Mentoring; fitting Empathy in Why is effective mentoring so difficult to deliver?

There are many well known examples, Einstein, Ghandi and Martha Graham among them. Oprah Winfrey cites author and poet Maya Angelou; Bill Gates names Warren Buffet; Bob Dylon’s was Woody Guthrie; Mark Zuckerberg’s was Steve Jobs. So what makes it work?

Until and unless you know someone well, it is more than difficult to figure out what kind of support would be most valuable – whether it is their ambitions, their objectives, their interests, their interactions or what. And it takes empathy to appreciate what kind of influence might be of value.

Mentors can help startups at specific stages – in concept development, production, marketing, finance and management; but mentoring needs are of all sorts and kinds, and that is the focus of the mentor manager (and where speed-dating is more like pot luck). I particularly recall being encouraged by my mentor when she said: “If you have come up against a problem, you are about to make a break-through.”

Enrico Fermi has been described as one of the most productive of scientists ever; a Nobel Laureate, but also, and intriguingly, as mentor to six other Nobel Laureates, he must have been able to be a different person to each of those different people. So what was he like?

‘As a person, Fermi seemed simplicity itself. He was extraordinarily vigorous; and in sport his ambitious nature became apparent. He was something of a benevolent dictator. This leadership and self-assurance gave Fermi the name of “The Pope” whose pronouncements were infallible in physics; and he preferred quick and dirty answers to time spent on consumingly accurate solutions – that came to be known as ‘the Fermi Method’. But all this did not offend at all, but rather charmed everybody into liking him.’

John Whatmore, April 2019