The “Great Resignation” has many organizations wringing their hands over vacancies, which impacts operating hours, customer service and efficiency. Those are immediate and visible impacts, reflected in signs posted on the doors and windows of all sorts of businesses that say “due to a labor shortage…” The less visible impact, however, is the loss of leadership capability and institutional knowledge that has left organizations via a greater than normal exodus of workers over the age of 55.
According to a CNN Business report from December 2021, 90 percent of workers who left the workforce due to the pandemic, with no intention of returning, were over the age of 55.
While we might not be able to get those retirees back, we can prevent this “brain drain” from happening in the future by creating a new level of achievement in organizations. Rather than identifying the pinnacle of one’s career as a title related to managing business units or other people, I propose the highest level of one’s career should be when we ascend to advising and mentoring others.
After decades of removing layers of management and hierarchy in organizations, I propose that we rethink what the pinnacle of leadership is, and add a new high level of achievement: Mentor.
We have lost so much wisdom and expertise from our organizations, and it’s not just due to the pandemic, this loss of institutional knowledge has been going on for most of the 2000s. An organization could invest decades in an employee in terms of experience and development, and then let them walk out the door without recapturing anything from investing in them.
After holding leadership positions, such as manager or executive vice president for a decade or so, it’s time to move senior level people out of production and into advising as a mentor. In this new role, their sole responsibility would be to consultatively support and guide the leaders who have replaced them or the up-and-coming leaders.
In the world of entrepreneurs and small business, a non-profit called SCORE exists — it stands for Senior Corp of Retired Executives — and offers mentoring to small business owners for free, with funding from the Small Business Administration. Volunteer mentors specialize in different areas (such as finance or manufacturing) and offer mentoring in person or virtually. Relationships can be one-offs or last for years.
We can use this as a model in corporate America. Picture this: Your company’s more senior employees share a wing or a floor in the building. They have private offices where they can meet confidentially with their mentees. Anyone from the organization can visit the “mentor floor.” They are greeted by a receptionist who asks them a few intake questions to match them with an appropriate mentor.
Additionally, mentors are free to “build their brand” and encourage people to ask for them specifically.
Mentoring relationships may be brief, such as a new manager asking for advice on how to give constructive feedback, or they could be more long term, such as a marketing manager meeting weekly with their mentor to use them as a sounding board for the direction of the department. Individuals can also have more than one mentor depending on their needs. For instance, having one mentor who helps them with understanding the politics of the organization while another mentor helps them to work on efficiencies within their department.
In support of this new way of developing skills and capabilities, L&D can help mentors to learn and follow a process, much like how we are currently training managers to adopt coaching behaviors. Additionally, advising alone isn’t going to address all issues or shortcomings, so L&D and the mentor would partner in identifying and personalizing the learning needs of mentees.
This is the true best-use of L&D in the future — to curate individual learning and performance enhancement.
In the face of an ever-changing employment landscape, companies can thwart costly mistakes by having a seasoned expert to help think things through and offer historical perspective. Professional development would be more personalized and integrated with one’s work. The company would have made space and time to transfer knowledge from older cohorts to younger ones by making mentoring part of the normal course of business. And, leaders would not have had a truly successful career unless their final job title were mentor.
