Mentorship: The Ultimate Tool for Employee Engagement and Development

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the intro. And you're right, it is Global Mentoring Month. So for everyone that's joined and everyone that's watching the recording, it's a great month to be inspiring your own leaders and your own HR talent learning teams to think bigger with mentoring in 2024. And I think one of the best ways to think bigger is to hear from two leaders that have inspired 10 KC from the day that we started. And that's David and Manisha, who I'll introduce in just a few minutes. And so today we'll celebrate Global Mentoring Month. We'll think through how mentoring can be the top tool for employee engagement, development, and retention. And we'll really dive into that in the details with leaders who have shaped, built, scaled, won awards for best in class mentoring, networking, and skills development programs. So we've got a jam packed agenda, and, uh, as, uh, Zach had shared, we're gonna be trying our best to get to as many of your questions as possible, so feel free to use the chat. I've got a live feed on my phone, so I'll be looking down here and there to try to answer all of your questions. Uh, with Global Mentoring Month, I think that's, of course, January, but mentoring something that really has a compelling reason to go live all year round. We see January's a big time to be rethinking and strategizing because it's a time where New Year's resolutions are big and it's also mentoring month. But then you have things like Black History Month, international Women's Day, and galvanizing underrepresented colleagues and allies where mentoring, sponsorship and networking is so critical. So it's really a good time to be on here, and hopefully today will inspire you for how you can take your current programs or your inspirations for those and really win awards and get better outcomes through best in class approaches. So, uh, shared. My name's Dave. Uh, I'm the co-founder of 10 kc. We're the world's largest diversity founded mentoring and networking platform. So we built our platform long before mentoring was as cool as I'd say it is today. And fortunately, with leaders like David and Manisha, we were able to continue to innovate and grow to, to where we are today. Um, our main goal is to really help organizations take advantage of the power of relationships and mentoring. I think many of you on this call realize that when you have a mentor, when you have a relationship or a network or a friend at work, you just perform better, you stay longer, you discover career opportunities, you create better ideas, you onboard faster, and the list goes on. The challenge is that typically without formal programs, uh, it's really tough, but with formal programs you see increased promotion rates. Uh, and for 10 kc we actually measure this across all of our installs, where we see when organizations launch our 10 KC programs, they reduce churn by 25 to 35%. So a really important thing is we're all thinking about retaining top talent, retaining and inspiring top skills. Mentorship is a core part of that. So we'll share this slide with all of you after. And I don't know, I'd love to hear from people on the chat as we look at this slide, but, uh, over 95% of Fortune 500 companies have a mentoring program. I can tell you that was not nearly the case a few years ago. Organizations are racing and now over 95% of Fortune five hundreds have a mentoring program. But the large majority of these programs are very low reach. They're a lot of work, they're filled with bias, and they have no data. And as we all know, what gets measured gets done. And so the good news is many organizations are now educated to a place where they know they need these programs. But the opportunity for everyone here is to think of how we can save time and effort, remove bias, and actually measure things so we can make things better and actually create accountability, transparency, and impact. So today we're gonna be diving into a lot of these topics. We're gonna be looking at the benefit of mentoring the ROI best practices, how to get adoption, how to take your current program or stand up a net new program and make it way better. And also how to track some ROI. And we're gonna do that through our two incredible panelists who, again, I've had the pleasure of working alongside. Uh, I've had many coffees with both of these leaders. Uh, and so first I'll introduce Manisha Berman. Uh, I met Manisha years ago, uh, when she was running the as A-C-H-R-O of capital Markets at at BMO. Um, and she was one of the first leaders who said, wow, this was actually in a 10 x our mentoring program. I've since worked with Manisha in her, uh, social impact work with Ascend, which is the LAR largest Pan-Asian Heritage Network, powering their mentoring networking programs, uh, and also now as the CHRO at CI Financial. So Manisha, thanks so much for joining us. I know you're, today, you're in Houston, uh, so not in your typical office. Uh, but uh, I'll let you, um, uh, I'll, you know, welcome to the call. And and next I'll pass over to, uh, David Simmons. Um, David, I, it was another one like Manisha who was with us since the, the very beginning. Um, at the time, uh, David was leading, uh, communications at McKesson, which I think most people are familiar with, and is now taking on the global, uh, chief communications and sustainability officer role at Canada Life. Uh, David's also very involved with Catalyst with his alumni network at Western, which, uh, have also been major organizations that have been able to take advantage of the power of networking and mentoring. Uh, and so with that, maybe Manisha, I'll let you say a quick hello and then I'll pass it to David. Hey, can everyone hear me? It's such a pleasure to be here. Yes, great for coming through. David. Hi everyone. It's, uh, real, really happy to be here in London, Ontario today with my, uh, teal background. I was told Teal. So maybe as, uh, as we get started, we're actually gonna kick off the poll question. And while we're doing that, maybe Manisha I'll have you go first and then David second. Um, Manisha, talk to us a little bit about your journey with mentoring and networking, uh, and maybe some of our origin story of, of how we actually ended up meeting and and teaming up. Yeah, great question. So I'd say, you know, probably a per personal and professional angle on the mentoring, um, questions. So I was raised, um, in, um, a family where it was all about academics. And the reason I mentioned that is because I undervalued the power of networking and relationships and mentoring, um, early in my life and early in my career because I was raised where it was all about results. So I think personally, I had my own sort of discovery and insights around how important relationship