Author Says Mentoring is Crucial for a Successful Workplace
Cheryl Hall, The Dallas Morning News. Feb 10, 2001. Updated Jan 25, 2015
Volumes are being written these days about what's happening in the workplace. But Ronna Lichtenberg believes one big problem is what isn't happening: good, old-fashioned mentoring.
The 50-year-old New York management consultant and former top marketing exec at Prudential Securities Inc. says this generational disconnect is costing companies big time. And it isn't doing employees any good, either. “You're not born knowing how to build relationships. You have to learn from someone,” said Lichtenberg, the author of the just-published It's Not Business, It's Personal. “When you have a generation of employees without these skills, it slows everything down.”
She interviewed 73 executive superstars for her book - including Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus and e-guru Esther Dyson - to find out just how powerful they felt real human connection was to a career.
Dallas weighs in with thoughts from Morton Meyerson, CEO of 2M Companies, Colleen Barrett, executive vice president at Southwest Airlines, and Christina Gold, CEO of Excel Communications.
“After interviewing them, I'm totally bedrock convinced that the ability to be successful in business - including making money - comes from the way you handle business relationships,” Lichtenberg said.
The age schism has been created by several converging trends.
The last decade of affluence created heady times for those new to the work force and gave many young, mobile and well-paid workers the illusion that older ages had nothing useful to offer.
Corporate America, keen on downsizing, got rid of many would-be mentors. And experienced workers who are left don't have time for counseling or figure it's wasted effort since new hires don't stick around long enough to even learn their names.
Add in the impersonal nature of e-communication and you have relationship-starved work environments where people “use” but don't “care” for each other, she says.
“The statistic that most amazes me is that the average 32-year-old worker has already had nine jobs. And that's a pre-dot-com number, so it's only gotten worse,” she says. “Now the incredible boom is petering out, and these kids are having to look for jobs for the first time. Their lack of relationships is a problem for them.”
Lichtenberg's own shooting-star career at Prudential, which began in the early 1980s, had its trajectory checked a time or two by co-workers who cared enough to take her aside and say, “No, Ronna, you may not do that,” or “This is how we get things done.”
She recalls one career-changing performance review from a boss whom she'd previously dismissed as unintelligent.
“We sat down and he said, 'Let's talk about the fact that when you don't think someone's very smart, that's clear to everyone in the room,’” she said with a hearty laugh. “He went through a 20-minute display of all my body language that indicated that I thought the person I was working with was just too stupid to live.
“That kind of guidance is hard to find these days.”
Ronna’s childhood in St. Joseph, Mo., provided unusual schooling in the art of relationship building. Her parents ran a tavern where breakfast for guys coming off the night shift was a stein of beer with a raw egg in it.
“I thought it was pretty normal to spend most of my time at the bar,” she said. “It wasn't until later that I realized most kids aren't working at a bar when they're 12.”
Her family is Jewish, which provided another learning experience about how to handle the occasional anti-Semitic slur.
Despite her outstanding test scores, her father argued against Ronna's (pronounced rah-nah) attending college, figuring she'd get married and that would be hard-earned money straight down the drain. Undaunted, she headed off to the University of Texas at Austin in 1968.
In 1982, after various trend-studying research jobs, she went to work for Prudential Insurance Co. in “glorious” downtown Newark, N.J., and got a series of rapid promotions that led her to believe she could be chairman one day. “I was into the dream,” she said simply.
By 1991, she was leading the company's strategic planning efforts, reporting directly to the chairman.
Ronna wanted hands-on operations experience, so the chairman sent her to Prudential Securities as head of marketing and as a member of its powerful operating committee. She was also sent to the advanced management program at Harvard Business School. “I was one of six women out of 200 people, and I thought I was really hot stuff.”
But her fervor chilled considerably with her less-than-warm reception at Prudential's securities firm. She walked into a dinner of the operating committee, which consisted of nearly 40 people, and the only other woman in the room was a waitress.
“You can only imagine how happy the guys were to see a woman sent over from corporate who was known as the chairman's favorite,” she says. “That's how I learned about office politics - learning to survive that.”
Successful maneuvering through the corporate jungle also provided rich fodder for her first book, “Work Would Be Great If It Weren't for the People,” published in 1998.
She left Prudential and its $600,000-plus salary to write the book at a particularly inopportune time for her family of four. The month before, her husband Jim had been downsized from his job via a voice-mail message telling him to come in and clean out his desk.
“We were really scared,” she said. “We thought we were really in trouble walking out into thin air. But I was afraid if I didn't do it really quickly then, I wouldn't do it at all.”
Today, she and Jim are making more money than ever, thanks in part to friends and business connections. That support provided the inspiration for her latest (less snide and more heartfelt) book for which she received a “healthy six-figure” advance from Hyperion.
Getting business big shots to talk about such a touchy-feely topic was no small task. After lining up such notables as Alberto Vitale, former CEO of Random House, others fell into place.
And she wanted to hear from unexpected voices. It's one thing to have Marty Evans, head of the Girl Scouts of the USA, espouse the importance of human bonding, quips Lichtenberg, and quite another when it comes from a hardcore business guy such as Mort Meyerson.
She got to Meyerson through Esther Dyson, who is considered one of the leading minds on Internet trends. Meyerson turned out to be a favorite interview because he made her reassess her basic principles.
“Mort was so crusty and had absolutely no fear of saying, ‘I absolutely disagree with that,’”she recalled.
Meyerson finds the finished effort thought provoking. He agreed to be part of the book, he says, because relationships are just as important in the “‘e-age' as ever. We shouldn't forget that business is an extension of human life and relationships mean more than anything else."
One surprise for Lichtenberg was how sold so many executives were on the idea of trust as a business strategy. For example, Don Soderquist, chief operating officer of Wal-Mart Stores, gives his suppliers access to highly sensitive inventory data that his competitors would love to get their hands on.
Why? Because it helps his vendors do a better job.
“His decision was you save money if you choose to trust,” she says. “You might get burned for being too trusting, but at the end of the day, you'll be better off. I heard that over and over again.”
Lichtenberg wanted the book to be a practical guide to those not getting on-the-job mentoring. She suggests methods to improve the way you handle people and cope with the way they handle you.
Avoid spending too much time with “Energy Vampires” who suck enthusiasm from your work life and constantly require transfusions for their insecurity hemorrhaging, she warns, as well as “Users,” narcissistic nuclear reactors who use their own magnetism to drain power from those around them.
These are personality types that those individuals successful in business weed from their relationship portfolio. “Energy Vampires are chronic and Users are acute,” she says. “Which is worse, high blood pressure or appendicitis? They're both bad, right?”
Start with a personal board of directors for Me Inc., she says, with you as the chairman and CEO. Look for people who will both support your career and give you tough feedback.
Former Dallasite Jerry Tankersley, now an executive with a New York investment firm who sits on Lichtenberg's “board”, says the book fulfills her utilitarian goal. “Ronna turns the creative into practicality. Her interesting ideas become actionable. I find dynamic stuff on every page.”
One of her handiest quotes came from Bill Aldinger, chairman and CEO of Household International: “Unlike when you invest in stocks, when you invest in people, past performance is a pretty accurate indicator or future results.”