Mentors Up The Mountain

Like many people posting during this #thankyourmentor timeframe, I too have many people who've influenced me as a leader, thinker and doer. Like others have expressed, not all of these mentors have been official, and the nature of my mentor-mentee relationship was highly dependent on people, reporting structure, and need at the time. If summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro was my most extreme range of personal despair to exhilaration, mentors have been my water, oxygen, fuel and motivation as I've advanced in my career. Today I'm thanking two mentors in particular, along with a third who we lost to breast cancer several years ago, but who will always be someone I'll remember. I'll start with her.

Hope Tuttle taught me to "never let 'em see you sweat". I met Hope when she hired me, pretty fresh out of college, to do PR for the Seattle chapter of the American Red Cross. There was rarely a week that Hope wasn't asked to give an official Red Cross statement to the media about famine in Ethiopia, floods in King County, or how families should prepare for an earthquake. She taught me that no matter what pressure you feel inside, to do our brand ambassador job well, we had to be prepared, and never give away the gymnastics in our stomachs. She had been interviewed by media hundreds of times, yet was nervous each time. Watching her deliver compassionate and clear Red Cross messages with grace and confidence, over and over, I learned much about preparation, managing nerves, and how to overcome my own fears in favor of getting the job done  (and message delivered) right. If I hadn't had this experience of watching her in action and at the same time benefiting from a "behind the scenes" look at her own anxiety, I wouldn't have been able to take on the role as primary spokesperson later, nor would I have been as empathetic to the many spokespeople I've since trained, about what it really feels like to be in the media hot seat. Thank you Hope!

Mentor #2 came along at a time when I moved with Microsoft, to Europe. Relocating to Paris, my manager, who was based in the US, suggested I seek out someone locally to help me with "unofficial" onboarding. I mulled this idea and shortly afterwards was in a hotel near our offices in London when I spotted one of our regional executives, Laurent Delaporte, sitting alone, reading over breakfast in the coffee shop. I approached him, introduced myself, and said he'd been mentioned as someone who could be a potential mentor for me in Paris. I don't think either of us had a clue about how things would play out, and the notion of some cliché mentorship was ill-defined and moderately appealing, at best. But, armed with a yes, I leaned in to his agreement, booked time, and outlined each time we met (or when I ran down the stairs to his floor hoping to catch him for five minutes) what I thought he could help me with. He may not know what a huge help he actually was during those three years, but because he was completely candid and became someone I could trust for advice, he was a key resource, sounding board, and collaborator. Laurent was a great example of a behind-the-scenes mentor, to whom I could go with questions about people, sixth-sense hunches I wanted to test with him, and local market questions that helped me show up informed in my day job. This generosity of his time was invaluable to me as I assimilated into French culture, sought to understand certain personalities and learned about the business. It also reinforced that a mentor is best when an actual relationship develops, not just a mentor/mentee formality.

Mentor #3 made a material impact on my career, and on the bar that is set in my mind about leadership. Oliver Roll was my direct manager at Microsoft, during major changes internally and in the customer and competitive landscape. Oliver is a unique combination of curious, creative, smart and fun loving. Working together, I witnessed his leadership of major changes at the company, and learned much about how to gain executive buy-in, how to rally the troops, and when to gain consensus vs making a sometimes very tough or unpopular call. From Oliver I learned about the importance of precision questioning in order to fully understand root cause, assumptions and gather necessary detail. I also experienced being challenged to embrace blue sky to dream, create, test, fail and learn. As our team was constantly asked to take on challenges that required pushing giant boulders up steep hills, this combination of having data and dreaming big, was key. In terms of style, there were times when Oliver's frustration and even exhaustion was clear, but his own state of mind was his own, and didn't become others' fault or problem. Oliver always took work seriously, but didn't take himself too seriously and didn't let the team wallow in over-seriousness, either. Rarely did we walk out of team meetings or one-on-ones not laughing about something, his office was a constant parade of stakeholders who also emerged - even from tough conversations - with something to chuckle over, and it was fun to come to work and take on gnarly challenges in an environment that was equal parts driving impact in the world, and personally amusing.  We succeeded individually and as a group, because we were inspired by our mission, connected to each other, understood expectations, and we were recognized for our work. From Oliver I learned much about creating high performing teams through a unifying mission, getting to know people individually - their likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, ambitions and passions - and incorporating those insights to foster positive culture.

Thank you to my mentors above, @laurentdelaport and @oliverroll, and to many others not detailed here. I've been fortunate to have learned from you on the journey.  I constantly try to practice and share what I can with others, with as much generosity as you've shown me. #thankyourmentor