building is equally important to being results oriented in your career. Um, and then of course, from a professional perspective as A-C-H-R-O, saw the impact and power of it in terms of building culture and, um, helping talent grow. And I think, you know, another part of it, which we can talk about more, um, Dave, is the diversity angle, which is mentorships if you rely on manual and organic. While powerful sometimes miss really important talent because there can be biases in the process, which is what I love about the power of both relationship and technology for great mentoring. I love that. And I think so often people think, you know, I'm not learning or growing if I'm not in the classroom, kinda like your personal story. And the reality is the majority of learning and development happens outside the classroom and through those un informal networks. And so how do you build and scale those to help educate and help democratize those opportunities? So thanks for sharing that. We'll come back to the bias point on a few, a few occasions. Yeah. Um, David, uh, over to you. Uh, thanks for having me here to chat about, uh, my experience working with you and, and the organization. And also the importance of mentoring. I'd say it's, you know, I'm the kids of, of immigrants. Like most Canadians of of my generation. Uh, I had a do bit of a different, uh, origin to mentoring than Manisha. Maybe my parents were, were, uh, strict and obsessive about grades, but my grandparents were, uh, evangelical ministers for better or for worse. And so the nature of that was we were constantly traveling. And what I saw in practice was net network and mentorship. And I saw the reach that, uh, was created through relationship. I saw the followership that was created through relationship. And so I think from a very young age, uh, my siblings and and family would tell you, I was sort of, um, obsessive about, about reach and obsessive about network. Um, and then through my academic career, through sports, through theater, through all these different types of things, you, you sort of see the indirect benefit of network. Uh, and then as I started to work professionally, originally in politics, you see the, the impact of network. And so by accident, maybe, uh, with great advice and, and, and collaboration with leaders like Dave, uh, you know, I was able to help an organization or two, this is maybe, maybe three if we're counting, uh, really get serious about how to open access to that thing called, called networks and, and mentorship. And I think being a racialized, uh, and queer executive in, in Toronto and San Francisco and New York has taught me that this has been happening for a long time in spaces and places that I may not have been in or people look like me not have been in. And so how do we take lessons from that, acknowledge that, and then make it more, more open and, and more accessible? So I've been really excited to be able to do some of that and to learn, learn about that, um, over the years. Um, amazing. Uh, so we're gonna fly, fly through these this next 45 minutes. 'cause if it's not obvious just yet, Misha and David have a ton of experience at executive levels, but I think what's really exciting is that there are executives that have actually built and scaled a lot of programs and they're, they get their, their hands in, in, into the work itself, enabling their teams and colleagues. So I think that's, that's helpful because we just got our pull response back, and over 40% of of people on this call are in planning stages for their mentor to networking offerings today. So we'll hopefully help you, uh, really learn from some of our mistakes and some of our wins, uh, as you're planning. And we also see, uh, lemme see if I get my math right, around 40% if you combine the two are actually manually, uh, running programs and have, uh, platforms and of some way today. So a lot of people are doing things right, uh, right now, and very few don't have plans for a program, although hopefully we'll inspire them to make plans to, to launch metric and networking, uh, in, in the year ahead. So with the, maybe I'll start with David for one of the first questions that the, the audience had asked was around like, what's the, the business case for making mentor networking programs better within organizations? It's interesting. I, I think Business cases are really important. We need to know how to build them and use them. When we think about programs like this, they often talk about the values case, uh, that under that, that, that buttresses the business case, the way I think about building a team. So whether that's in the workforce or outside the workforce, and Manisha's an expert in this space so she can challenge me and keep me honest. People want to belong right at in every aspect of the way we live our lives as human beings, we want to belong. And the easier we make it for individuals to feel themselves as part of something, the more, uh, likely it is for those people to stay, to grow and develop in that environment. And so, when I talk to operating executives who I'm on executive committees where there was a, growing up in consulting and at McKesson, I would often say, we wanna win. I don't wanna work for the sec, the, the second best person in the market. I wanna work for the best organization in the marketplace. When I was running, I wanted to run on the best team in, in, in, in, in competitive, uh, track and field. So, so reducing those barriers to belonging is so key. And the way you create belonging is through relationship. And so we know that to be true. So if we can make mentorship easy and include sort of three steps to it, in my mind, there's role modeling, which you learn, you know, in kindergarten, right? Uh, you say, you say, yes, please, you say thank you, you learn your values. There's advice, how do you fit in here? What does it mean to win? What does discipline look like? What does showing up the right way look like? What are the soft skills that are required to move from pharma to wealth and asset management? I can, I can talk to you about that, that difference as I took off my double breasted jacket and tie to get on this, this, this, this, this webinar. And then the third piece, which again, is so important as you move through leadership is sponsorship. Who's gonna speak up for you when the door closes? And we're talking about key talent moves, we're talking about stretch assignments, we know, and it's, it's, it's not better or worse, but it's different. And it's true. We know individuals all have affinity bias. We all have it. You know, I'm very proud that my team, my leadership team is, uh, 50% women identified. I have openly LGBT people on my team. I have racialized people on my team. I could be accused for hiring people that look and live like me the same way that others might