quite related to mentoring, right? What is it that you want

to be learning? How is it that you want to be developing what

is it that you want to be giving of yourself to others and really

keeping that front and center is is the best piece of advice? I

think that I ever got

nicely done. That's great. That's great. So

thank you for being here. Thank you for your wisdom. And the the

great explanations about mentoring and mentoring

excellence. I I feel like that's clarified it more for me as

well, because I was curious about that. I i hope that my

audience, I hope that speaking now to my audience, I hope that

you appreciate as well. And if you are interested in finding

out more about mentoring, I will put the link on the website to

the Center for mentoring excellence. There's some good

information on there from Lisa and her team, and remember to

stay connected and be remembered. You.