According to a new survey from RHR International,

• 50% of CEOs feel isolated in their roles
• 70% say that the isolation negatively affects their performance

Can you blame them? We put CEOs on a pedestal, we expect them to have all the answers, and then we are completely unforgiving when they don’t.

Arguably Yahoo’s CEO Carol Bartz and HP’s CEO Leo Apotheker were each fired as a result of isolation. They were not connected to the people and therefore not connected to the issues important to their organization.

Conceivably, however, CEOs are responsible for their own isolation. Sometimes they fear the appearance of favoritism or the risk of divulging confidentiality issues; other times they fear rejection for not having all the answers.

The cure for isolation? Mentoring.

Mentoring – the Cure for the Common CEO

Mentoring remedies isolation in many ways. It offers CEOs the opportunity to connect instead of hide, explore options instead of pretend to know, and promote knowledge-sharing instead of information-hoarding.

When Howard Permut, President of Metro-North Railroad in NYC, embraced their new leadership mentoring program, he enthusiastically became a Mentor. In doing so, he brilliantly accomplished 3 critical things:

(1)    He molded an up-and-coming leader by imparting his wisdom as a Mentor.

(2)    He put his finger on the pulse of the people and the organization.

(3)    He catapulted a knowledge-sharing, mentoring culture with his support and participation.

Redefining Mentoring

CEOs who shun mentoring are often caught in the trap of an old definition in which “mentoring” is laden with unrealistic expectations. When CEOs embrace a more flexible, simple definition of mentoring, everyone, including CEOs, wins.

Mentoring is simply sharing been-there-done-that wisdom with someone who wants to go-there-do-that.

Reverse Mentoring

Reverse mentoring fosters learning up and down the corporate ladder. In this form of mentoring, leaders are mentored by individual contributors. With reverse mentoring, CEOs acknowledge that it’s acceptable not to know everything, and it’s encouraged to learn from our peers at all levels.

Everyone – even the CEO – has teaching and learning opportunities.

As an example, suppose a CEO wants to discover the world of social media and explore how it could benefit the company. Any employee – even someone fresh out of college – who has spent time discovering social media can share that wisdom with the CEO and accelerate the CEO’s success in the world of social media.

10 Ways that Mentoring Impacts CEOS (and all Leaders)

1. Ego: Our ego is fed when someone looks to us for wisdom and advice.
2. Legacy: Leaders leave a legacy when they share wisdom with the next generation. They are making a mark on the history of their organization.
3. Altruism: It feels good when we help others. Ultimately, we want to make a difference, and mentoring allows us to do just that.
4. Strengthened Wisdom: We relearn our own wisdom when we impart it, which then strengthens that wisdom.
5. Accelerated Success: The best way to stop learning things the hard way is to learn things from someone who has already learned them the hard way.
6. Social Cognitive Theory: People watch leaders to determine how to act and behave. When leaders get involved in mentoring, their people observe them and will follow suit.
7. Leadership: There is an unwritten expectation that leaders mentor others. Engaging in mentoring affirms your right to be a leader.
8. Discovery: When leaders mentor others and are mentored by others, they discover new talent, new ideas, new information, new issues, and new approaches to problem solving.
9. Knowledge-Sharing Culture: You are fostering a culture of learning and discovering. The entire organization benefits when its people share knowledge, instead of hoard it.
10. Community. Nothing cures isolation faster than jumping into a community of people and working on a project together.

3 Easy Ways to Get Started

1. Seek out a New Mentor Each Quarter. Think of something you want to know more about. Find someone in the company who knows about it. Spend an hour per month learning from them.
2. Solicit a New Protégé Each Quarter. Allow people to submit a formal application to be your Protégé for a quarter. You won’t be inundated, as most are intimidated. Only the ambitious, up-and-comers will submit one, and then the application process will filter out the disingenuous.
3. Host a Group Mentoring. Once a quarter, host a lunch for a group of 20 people to focus on an issue, a challenge, a topic, or a subject matter. Have attendees come prepared with questions and an introduction. Your community will instantly expand by 440 new connections a year!

