Laurie Baedke (00:26)
Welcome to the Growth Edge Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Laurie Baedke, and today's episode is a solo show. I wanted to wrap up this month back and the great learnings from our focus on mentorship and sponsorship. Obviously, passion topics of mine, not as nice to haves, not as sentimental gestures, not as an informal coffee here or there, but mentorship is a leadership imperative. Because if there is one through line across every single season of high performing careers, it is this.
No leader grows alone. And mentorship is the ultimate catalyst for leadership development, for growth, support, connection, camaraderie, accountability, and the list goes on. When Dr. Ruth Gotian joined me on the podcast, she made a really compelling business case for mentorship. One that should reframe how we think about it entirely. Mentors are promoted six times more often. Mentees are promoted five times more often. And burnout decreases. Let that sink in.
stronger performance, greater advancement, lower burnout. It's the ultimate win, win, win. And yet too often mentorship is left to chance. We assume it will happen organically or we treat it as optional and we outgrow the belief that we still need it. But mentorship compounds, my friends. Early in our career, it accelerates our development.
Mid-career, it sharpens discernment and expands our influence. And at the executive level, it protects against isolation and distorted judgment. That's why my conversation with Dr. Suzanne de Janasz was so powerful. She spoke candidly about CEO mentorship and the critical role of vulnerability and trust at the highest levels of leadership.
At that altitude, mentorship is not resume advice. It's a highly confidential space, a place where leaders can tell the truth, a place where vulnerability is not weakness, but wisdom. Because the higher you rise, the heavier that leadership becomes. And without trusted counsel, even the most capable leaders can drift. So today I want to explore mentorship across the leadership arc, from early curiosity through mid-career complexity to executive responsibility.
Because mentorship is not a single relationship, it's a living and evolving ecosystem. And if you're serious about sustained leadership excellence, mentorship isn't something that you fit in, it's something you build around. So let's talk early career first. Early in our careers, we are given a gift. It's expectation. People expect you to ask questions. They expect you to not know everything. They expect you to be learning.
Curiosity is not a liability at this stage, it is currency. And here's what high performers sometimes underestimate, time compounds, not just financially, but developmentally also. When you invest a dollar at age 25, you're not just investing the dollar, you're investing 40 plus years of growth on that dollar. When you invest in self-awareness at 28 or 34, you're not just improving one interaction,
You're improving thousands of conversations across decades. When you strengthen emotional intelligence early, you're shaping every negotiation, every future hire decision, every future hiring decision, every crisis response, every boardroom moment. The return isn't visible immediately, but over time it becomes unmistakable. That's the quiet power of compound development. The return multiplies over decades.
This is where humility and curiosity and coachability become a competitive advantage. Coachability is the long game. It's the willingness to hear what you might not want to hear in a moment and change because of it. In the early years, feedback is fuel. Curiosity accelerates our growth and mentorship shortens the distance between who you are and who you are becoming. At this stage, mentorship is often more directive.
You need someone who opens doors, shares context you just don't have yet, protects you from unavoidable mistakes, names your blind spots. And just as importantly, you need someone who expects excellence from you.
intelligence is foundational here. As Daniel Goleman has said, emotional intelligence is the sine qua non of leadership. Technical skill may get you into a room,
but emotional intelligence determines how long you stay there and how far you go. Mentorship accelerates emotional maturity. It helps you to reflect. What triggers me? How do I respond under pressure? Who do I allow to hold me accountable for growth? These are not abstract questions. They shape your trajectory. And the earlier and more often you ask them, the stronger your foundation. Okay, stage two is mid-career.
Mid-career is very different. You're no longer proving your potential. You are delivering outcomes. Leadership becomes a cascade of decisions. Research suggests that adults make over 35,000 decisions per day. For leaders, many of those are high stakes. Decision fatigue is not just a theory. It is a neurological reality. So when cognitive load increases, our judgment declines. And here's where mentorship shifts form.
In mid-career, you don't necessarily need someone telling you what to do. You need someone who helps you to think. A sounding board, a strategic mirror, a thought partner, a challenger of our assumptions, someone who will zoom us out from wrapping around our thoughts. This is where coaching and mentorship become invaluable. They create space for reflection in a world that rewards speed. They help you to guard your cognitive peak, to avoid overextending.
to prioritize what truly matters. Moving forward with 70 % confidence instead of waiting for perfection. But here's the risk at this stage. Competence becomes independence. Independence breeds self-sufficiency. And self-sufficiency over time can quietly become isolation. High achieving professionals are wired to perform. They're disciplined, driven, reliable.
