The scene is commonplace in corporations. You got paired with an Executive Mentor, or you ask someone you admire to mentor you. You schedule the first meeting following the two-pager document with suggestions available on your intranet. You and your mentor have a great first session when you discuss your objectives and the rules of engagement. Then scheduling the second meeting is not as easy, and your mentor disappointingly does not come fully prepared for the session. Usually, one or two more meetings will feel like shoveling dirt on the mentorship coffin. That two-pager will tell you it was your fault (and no worries, about 80% of corporate mentorships end like that). You, the mentee, need to feed the relationship and drive it to successful outcomes. And that is partially true at best. 

It feels great to be an Executive Mentor

Mentorship is a developmental relationship, and both parties must invest in it to make it work. It is easy to blame mentees for failures, but let's face it, if mentors do not duly do their jobs, nothing will happen either. It feels terrific when the invitation comes to mentor someone. It brings prestige, self-realization, and pride. It is the recognition of years of hard work and learning accumulated, the excellent leadership skills you have been developing, and the time invested in your charisma and communication skills. Great feelings, but please remember... "it is not about you." You are there only to help your mentee grow and develop and for you to learn with it. Therefore, great executives are not necessarily great mentors. Selfless executives have better odds. 

Emotional intelligence, life experiences, and intellectual power can transform lives

Thus, becoming a great mentor is primarily a personal development journey where we learn to move our focus from ourselves to helping others. That is the main reason there is a clear correlation between great mentors and the number and breadth of experiences accumulated. In one part, it is essential to have experienced corporate up-climbing, the thrill of managing big teams and budgets and achieving great results. In another, the pain of failure, setbacks, and hardship. Every part of those ego-excruciating moments makes us better people, leaders, and (wait for it...) mentors. Why? Because we stop seeing ourselves as infallible superheroes and start looking at others' shortcomings with empathy and understanding. With those, we have meaningful stories to tell and the ability to work on how people feel about such events, their limitations, and the critical timings of each one. We help build realistic plans and set realistic goals. We come through as real people, and we can win our mentees' trust by showing our vulnerabilities - which is fundamental to creating a safe space and empowering open sharing. And that combination of emotional intelligence, life experiences, and intellectual power will genuinely transform lives when selflessly used at the service of your mentees. 

Effective Executive Mentors are not born

When I achieved that career stage and started mentoring more frequently, I learned the second part of the mentoring definition was also accurate and formidable - mentors learn a lot with their mentees too. The richer the exchange, the stronger the relationship, and therefore the more influential the mentor is. But something else was missing at that phase of my Executive Mentor career. Not every mentee is the same or their challenges. To be effective as a mentor and help my mentees achieve their goals, I needed to be flexible and adaptable and discover the right tools to apply in every situation.
Exchanging with other mentors within Collective Brains, we found out that there was no training or even literature readily available to support mentors' development. So we collaborated with learning experts to create the world's first Executive Mentoring Certification Course. The course is built on the best academic research in the field. Knowledge and technique replaced intuition and conjectures. It helped me realize my personal transformation and acquire a repertoire of skills and strategies to apply at large and every case. I learned how to communicate effectively, listen better and use storytelling effectively, among other skills and tools. Now I plan my mentorships efficiently, get better prepared for each session and create mighty summaries. And as a company, we want to train and certify every mentor out there. I got my badge and you should get yours.

Most Marketing decision-makers have a real challenge today with Digital Marketing. It is becoming growingly challenging to reach positive ROI in digital campaigns, and the number of qualified leads they generate does not please their sales counterparts, raising many eyebrows. If that is your case, you are not alone. It is indeed becoming harder to define success (or at least find consensus) in those days of media saturation, low clicking rates, and blurring clutter. The need for higher ROI is even more critical when 42.3% of CMOs say they will reduce their investments in 2022, even though Marketing budgets are growing as a percentage of the total company budget (The CMO Survey). That combination will put more pressure on CMOs to show results. HBR said, "More than 30% of marketers who participated said that they are experiencing average-to-no returns on their investments, which could create funding difficulties in the future if they are unable to overcome this gap." 

