Mentorship As A Tool To Engage And Inspire The Next Generation

Please note: This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Forbes​.com on August 22^nd, 2019.

About the author: François Botha is the founder of Sim­ple — a next-gen­er­a­tion advi­so­ry com­pa­ny serv­ing fam­i­ly offices, pri­vate wealth and Fin­Tech sectors.

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There have always been sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with inter-gen­er­a­tional suc­ces­sion, with the major­i­ty of fam­i­ly busi­ness­es not being able to suc­ceed in the next gen­er­a­tion. The chal­lenge has esca­lat­ed in recent times due to the grow­ing mind­set-dif­fer­en­tial between the old­er, expe­ri­enced com­mu­ni­ty of busi­ness own­ers, who hold decades of insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, and the new, up and com­ing pipeline of young leaders.

Research indi­cates that up to 75 per­cent of poten­tial next-gen­er­a­tion suc­ces­sors are not want­i­ng to join the fam­i­ly busi­ness, a sta­tis­tic that points to the fact that the next gen­er­a­tion is not being ade­quate­ly engaged, embraced and understood.

This is a chal­lenge that is not just rel­e­vant to suc­ces­sion but indi­cates a gen­er­al mis­align­ment between gen­er­a­tions that needs to be addressed for busi­ness­es to thrive in the future. It is there­fore not sur­pris­ing that men­tor­ship is becom­ing an increas­ing­ly impor­tant engage­ment tool in both under­stand­ing the prin­ci­ples, pri­or­i­ties, and moti­va­tions of the next gen­er­a­tion and pro­vid­ing them with the nec­es­sary oppor­tu­ni­ties and expo­sure to grow, devel­op and craft their own space with­in the busi­ness environment.

What Is Mentorship?

Often, the first form of men­tor­ship that next-gen­er­a­tion lead­ers expe­ri­ence is the most infor­mal, but prob­a­bly the most pow­er­ful: The din­ner-table con­ver­sa­tions of their par­ents that they hear and lat­er take part in. The impor­tance of this role-mod­el­ing, when it comes to shap­ing the val­ues, prin­ci­ples and gen­er­al busi­ness approach of future lead­ers, should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed and has a pro­found impact on the next gen­er­a­tion, espe­cial­ly if an inclu­sive approach is tak­en towards them as they mature.

With­in the busi­ness con­text, a men­tor plays the role of influ­enc­ing both the pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al growth of a mentee, often mean­ing that a more senior indi­vid­ual will take the respon­si­bil­i­ty of men­tor­ing a less expe­ri­enced junior. The duties involved will gen­er­al­ly include spon­sor­ing devel­op­men­tal ini­tia­tives, embed­ding the prin­ci­ples of effec­tive lead­er­ship, moti­vat­ing, inspir­ing and sup­port­ing per­son­al mas­tery and self-awareness.

An Inspiring Story Of Mentorship: Uli Maybach

Ulrich Schmid-May­bach, also known as Uli May­bach, is the 4^th gen­er­a­tion of the May­bach fam­i­ly. His great-grand­fa­ther was an orphan at the age of ten and lat­er Got­tlieb Daim­ler dis­cov­ered him and his tech­ni­cal tal­ent in the orphan­age. Were it not for this men­tor­ship rela­tion­ship, Mer­cedes-Benz would arguably nev­er have seen the light of day.

Today, Uli wants to build on this lega­cy of men­tor­ship that helped to build his fam­i­ly busi­ness and wealth. With the objec­tive of men­tor­ing tal­ent in adver­si­ty as a means to affect pos­i­tive social change, Uli cre­at­ed the May­bach Foun­da­tion in 2006 and has since been induct­ed into the Coun­cil Of Men­tors of the Unit­ed Nations Glob­al Youth Lead­er­ship Net­work in New York and has com­plet­ed icon­ic glob­al projects as var­ied as build­ing in-coun­try med­ical com­pe­ten­cy in East Africa to train­ing the first per­son of col­or to play for the South African polo team. Uli Maybach’s pas­sion for men­tor­ship has demon­strat­ed just how vital this tool can be to bring about change not only to indi­vid­u­als but to soci­ety as a whole.

Mentorship In Family Business

When asked for his views on men­tor­ship with­in the fam­i­ly busi­ness envi­ron­ment, May­bach high­light­ed how pro­found­ly effec­tive men­tor­ship is in build­ing a shared vision and con­nect­ing and align­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to the val­ues and pur­pose that under­pin the fam­i­ly busi­ness. Using his own fam­i­ly busi­ness as an exam­ple, May­bach explained how the focus on qual­i­ty and inno­va­tion, two pil­lars of his fam­i­ly busi­ness, have been passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion through active men­tor­ship. Con­sid­er­ing the mind­set of the next-gen­er­a­tion, which often tends more towards trans­for­ma­tion than preser­va­tion, men­tor­ing could be the most effec­tive tool in chan­nel­ing the ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of aspir­ing lead­ers into pas­sion-projects, like impact invest­ing, which devel­op their com­mer­cial acu­men but still align to the val­ues that are at the heart of the busi­ness. May­bach does, how­ev­er, advise that a for­mal men­tor­ing rela­tion­ship between fam­i­ly mem­bers that are too close­ly relat­ed can some­times be prob­lem­at­ic due to the emo­tion­al con­nec­tion being too strong.

Mentorship Drives Results

Find­ings from numer­ous research projects con­duct­ed over the last thir­ty years high­light the sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits that men­tor­ship has for businesses:

1. Improved Career Outcomes

An analy­sis of forty-three stud­ies con­firms that men­tored employ­ees receive high­er com­pen­sa­tion, a more sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of pro­mo­tions and feel more sat­is­fied and committed.

2. Employee Engagement

A sur­vey of 170 sales and mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als found that men­tored employ­ees felt more pos­i­tive­ly about their orga­ni­za­tion and their senior lead­er­ship and felt more informed.

3. Employee Retention

Men­tor­ing has been found to reduce turnover inten­tion as well as actu­al turnover. When over 5,000 new­ly hired sales rep­re­sen­ta­tives were sur­veyed, men­tored employ­ees report­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er orga­ni­za­tion­al com­mit­ment and reduced inten­tions to leave their orga­ni­za­tion than did non-men­tored respondents.

Mentorship Benefits All

With the world of busi­ness evolv­ing at a rapid rate to adapt to the fast-chang­ing demands of a new gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers, achiev­ing the objec­tives of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inter-gen­er­a­tional wealth preser­va­tion places a high­er pri­or­i­ty on inspir­ing, assim­i­lat­ing and prepar­ing the next gen­er­a­tion for lead­er­ship roles. Men­tor­ship will play a key role in achiev­ing this, not only through moti­vat­ing loy­al­ty and reten­tion but by unlock­ing and unleash­ing the tal­ent and val­ue that resides in these aspir­ing lead­ers, for the ben­e­fit of the busi­ness and soci­ety as a whole.

Please note: This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Forbes​.com on August 22^nd, 2019.

About the author: François Botha is the founder of Sim­ple — a next-gen­er­a­tion advi­so­ry com­pa­ny serv­ing fam­i­ly offices, pri­vate wealth and Fin­Tech sectors.