too, too as well. So if we know that that's a part of talent acceleration, then let's be honest about it and create some criteria that allow us to do sponsorship in a way that moves the company, the organization to that goal, which is winning. Yeah, well said. And, and belonging is like such an underpinning of, of performance and innovation and engagement. And, and if you don't have networks or mentors, you just, you, you just won't have that, uh, especially in the decentralized hybrid world. Manisha would love for you to kinda answer the same question from, from your point of view in the, the organizations you've worked with. Yeah, I think, I don't think there is a leader anymore who would say they don't understand the value of mentoring. So I think, you know, as you said at the beginning, Dave years ago wouldn't have been 90% that organizations that say they have a program, it's becoming much more about the how and the who. So as I mentioned at the beginning, if it's left to more organic manual processes, I think important people and often diverse people get missed. Um, and you know, I think there were so many comments that David made that just really resonated with me. Um, but that belonging and inclusion piece is so important, right? I think it's that next evolution. So everyone believes diversity is important, but it can't just be that you have the right PE mix of people in a room. What you also need to get at is those mentoring relationships, the people that get those, you know, the sidebar conversations where they get the guidance and the insights that can really compound over time. And if that's not equal, equally distributed, certain people succeed in certain jobs. So I think, um, that one is so important is I think every leader lies into mentoring, but then what I would challenge them on is, who are you mentoring? Are they someone in your, you know, like, and how are you doing it? So I think that's, that's the next evolution for me. Yeah. You know, well said. And I think, you know, David, you've, uh, you've talked about kind of affinity bias. Um, I think with return to office and going back to hybrid, there's the whole thing around, uh, proximity bias, which really, uh, is another kind of significant bias. There's also things like matching biases where men are 12 times less likely to meet with a female colleague than a male colleague. So for all those that might have just like the old organic approach to say, go find your own mentors, it's just how our company operates. There's a lot of bias built into that, which a lot of executives have the privilege to not really have to think through because they're now executives. So whether it's affinity, proximity matching, uh, and that includes gender visible minorities, even just things like location and and so on and so forth. But, uh, maybe Manisha, I'll have you start first and pass it to David, help this audience who's in planning phases, and they're probably debating just organic, go figure it out yourself versus leverage technology. How did you navigate those kinds of conversations and what advice would you share with everybody? Yeah, I think, um, because, you know, years ago you had to convince organizations that diversity was important. I think most organizations get that. So to me, people get that mentoring is important. They get the diversity is important. I think the intersection point that helps is, is explaining that bias that you just articulated, the proximity bias, the matching bias, and saying, Hey, a tool like this gives you an opportunity to scale. It identifies those hidden gems that you may have overlooked because of our biases. Um, the other is the labor market is really challenging. And, you know, for really strong talent and specialized talent, they can get what you're offering in many organizations, but if they have a really deep sense of connection and belonging in the company that you work for, that's what's gonna hold them. It's not gonna be the comp, it's not gonna be the nature of the work, because most organizations can match those things. It's gonna be that intangible of how deeply connected they feel to the company. And that comes from relationships and a feeling of, you know, as Dave called out belonging and inclusion. Yeah. Dude, maybe I'll have you kind of wait on that as well. Is like, how did, how did you think about some of that? Because I think you're in a lot of boardrooms. We're also in like a cost cutting era, and people are kind of like, maybe we'll just let this all happen on our own. What would be the coaching that you'd give to, maybe it's like a, a manager of talent who's trying to make their career within an organization, or maybe it's an executive. Uh, what would be the advice if you had a, a few of them in front of you? I'm going to be really vulnerable. 'cause I think it's a, it's a leadership quality that, that i, I preach, I'm gonna practice it. And manishh, I almost feel like I want to do like a podcast with you, with someone who's worked close to hr, but never in hr. I can be, I can be hrs best friend and ally or irritant. And one of the irritating things I sometimes say, and I know you wouldn't do this 'cause I've seen the impact of your work in over your career. Um, I often say to my colleagues, and I, there's a lot of people, professionals on the call, anything that's left to an accident in business usually doesn't work. Like it just, and so sometimes when we're doing these programs internally, people will say, oh, let's just have it be leader led or let's let it be organic. And I say to them like, in in what universe do we make it? Do we launch a strategic initiative and say we're gonna let it be an accident? So I I would just kind of say, for those of us that care about talent development, care about inclusion, care about accelerating people that look more like the people on this call than some of our, our bosses who, nothing wrong with that, but it's the truth. We need a strategic framework. We need measurement. And, and that's how leaders often think. Like I worked for engineers, um, and scientists when I was at McKesson, and now I work for actuaries and accountants at Great West Life Co. And I can tell you, I can't go to them with a plan that just says, we're gonna, we're gonna see if it, if it works. I go to them and I say, here's the framework we're gonna use. Here are the measurements trying to get after. And here is how it's either gonna grow the business, surprise and delight our customers and stakeholders, or retain your top talent, because that comes back to how you grow the business. So again, if I was doing this United Way or at Western or in some of the other nonprofits, I volunteer with Harry Jerome maybe. But even then, I think the rigor is, is, is, is is so important. You definitely both need a podcast. And, uh, we'll, we'll add that