When something needs to get done, they step in. They don't wait, they don't complain, they just carry it. And because they can carry it, they often do. Execution becomes their obsession, their identity. They deliver, they produce, they move it forward. And let's be clear, execution matters. Nearly half of all strategic plans fail because of poor follow-through. Vision without implementation or execution is
Just aspiration. But here's what often goes unnoticed. Relentless execution without reflection erodes our discernment.
When you are constantly producing, deciding, solving, and advancing, you rarely pause long enough to recalibrate, to tinker. You begin solving today's problems with yesterday's assumptions. Sustainable execution requires clarity. Clarity about priorities, clarity about trade-offs, clarity about what not to carry, and clarity requires reflection. It demands some space to think.
to challenge your own patterns, to ask, is this still aligned? To hear from someone who is not inside the pressure pot that you are navigating. High performers rarely struggle with effort. They struggle with perspective. And perspective almost always requires another voice in the room. There's also a stage where mentorship becomes reciprocal. You are both being mentored and mentoring.
And something powerful happens when you begin to mentor others. You begin to refine your own leadership philosophy. You articulate what you believe. You clarify your values. You sharpen your standards. And this mid-career mentorship isn't just about advancement or development. It's about alignment. Alignment between your responsibilities and your purpose. Between your ambition and your wellbeing.
Okay, so chapter three, the finish line of our career is senior executive leadership. When we think about those advanced roles in our ascent,
higher you rise, the fewer peers you're going to have. The greater the risks, the heavier the decisions and the more visible your presence and actions. At the executive level, mentorship becomes protective. Protective against isolation, ego-driven decisions, mission drift, emotional exhaustion.
In the episode with Dr. Suzanne de Janasz she reminded us from her research that CEO mentorship must be built on vulnerability and trust. It is simply imperative. At this altitude, mentorship is highly confidential. It's a space where leaders can say, I'm not sure, I'm overwhelmed. I may have gotten this wrong. Without that fear of exposure, executive presence also becomes amplified in this season.
Research suggests that 93 % of our communication is nonverbal. It's body language, it's tone, it's posture and carriage. At senior levels, people study you. They're watching your every move and dissecting every word. Your composure sets culture. Your boundaries set culture. Your emotional regulation sets culture. And if you have no one holding up a mirror to you, blind spots can widen.
is why executive mentorship is not optional. It's an act of stewardship. So thinking now about putting it into practice in a mentorship ecosystem, here's the truth. Mentorship is not one single person. It's not a perfect relationship that meets every need across the decades. It's an ecosystem or a network, an intentional team of voices that shape you differently at different stages for different needs.
One mentor may stretch your thinking. Another may be advocating for you when you're not in the room. Another may simply well just shoot you straight and tell you the truth when no one else will. Some mentors will be ahead of you in experience. Others will be beside you as peers or partners. Some may even be behind you because mentoring others sharpens our own clarity and conviction. An ecosystem of mentors evolves as you evolve.
and you must remain coachable in every season. Have I plateaued? Have I become brittle in my thinking? Coachability is delayed gratification. It is humility in motion
signals growth potential at every step along your journey. So let me bring you to a close with five questions. Who's mentoring you right now? Who are you mentoring?
Where might isolation be quietly limiting your growth? Where do you need challenge, not affirmation? And what conversation have you been postponing that could change your trajectory? Mentorship is not about dependency. It is about acceleration, about sustainability, about growth, about humility, and it's about legacy. Dr. Ruth Gotian reminded us that mentorship drives
both promotion and reduces burnout. Dr. de Janasz reminded us that vulnerability and trust are the backbone of leadership. And Dr. Cole shared from her research the win-win relationships of diversifying our circles.
The evidence is clear. The business case is compelling. The human case, it's undeniable. So here's my encouragement. Don't leave mentorship to chance. Design for it. Curate it. Invest in it. Protect it at all costs. Because the leaders who endure, the ones who rise and sustain and finish well, aren't the ones who knew the most. They're the ones
who continue to learn. They never walked alone. So if this episode resonated with you, I would love to encourage you to take one simple action this week. Reach out, schedule a conversation, invite the feedback, offer the guidance, or thank someone who has given to you something you're paying forward. Leadership is relational and mentorship is the ultimate multiplier.
As always, I'm rooting for you, my friend.