Here’s how LifeMoxie Mentoring is Helping CEOs and Other Leaders Embrace Mentoring in 2012

1.            The 2012 Webinar Series

 We have 2 complimentary webinars in January chocked with great value!

• Jan 18:  “Architecting a Business-Impacting Mentoring Program”
• Jan 31:  “Metrics, Trends, and Benchmarks – Measuring the Success  of your Mentoring Initiative”
• Apr 19:  “Mentoring, Sponsoring, and Coaching – Increasing your R.O.M. by Leveraging Every Relationship”
• July 19:  “Mentoring Advisory Boards – Gathering Thought Leaders  to Power Your Vision”
• Oct 25:  “From Idle to Innovative – Leveraging Mentoring to Evolve  Your Workforce”

Check out www.lifemoxie.com/webinars.php to learn more and register.

2.            The Mentoring Council launches!

Connect with mentoring leaders in organizations around the globe to discover how they are using mentoring as a strategic advantage instead of a missed opportunity. Check out www.mentoringcouncil.com for more information.

In 2002 Harvard School of Public Health spearheaded the effort to officially declare January “National Mentoring Month.”

Why a whole month dedicated to mentoring? Because while its impact is transformational (not just transactional), people often overlook it.

12 Ways for Leaders to Celebrate National Mentoring Month:

1. Be a Protégé

This one is easy! Who couldn’t use a little less learning-it-the-hard-way?

2. Be a Mentor

What’s in it for you? Simple. People solidify their wisdom by imparting it. And if that doesn’t do it for you, don’t forget the trinity: ego, legacy, and altruism. They go a long way for our motivation.

3. Act like a leader

It is an unwritten expectation that if you want to be a leader you need to mentor others. And then add in social cognitive theory which says that people look to their leaders to determine their own actions. So mentor, be mentored, and others will follow you.

4. Intentionally strike up mentoring conversations

Listen for opportunities to contribute your hard-won wisdom. Ask for permission to share your insights. They’ll appreciate the gift. In addition, seek out mentoring from others to accelerate your own path. They’ll appreciate the ego boost.

5. Create a “Speed Mentoring Event”

Just like speed dating, speed mentoring brings people together to connect in a structured activity to mentor each other for 5-10 minutes and determine if they want to explore a mentoring relationship further. A fun way to launch any mentoring orientation, program, or initiative.

6. Promote reverse mentoring

Andy Grove, founder and former CEO of Intel loved this! He dubbed people “Technical Assistants” and they taught senior executives the things they need to know to be successful, like marketing, branding, the Internet, and competition. Everyone thinks the people higher up know the most. Don’t let that assumption shortchange the wisdom and insights percolating at the bottom of the corporate ladder.

7. Encourage peer mentoring

Need to break down silos? Need to blend cultures of two merged companies? Establish peer mentoring for people to connect cross-functionally, increase their understanding of how the company works, improve their work-effectiveness by expanding their network, and expand their community at the company.

8. Launch group mentoring

People too busy for the commitment of 1:1 relationships? Invite them to lead or participate in a group mentoring lunch. Attendees bring their questions and the group Mentor imparts his/her wisdom. Everyone wins with the exposure and visibility this format offers.

9. Train people how to win at mentoring

People just want to win. So show them how. Give them the training they need to be successful. At a minimum, teach them about expectations, goals, deliverables, boundaries, the 5 mentoring conversations, being a great Mentor, being a hungry Protégé, and being a supportive Manager.

10. Thank a Mentor on January 26

January 26 is “Thank your Mentor Day.” Face it, you didn’t become a leader without some mentoring. Who shared their wisdom with you? Even unintentionally or informally? Thank them for their contributions to your success.

11. Start your own mentoring program

Mentoring is the most cost-effective, time-efficient tool for leaders to transform people while driving organizational strategies. What kinds of strategies? Attracting talent, on-boarding, succession planning, leadership development, diversity & inclusion, productivity, effectiveness, cross-functional development, and talent/career development are just a few.

12. Don’t let mentoring be your missed opportunity

If you don’t do anything about mentoring, it’ll happen anyway. People are mentoring each other every day, often accidentally, unintentionally, and informally. You, however, miss out on the opportunity to define it, direct it, own it, measure it, leverage it, and lead it. And this is essential if you are committed to making a difference with people and with your organization.