as a, as an action item. Uh, uh, and I do, I I think it's so true, right? If, if anything is important in what world do you ever just say, well, let's just, let's just leave it with the organic approach and just see how it goes. Like everything will, will we'll work. Uh, so very tweetable, uh, LinkedIn post, um, moment on that. Uh, so let's kind of like kind of keep, keep rolling through it. I think when, uh, a lot of times when organizations have so many technology platforms, they're trying to evaluate whether they kind of use in-house solutions in different ways, or how kind of mentoring platforms like 10 KC can kind of fit within that ecosystem. And, um, Manisha, I know this is something that came up a lot in, in many of the worlds that we've, we've worked through. Um, and so maybe like a two-part question I'll have you talk through. I think the first is you have leaders who are like, well, we're kind of doing this already, or can I can kind of happened already. Um, what was the coaching that you gave them? And then two is how did you see this living within the existing like teams and Workday environment so that with things like 10 KC it was enhancing the employee experience and not confusing it? Yeah, you know, I, again, I I love how Dave positioned it around, like, what is ever important to you that you allow to happen by accident? So similarly, you know, we had some conversations with leaders that Dave, you were a part of where there was an initial reaction was, no thanks, we're good. You know, we're doing it already. And what we push them on is we have more turnover than we would like. We have people who are, you know, struggling with the whole hybrid remote coming back in paradigm. We don't have the diversity levels that we want. We don't have succession, bench strength. So, you know, in what world do you feel that we're doing it perfectly today and that there's no improvement required? And when is that ever a mindset when you're running a business, right? It's always about continuing to compete and do things better. So, um, you know, I think that that one is an important one. And I think when you partner with an external vendor, they're going to keep you, um, constantly thinking about the next evolution of your practices. Like sure, you know, when early days, Dave, you'll remember when we were looking at, um, a mentoring tool, there was someone who said, Hey, like I can just, I've just invented this little algorithm and I can, we can do the matching inside the organization, but when you partner with someone, they're gonna help you really look at what the best practices are, continuously evolve the methodology, bring you in with other partners that are doing the same thing. So just, it'll help you keep evolving your thinking and approach, um, which I think is so important. Yeah, well said. I think many organizations, it's, it's such a, a shame to just try to think that you can just do it yourself when isn't it great when you can benefit from the best practices of, of so many others and inherit those to accelerate things. And I think that long existed for things like learning programs and LMSs, and the Next Frontier is really doing that within mentoring and networking, like with those programs. Because people used to think if you're not in the classroom, you're not learning. And so LMSs and LinkedIn learning were all, you know, what everyone had to catch up on. But now people are realizing, especially with new skills, it's really mentoring, networking, sponsorship. But those two need, uh, you know, we wanna accelerate people's roadmaps and plans and you don't have to re reinvent the wheel. Um, David, maybe I'll let you kind of weigh in on, on those two questions as well and just share some of your experience. I'm thinking, uh, in real time. So I'm, I'm not following the notes that I should be following. I apologize Dave and Manisha, but Manisha talked about, um, we're the, the re the refrain. We're already doing that. And I think it's, it's important. We, we, we, we put that on like a poster, uh, in our offices and, and, and throw darts at it, right? Because it's the word. It's like, oh, it's it, we've always done it that way. Is the, is the other expression, right? I think about, uh, behavior being so learned. I mentioned my grandparents were ministers. We just did an announcement in London, Ontario this morning, and I was there playing the video on the, on the news, and there's a shot of me holding the top of the podium like this as I'm making the announcement and then putting my hands in the pockets of the jacket that I'm wearing. And I share that in real time because my grandfather was a preacher. And I was looking at that shot and I was like, oh my gosh. It was like scary. And it's a reminder that behaviors are learned. I used to grow up watching him do this at the podium before make a joke and you could see me on this video, I'm doing this, I make a joke and I put my hands in my pocket. I was like, and so I, if we know behaviors are learned and we know that we need to build culture in order for people to be senior leaders in these organizations, which is totally normal and okay, it's, it's, it's a reminder. My coach used to say this to me. My, my exec coach would say, do you know the answer? Your job as a leader is to get there faster and bring people to that answer faster. So we know it's true that behaviors are learned. We know it's true that mentorship is the way that we share learning and culture and build leadership capacity. So let's get there faster. And this is a tool that I've seen in action that allows us to be agnostic to geography, be, uh, indiscriminate to time and to force ourselves to put a series of criteria on the table that we're gonna hold ourselves to. Because we know that the things we've been doing forever are not working to get us to where we need to get to. And I just think those are just such important, uh, pieces of hard truths that have to come with grace that will get us to, to where we need to get to a lot faster. I remember when we launched Own It, we used, we launched McKesson Cafe, myself and the president and one of the business units decided to co-sponsor the introduction. And the, she was the CFO before she was the first woman to run a business unit at McKesson. Paula Keys wonderful executive, wonderful leader. And she knew, she wouldn't have said it at the time, but she knew she was kind of on her last sprint. This would've been her last role given where she was at in her career. And she said to me, I don't want to just do this to say that I've got more women involved in leadership. And I remember, remember Dave was part of a conversation we had with her before a keynote. She said, I wanna make more leaders. Like I want more CFOs, I want more presidents who are women in this business, and that's what I want this