If you are a B2B marketer and have an active profile on LinkedIn, you are probably overwhelmed and maybe even irritated by the number of "experts" unwelcomingly reaching out to sell their silver bullet that will multiply overnight your lead generation. Those "experts" pitch successful models applied in previous clients that will bring a similar ROI to you - as if it could work like a formula. And let's face it, sometimes the lack of clarity from companies regarding their marketing plans helps to feed that buzz. 

I mentor many marketers. And when Digital Marketing is the topic, I always ask - "Do you have the right GTM (go-to-market) Strategy and an always-on, highly-skilled analytics team? A team crossing information from multiple channels, platforms, and tools and creating true insight from them?" So far, all replies assumed a "yes - but" structure. Truthfully, it would be best not to start pouring money into your Digital Marketing Engines and Campaigns if you answered "no" or "yes-but" to the previous question. 

And if you did answer "yes-but," start by (re)defining your GTM Marketing Strategy and shedding light on your marketing plans consistently around it. Believe me when I say that your team needs it. As a Marketing Executive, I have had the opportunity to witness many heated discussions about activities where the real issue was a strategic misalignment in the first place. Needless to say, a B2C strategy is different from a B2B one and distinct from a B2B2C. For the luck of B2C marketers, consumers find traditional advertisements more reliable than their digital counterparts, and social media marketing can make it more personal and fun for them, reaching better engagement levels. Combining properly online and offline activities will boost results from Digital. The B2B funnels usually require more robust analytics and dedication to determine what is working, to whom, and why. Each case is unique and has its differences and nuances. Finding the ideal dashboard to monitor and improve performance requires knowledge, a consistent approach, and an exploratory mindset that will push the analytics team into new territories. 

I recommend CMOs and Marketing Leaders, regardless of their experience level, to work with Certified Mentors who "have been there and done that." Certified Mentors can help you navigate your specific case by asking the right questions, bringing fresh perspectives, and sharing models and research to support your ideas or not. There are many nuances impacting how effective your marketing strategy will be in execution. Differences in marketing products, services, or solutions. If there is already a demand for your offers or you need to create one. Acting upon the complete cycle from customer acquisition through pipeline acceleration and lead conversion. The different targeted customers and personas. The many customer journeys. The brand experience. The sales channels. The commerce play. The mobility play. What parts must your team handle, and what will you outsource? This list is endless. And yet how to mix and prioritize all that. A mentor will raise your confidence in writing and driving the right strategy, articulate the messages and present it in the best way, and increase the chances of a better ROI. You will not get this level of candid and expert feedback anywhere else, as mentors are entirely devoted to your success only. 

Once you have a clear GTM Marketing Strategy and a definition of the roles Digital Marketing will play in your marketing mix, focus on creating a solid Digital Analytics muscle. That is your digital marketing optimization engine. No digital campaign, content, or activity will be correctly designed to reach its full potential without being adjusted a few times. Analytics needs to inform us in numbers what profile of customers we have reached, who reacted, how, when, and where. Where those prospects come from and where they go next. And all information about their behavior in our digital properties and, for the more advanced, on the internet. Digital Analytics is not new or rocket science, but the number of companies claiming to have built that muscle correctly and put it to use systematically is a small fraction of the total - only 7%! Every Digital execution must have a marketing analytics capability to measure performance. You will probably start with your content, SEO, and SEM execution. Then build the outbound and display ads with the correspondent analytics. You will add social marketing, integrating every handle into your engines and ensuring that its flow of potential leads can be redirected, identified, and measured. Every part may feed to a central dashboard where you have a real-time pulse of your execution and so what is working and what is not. When and only when you know the accurate insights behind the statistics of your activities, you can start to raise your investments to production levels.
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 At this point, you can forecast your ROI with decent precision. Digital Marketing is not about finding the silver bullet but building the right strategy and engines that will empower you to optimize your play and find answers to most of the questions. With those basics in place, a clear GTM Strategy, and a powerful analytics team, you can now talk about ROI and effectiveness, how to help sales with more leads, pipeline acceleration, reaching higher conversion rates, and everything results. And if you don't know the answer to a question, you can quickly put new concepts to the test and make up your mind about the possible paths. The next step will be building your marketing automation and elevating your ROI to new levels. And that is the topic for a future article. ​