50% of New Year’s resolutions are broken by January 3.

Why?

Because the whole ritual is all about fixing something broken.

The most popular resolutions each year: lose weight, stop smoking, and stop spending.

Wow. That’s exciting. You can imagine how thrilled people are to bound out of bed each morning on Jan 1 and Jan 2 to stop doing the 3 things they love most: eating, smoking, and shopping! Yes, sign me up for a whole year of that, they’re thinking. By January 3, they rightly decide that it’s not working, so they give up.

People have the same visceral reaction to Performance Reviews, Performance Improvement Plans, and all other documents drafted to describe what’s wrong with them. Who wants to come running into the office to fix their weaknesses? That sounds uninspiring, dismal, and miserable.

This is the day! You are officially allowed to dump all of those inane exercises on January 3!

You may be mentally protesting. But think for a moment. Has it ever worked? Have you ever changed your behavior or someone else’s by designing a plan to fix what’s wrong with you or them?

No! So, in the words of Bob Newhart from a MadTV skit, “Stop it!”
(Check out the hilarious skit on YouTube.)

So now that you’re done flagellating, thrashing, scolding and berating yourself and others, what is left to help us create change this year?

3 powerful game-changers:

1. Influence
2. Mentoring
3. The Battle Cry

Influence

You can influence change in yourself and others by understanding what makes us tick. Two major influences drive action and inaction in every human being: the need to matter and the fear of rejection. Remember only those and you’ll never need resolutions or performance reviews to make the new year a watershed year.

Mentoring

There is no greater tool for transformation than mentoring. One person who has been-there-done-that shares institutional, tribal knowledge with someone who wants to go-there-and-do-that. The sharing of knowledge, wisdom, and lessons learned inevitably accelerates the success of the other person.  It’s brilliant. It can be a strategic advantage to individuals, teams, and organizations. However, it is often overlooked and then becomes a missed opportunity.

The Battle Cry

If you do nothing else after you dump the New Year’s Resolutions, declare a Battle Cry for your year. What will get you excited to jump out of bed each morning? What will have you excited to run into the office to start working? What will have your team jazzed about showing up?

A battle cry is bigger than a goal, a mission, or a vision. A battle cry has goals and it aligns with missions and visions, but it’s more than those. A battle cry is the deep-seated, heartfelt, emotional reason we show up big.

Some examples of a Battle Cry:

• * to constantly surprise and delight my boss with my contributions
• * to make every moment with my kids a fun learning opportunity
• * to be the company’s innovation expert
• * to shock and awe my doctor at each visit with my great health
• * to form partnerships with each of my colleagues and my clients
• * to be kind without exception to everyone I meet

Without a battle cry, your resolutions and performance improvement plans are designed for demise. And without the power of influence and mentoring, your battle cries will become sad, wistful whimpers.

It’s January 3.

What resolution are you throwing out the window today?

In its place, what will be your battle cry for the year?

And how are you going to leverage influence and mentoring to drive that battle cry and make 2012 a game-changing year?

This season’s #1 selling book at Barnes & Noble offers some invaluable lessons for mentoring leaders.

Here’s how it works. With your purchase of Elf on the Shelf comes your own stuffed doll – The Elf – that joins your family. Your Elf sits on a shelf every day and watches over you. Then each night your Elf makes a quick visit to the North Pole to give Santa the scoop on all the good and the bad he observed that day Then he rushes back to your house, ready for the next day’s observing duties.

 Here are 5 lessons from the Elf on the Shelf that we can apply to make our own mentoring programs as popular.

1.       Set the Rules at the Beginning.

Here are the Elf on the Shelf rules. You cannot touch the Elf or he will lose his powers. The Elf arrives after Thanksgiving and leaves right after Christmas. You can talk to the Elf and share your holiday wishes, but he will not talk back to you. His job is just to listen and observe. He will leave every night to report back to Santa and when he returns he will be in a new location in your house for you to find.

Similarly in mentoring programs, people just wa