program to be about. So she gave a call to me into HR and said, if this is just gonna be about growing, the number not up for it, I wanna be disciplined. And Paula is, I love her. She's so aggressive. She was like, I want more people in hard jobs. Like, and like she want that. And I said to her, good for you for saying that. And I can tell you her goal was to double the participation in the program. She did that and she said to every exec, I want you to sponsor a high potential woman, and I want that woman promoted. Like, I don't want 'em to feel good. They should, but I want 'em promoted. And they just, it was a call to the moment that got us to the answer. We knew what the answer was, and we got to the answer a lot faster. And I can tell you the people who got promoted didn't get promoted 'cause they were nice, they got promoted because they had the capacity, the capability, and the credibility to do their jobs. Uh, well, well said. Uh, and maybe we'll just see the answers to question two coming off of that, because I think, uh, launching these different programs and, and getting some of that, that friction, uh, the, these, this question might help, but, um, yeah, it looks like, you know, very, very classic, a lot of the problems around getting participation, tracking performance, and then just man manually managing the program. And so maybe we'll talk about adoption just off of that and how people have got participation. I think, David, you just shared the example of when 10 Casey and McKesson when we launched, uh, the, the first program, which is really focused on engaging women and allies and double the participation. So, um, and Manisha, I think you have a lot of similar stories from, uh, BMO out Ascend and, and now soon with CI Financial, now that you're, you're in the seat. Uh, but maybe let's talk about how 10 KC and a platform can help organizations get participation and keep participation. Because I think those two things are, are equal. Um, David, I'll have you kick it off and then Manisha you can follow. I mean, I think I talked about how to get it. I think how do you keep it, one of the things that I believe to be true is that not every person needs to be in everything forever. So one of the frameworks that I used at McKesson when we did it, uh, for own IT and then scaled it globally, um, was there's three steps to this. One is to bond. How do you create that interpersonal connection with leaders who may not connect naturally? So a lot of what we did, and Dave, you remember this is we used your team to say, we're gonna get, we were a sales driven organization. It's pharma. We're gonna get sales leaders who are often in the front seat to meet with non-sales leaders, operations people in the distribution center, retail operations leaders, uh, HR executives. We're gonna the marketing team who were selling their products and services, but may not even know what they do on a daily basis. So how do we bond and create a, a common vernacular or a common understanding of who we were as a company? The next step was how do we bridge, so how do we un how do we use leaders as the tools to say we're actually all on the same team chasing the same goals. And so we need the same leadership behaviors to get to where we need to be. And a part of that output was three transformation behaviors that McKesson introduced. Debate to side commit enterprise first, um, I can't remember the third one, but I work for Canada Life now. Um, and then the last piece was how do we build and not, and not, and, and it was a real, and again, Dave, you helped coach us through this, the action orientation of that mentorship. How are you building that individual so that at the end of that mentorship relationship, they can walk away and say, I have this new scale talent or perspective I didn't have before. And I think by time binding things and saying, Hey, there's this three step process that everybody's gonna follow and there's an output from it, it just makes it more real and makes it more effective. And that's how you keep people in it. 'cause there's a, they know what they're, they're pursuing, they know what they're, they're getting after. Versus it feeling like, you know, me and Manisha are gonna meet every quarter and and be friendly. Like, that's great, that's a great relationship and I'd love to see you downtown. Um, but that's not mentorship. And I think being really clear about That's helpful. Yeah. Really well said. I'm Manisha I'm gonna pass it over to you. 'cause I think there's, I I I, I'm thinking of a few examples that, that we've worked through, but Dave, just to double click on what you've shared, it's so true that guiding people through those experiences and building capability around that is so important. And I, I've seen a lot in the chat about what we have an automated matching system that's great. And that's actually where 10 KC started and we quickly learned that matching's very important, but actually as important of that as structured curriculums, guides, and pathways, is this a sponsorship conversation that looks very different than a new hire onboarding buddy program? And, uh, I think about conversations years ago with David and Manisha when we were just a matching platform. It's probably four years ago, five years ago now, we're, we have every type of program from sponsorship to onboarding buddies, women's programs, bipoc mentoring, um, and and group mentoring. one-on-one because helping people guide through experiences creates capabilities, competencies, it levels a playing field and it just creates better outcomes. And so engagement often hinges on competency. If you have competency, you keep doing it. If you're not really sure and you're, you're kind of afraid of it, you're engagement drops. So the more we can make competency easy, fun, guided, explicit, the more outcomes that that we'll see. Um, Manisha, talk to us about adoption and, and engagement and how, uh, some of the, the technology work that we did, um, helped you accelerate that. Yeah, I think, um, and this is where an outside partner, as I mentioned can really help. I think, you know, the first 1.0 of mentoring was just as David said, we're gonna meet for coffee every quarter and you only get so far. And the conversations stay quite superficial. So what I think is really important, and just because someone's an executive doesn't mean we're a good mentor. Um, and so putting much more parameters and guidance around it in terms of, you know, what are we gonna focus on? How are we gonna make the conversations really meaningful and relevant with real curriculum and discussion topics, I think really helps. So, because I think one of the biggest things with mentoring is you need to have a program. And by doing it at scale, you get the benefit of not missing anyone, but what can happen when it's inorganic