The door of the CEO's office opened after a few minutes of waiting in the lobby. He was the owner of a billion-dollar tire retail chain in a top international market. Our consulting team was vigilant in reading the room and answering all questions about the deep analysis we made per his request. He asked us to analyze and critique critical topics in their Strategic Plan, offering our support or vetoes to the ideas. We went through our recommendations, the reasoning, the impacts, and a straightforward conversation about every point and why not. Immediately after the conversation, he pulled out his desk drawer, threw our report in, and closed it, using his body language as a clear message that he would not request any follow-up about the work done. And then, he explained himself - "This is a family-owned company. Everyone seems willing to please my ears when they talk to me. I lost the ability to receive honest feedback. When I believe in a strategic direction, no one opposes me directly, so it becomes a dangerous bet. All I wanted from you is to hear your frank opinions about our Strategic Plan. Thank you, it was valuable."
The conversation immediately triggered me to think. That business owner had just spent a few hundred thousand dollars to hear candid feedback on the ideas he supports. That was his price tag for losing the ability to equip his team to talk honestly and directly to him.​

LEAD THE WAY

Many people use humor as a tool to cope with social situations they witness. A couple of friends use it in a particular way. When they see someone with a bad combination of clothes or colors or even an inappropriate outfit for an occasion, they like to say, "those persons have no friends" - meaning that if they had any, they would not allow them to go out dressed like that. Yes, mean and judgemental, but true. If we always have someone to give us a second honest opinion, it can save us a lot of face value when expressing ourselves out there. Many mentees shared with me this last year their regrets about inappropriate comments made in past decades about race, gender, and age that they could avoid if they "knew better." And to know better, we need to be trained to listen to feedback and, above all, welcome them as a valuable tool for advancement. 

Creating work environments where people trust each other and direct conversations can happen respectfully is priceless. If you are a team leader, your team members will quickly read your preferred form of dialogue and react to it. If you like to be flattered by your contributions, they will learn to give you compliments. If you are a data-driven decision maker, they will try to support their proposals better when approaching you. If you tend to be more process-oriented, they will always bring a view of the impact of their projects on the operations. So it is your role to hint the team in the right ways and be mindful of the desired outcomes. Communication can be tricky, and the more direct we talk to each other, the more clarity and productivity we will drive with positive business impact. Practicing active listening is a golden standard to refine common understanding and establish a team's way of understanding shared themes. Most high-performing teams master those skills. 


TEN HINTS TO CREATE A CULTURE OF CANDID CONVERSATIONS

Hence, you need to show the way and lead by example. If you put actual results above your own opinions, you will foster a behavior where all members will be more analytical and customer-oriented about their work. In a nutshell, be mindful of how you want to build your work relationships. Express satisfaction and gratitude for people challenging your concepts. Find compromises where possible and share the sense of ownership for all ideas with your team. Those are good ways to stimulate productive conversations in the workplace. 


Here are ten more hints to help create a culture of candid discussions in your group. 

1. Acknowledge every contribution to a conversation in a transparent way.
2. Value ideas that expand the conversation frame or go against your beliefs. Ask questions and clarify every point until you genuinely understand different points of view.
3. Invite more people to a topic if no one diverges from the same concepts and ideas.
4. Hire Mentors for you and your team members. Mentors will provide candid feedback on topics no one else can, and your team will learn essential skills. 
5. Encourage people to challenge you directly in an open forum.
6. Lead by example and always give candid feedback - don't forget to be nice when doing it. 
7. Center topics and conversations around desired results. 
8. Do not get stuck on arguments. Ask for more data to clarify sticky points. 
9. Practice active listening continuously, and coach your team to do it too.
10. Openly recognize top talent for being candid and respectful in conversations.

WORK SMARTER


Practicing that will make you more aware of every task and project and help you move faster as a decision-maker. You may save time in needless meetings and reduce time on others. You will encourage people to talk frankly to you, and they will always know why you made decisions that way. The halo effect of that change in people is breathtaking. More productivity emerges from higher engagement and collaboration as trust grows among peers. All desirable side effects from one intentional move you can do today. My last piece of advice to you is to go ahead and hire a Mentor. They will help you with your discipline and techniques to apply.