versus organic is the chemistry isn't as natural. So, you know, as David mentioned, you need to build that bond and it takes time for it, for the conversations to go from surface level to much more in depth. So I think having some of that curriculum and competency and conversation guides helps take it deeper. And then I think the other part that leaders need to be transparent about is often leaders do not share the undercurrents of what it really takes to succeed. They, um, they focus more on the kind of above the line, here's the technical things you need to be good at, here's the different parts of the organization. Those things, to me, a mentoring relationship has really achieved success when there's this trusted relationship and the individual can go and say, Hey, I'm really struggling on this project, or I'm having a challenge with this leader, leader that I'm working with, and I know you know them well, can you help me in terms of their working style and how to be successful with 'em? That doesn't happen as much as, you know, you would like, but to me that's really the power of the mentoring relationship is it gets to that level of depth. Yeah, that's a, it's such a good example. Um, and I think the something that kind of often goes, not like doesn't, gets discussed as much is the deli, the different delivery formats that both of you built in. And something unique with 10 KC is, you know, in previous worlds or with other technology solutions, oftentimes it's one size fits all. And so if you're an executive, you're gonna get the same mentoring opportunities as say, like an intern. But we know an executive and an internship should probably be segmented a little bit differently in an enterprise wide program. And that's where adoption and engagement can increase when you offer in a single mentoring program group mentoring through office hours, I know you've both launched group mentoring through office hours where leaders can match with groups of people in the same path. People can match one-on-one, there can be networking. And so being an all-in-one solution like 10 KC allows users to take advantage of the right solutions. And Min, I'll always remember all of the executives started to actually help themselves and they were traveling to an office in Chicago and all of a sudden they were doing a career Ask Man thing in the Chicago office as a group mentoring offering. And so, you know, previously it was sometimes executives you're having to convince on mentoring, it was so amazing to watch them just start to help themselves because the experiences were able to be offered to them in, in the best way possible. Um, I think also just a note to everyone on the call, uh, platforms like 10 KC are now fully integrated. So whether it's Workday Success Factors, Oracle, Microsoft Teams, slack, um, everything actually is directly in the employee experience. And so it just, you know, we've come so far through Covid by forcing adoption on these platforms that now engagement's so much easier. Just the one piece of advice is don't make people download another app. So if you are thinking of a mentoring program and you are thinking about making it an app, just stop there and think about how you can instead enable it through Teams Slack, um, or whatever platform it is that, that you might, you might use. Um, and so we know mentoring can drive things like engagement, retention skills, uh, or all of these, but we're gonna make you all choose one on this, this third, uh, poll question. And so, um, Zach, maybe you can just let us know what the responses are, uh, on this one. Uh, awesome. Yeah, retention and retention is number one. Uh, and sure enough on the poll it's number one as well. Um, and I think I shared the top of the call, we measure retention across the millions of smart matches that 10 KC makes. And you know, I think we've always known that when people have relationships and mentors, they stay longer, they get career opportunities, they get sponsorship the way Paula advocated at McKesson, uh, like David had shared. Uh, but I wonder like, you know, what do you, what would be the advice that you'd all share in terms of like when and how to measure retention? Because I think Mani and Manishh, I'll have you kick this one off first, where we can't just launch a program and expect retention to change in six months. So what was some of the data that you measured to know things were successful before you scaled and, you know, after a couple years we now see retention, but what would be some of those, how did you approach data in in those pilot phases with, uh, with your implementations? I mean, I think, I think a big part of it is take up, right? Like how, how quickly is the pro is there take up in the program? What's the participation level like? So that gets at the kind of volume side of it, but obviously you wanna also measure quality, which is, um, the experiences that people are having, the level of connection between leaders and employees, how it starts getting used for real problem solving. And then over time, I think longer term are things like the inclusion, diversity, retention piece, because I agree with you, Dave, those come later. So I think just really thinking about your leading and lagging indicators, um, as you launch a program to understand the success And how did, because I think, you know, a lot of people might just be sending out surveys everywhere and then trying to put those surveys in Qualtrics and get creative with their data science intern to try to make sense of it all. But how did you configure your solutions to have surveys and nudges and those leading indicators measured through the actual experiences? Yeah, I think one of the things that we paid close attention to is the degree to which it was being used to solve real business problems. So, um, yes, of course there's a bunch of intangible benefits from a people human capital perspective, but when people are at a point where they're seeing opportunity to use these platforms to solve real business issues, then you know that it's really taking hold, right? So in my previous role, um, our sales and distribution group was over 17,000 people. People are working remotely, they're working across many locations, and we always, you know, anything that we did because of the huge scale and the impact, we always wanted to get employee feedback, client feedback, solve issues together, get them as champions. So what, as we started to roll out, what we saw is that business leaders saw the value and were using it not just to do, you know, the first step, which is the coffee chat, but go further and, and actually tap into the insights of the employees to test solutions and raise questions and create champions of things that we're rolling out. Yeah, well said. And I, I found what you've done with the group matching and helping leaders group match to people to have real transformation and business outcome questions, whether it's brainstorming new ideas or launching new culture frameworks was like such an awesome way to connect to those actual business outcomes. Uh, David, I've got a, uh, a bit of a skill testing question for you off from, from one of the audience members, but, uh, it's a slight revision from what they had shared. Um, how do you think, um, you know, a lot of organizations are, are pushing to potentially just use off the shelf mass offerings on platforms like Workday. How do you kind of weigh the pros and cons of just leveraging those versus adding platforms like 10 kc? Like what's the, the pros and cons and, and and what, um, how did you think through all of that knowing that you'd used Workday in the past? Mm-Hmm. Yeah, we did use, uh, days and one of the implementations I worked on with, uh, 10,000 Coffees team, we used Workday and we looked at the benefit there and it, you know, I'd ask the talent officers and people officers to, to challenge me on this, if you feel differently, I think some solutions are designed for scale, and I don't mean that this solution can't be scaled, but some solutions, like an employee onboarding is for every employee, right? So every employee needs to go through a program, understand fundamentals, and be able to deliver against those fundamentals. What we found very helpful in the implementations I've worked on this is we've said we have a targeted population that we want to be able to invest in, and we want to be able to make sure that that population has an experience that we can track, measure and then, and then continue to invest in. And so I think that's this, the customization and customization might be too strong of a word, but the ability to focus, right, with this technology and with the, with the services and supports offered through the organization is super helpful. So whether that's in the high potential leadership program that we had at McKesson that I was a part of, that this platform could be used to connect senior executives with emerging leaders who are sort of in, you know, CHROs know this two times promotable in five years. So they're, they're, they're driving. There's that piece, whether it was, Hey, we need, we don't have a problem with women in management. We have a problem with women in operating roles, so we're gonna really target and, and measure and track and trace that we had an issue. It was really interesting. Myself and the, the finance leader in the previous role we're doing a town hall with our African American, uh, resource group. I was living in the US at the time, we did this town hall about, and one of the participants said that she had been at the company for 25 years, um, and there weren't enough black young people in our management rotation program. And the response from the finance leader was, well, we only recruit from the top. And it was a, we would've coached if we had done a briefing we only recruited from the top business schools in America. And the response, we were in Virginia and we were responsive, one of the participants was, have you ever recruited from an HBU? And we never did. And so it was a real, and we both looked at each other and like, wow, like, you know, dumb. And so it was a real opportunity for us to go back and say, how can we create the right networks? We had HBU graduates who had then gone onto Ivy League business schools where we had partnerships. How do we create a network? How do we match people? How do we then measure the outcomes? And then how do we grow the participation? And now that program has participation that reflects the employee population and the geographies that they're in. So I just, I, I give those examples to say, the more specific you are with the business problem, the niches point, the more likely you are to solve it. This is a business problem. Be specific. Get a tool that allows you to be specific and then get after the solve. Yeah, well said about getting a tool that allows you to be specific. We, uh, this is maybe something more for off the record for a, a webinar like this, but I think some of the greatest examples our clients share about turning on Workday is it's, it's uh, it's almost like just sending a single friend to a phone book to try to find a date. And it's like you could just start calling everybody and hoping that that's the way to get it, but there's actually great tools and platforms to, to go and find a great partner. And I think when you think about mentoring, there are some, uh, metaphor, some kinda analogies to that where you can't just send someone to a giant directory to say, go, good luck. Go go find those people. If you want to create specific outcomes the way that David had shared, you gotta create, have tools that create specific programs to do that. Um, and mentoring sponsorship, networking's no different. Uh, Manisha, maybe I'll, I'll uh, kind of improvise on one of the questions that had just come in. I think it's a, an interesting one, uh, around like leadership time. I think manager burnout, leader burnout, we're hearing it all the time. The to-do list is just growing nonstop. Are you really going to make these leaders and managers now have to mentor people? Uh, is launching programs like 10 kc whether it's sponsorship mentoring or any of its forms, is it adding more to leaders and managers to-do lists or do you see it as helping them do their expectations, but more effectively, how do you kind of coach people who might be running up on those challenges of, well, my leaders and managers are burnt out, the last thing they need to do is mentor and sponsor people. I mean, it's part of your leadership accountability to mentor and sponsor people. So you, you shouldn't be a leader if you've got a long to-do list that does not include leading. Um, and so I think it's more saying, this is part of your accountability. How can we help you do it at scale, reach more people, take a more inclusive approach, make it more relevant. And by the way, there's a ton of ROI for you because you're gonna tap into, um, a number of bright minds to help you solve the problems that you're trying to solve. So it really is a two-way win. It's not, um, a wise man or woman just imparting their knowledge on an audience. It really should be an interactive discussion where they're getting a lot of insights. The more senior you get, uh, the, as you move into more corporate roles, you often lose your, um, you, there's a risk that you are not as grounded on the day-to-day running of your business, the client perspective, the next generation perspective, the broad employee perspective. So there is so much for you to gain that will help you be more effective as a leader by taking the time to do it. Yeah, I love, I think one of the best quotes we heard is, you know, the more you teach, the more you learn. And so by taking that hour a month to, whether it's in a group experience, like a group mentoring experience, or one-on-one, you just get those aha moments that you might've been stuck on. Um, so we're, we're in the final stretch and, and so maybe, uh, um, just something around I think making the leap and, and what was your biggest aha moment? So David, maybe we'll start with you first, then I'll pass it to Manisha. So you've made the leap, um, and I know you've launched mentoring and networking programs, leveraging technology in the past. What did you find was like your best aha moment? Um, and what, uh, the second part of that was, is there a feature or functionality of 10 KC that you found to be kind of like your secret superpower that you, you love the most from your, your implementation? So what was kinda like the best aha moment after finally making that leap and innovating? Um, and then two is, was there any feature or functionality of, of your 10 KC that really, uh, was your, your superpower? So David, and then I'll pass it to Manisha. I would say this, um, and it doesn't directly answer your question. One of the principles I give my teams that I've had the privilege to lead, I've always been in support functions, whether it was strategy or marketing or comms or, um, sustainability is to meet the leader where they are, IE the operating leader. 'cause that's, we're in a business, we gotta support the operation to get to its goal. And sometimes when you're in roles like mine, you chase the shiny ball and you chase the exciting initiative and the exciting project that makes sense to us, right? That, that makes sense to the communicator, to the strategist. And that's a recipe for failure because it does not connect with the operating leader or the chief executive or the person running the company. And so I'd say what was a great moment for me with this program was we were able to meet operating leaders where they were and take the fear. And it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Take the fear and the worry and the caution out of what seems normal to us, which is a conversation about mentorship and inclusion and what I, I am not an apologist for traditional leaders and for old people and for mainstreamers, but I do acknowledge that some of this sounds like I don't know how to do this. I had a, I worked with the CE who said to me, I don't know how to, I don't know how to mentor. And I said to him, you're one of the best mentors I've ever had. You just don't call it that. And so 10,000 copies was able to just make it simple, easy, real. It framed it and it was like, oh, I can actually do this and I can actually add value. It's not a time suck. It's not a wasted thing. It's not touchy feely, you know, I hate when people call it that, but it's a real thing that's been happening for decades and now we're gonna formalize it and make it impactful. So I think that's been been really good. And that the, the, the tip I would give to people is, you think about this or any other program that has the same outcome, remember that the audience doesn't know what it doesn't know, and you have to remind them of it in a way that's non-threatening that that that disarms and that engages and you'll be off to the races. Love that. Uh, thanks for sharing all that Manisha over to you. Yeah, I love that. I often, um, you know, will say that in corporate or HR roles, we can sometimes fall in love with our own programs and forget to make them relevant to the business. So I, I love this, um, that positioning around meet them where they are and you know, building on that. Often when driving change, you want to be deliberate about, yes, you need the people where they are immediate champions because they are gonna help you accelerate. But the often the magic are the ones who are your most difficult, the ones who are putting a lot of barriers up. The ones who, um, can often be hard critics because if you can get them on side, they will become your biggest champions. They will push you hard on the quality and the delivery and making it really relevant to the business. So don't shy away from some of those tougher partners because you can turn them around and you can learn a lot in the process. Um, on 10 KC in particular, I think, you know, one epiphany, actually Dave was quite recent. You and I were talking about the relevance of a platform like this as people come back to the office. And what we talked about is there was this, you know, open door and it was, um, a really easy sell when you thought about a platform like this when we're all remote during the pandemic. But in fact, you know, this tool is a combination of platform technology and human connection, and you need it as much or more as we move into the hybrid world, which is actually even harder than fully remote or fully in person. And, um, so I think that's the other epiphany with more recent epiphany is the importance of maintaining these kinds of programs as we move into this new hybrid work environment and bring people back. Yeah, well said. I think the, the world of work is actually more decentralized when we're hybrid, which makes relationships and proximity and all those things more. There's a bigger opportunity, but it's also more challenging. And where 10 KC can actually systematically create those in-person experiences as well as hybrid. And, uh, so it's a, we're we're really looking forward to the new world of hybrid as people bring people back to the office. Um, so I've, we, we have a slide up here, if anyone on, on the call, we actually have, uh, an opportunity for anyone that's joined this call or the recording to actually get a free 30 minute session with our, uh, solutions and strategy team. So feel free to scan the QR code, the QR code is back, uh, to be able to book one of these sessions to just get some of the best practices that you might be able to bring into your organization and, and learn more. Um, so while we're doing that, I just wanted to say a huge, uh, congratulations and thank you to Manisha and David. Uh, but thank you. You've both been a part of the 10 KC world since the beginning. You've seen us go from coffee matches to now all encompassing me mentoring, sponsorship, career development skills solution, and um, so you've seen this before. Many have. And just really appreciate your continued vision, support and, you know, challenge as well to help us continue to be the biggest diversity founded mentoring program in the world. Um, and, uh, congrats on everything that you've built, whether it's in the social impact organizations like Catalyst or Ascend or within your executive roles. So thank you, congrats, and really appreciate you joining us today. Thank you. Thanks so much.

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