Leadership Lounge: Staying Sharp at the Top—How CEOs Can Use Mentors to Sustain Performance

You’ve reached the CEO role. Your experience and track record got you there, but reaching the top doesn’t mean your development is complete. The role will inevitably present situations you haven’t encountered before. You may be navigating a difficult board relationship, making consequential calls about your top team, leading a transformation, or weighing decisions where there is no obvious right answer. At the same time, the number of people you can speak to with complete candor has narrowed considerably.

That combination can make continued development both more important and harder to access.

A mentor can give you an independent place to test your thinking, challenge your assumptions, and explore difficult questions without the organizational consequences that can come with having those conversations internally.

Why do few CEOs have mentors once they’re in the role?

Suzanne Bose-Mallick, Leadership Advisor, RRA: On one level, there's a perception that you should have all the answers because you’re the CEO. And the idea that you may need any improvement, development, or acceleration from that point is seen as remedial. Whereas I would make the argument that this is an opportunity for new CEOs to reach their potential faster.

What challenges can a mentor help you navigate as CEO?

Suzanne Bose-Mallick, Leadership Advisor, RRA: One area where a mentor can really help with is building a productive relationship your board. Around 25% of a new CEO's time can be spent dealing with board matters, which I think comes as a surprise to most CEOs.

When I speak with CEOs about their relationship with the board, I like to explain it as the CEO is the person sitting at the center of the hourglass, with the board in the V above and the organization in the V leading down from the center of that hourglass. Your role as CEO is to figure out how to translate the messages to and from the board and translate that into operational delivery in the organization and through the top team. An executive mentor is someone who can help with that.

What’s the difference between the mentorship you receive from your board chair versus an external mentor?

Suzanne Bose-Mallick, Leadership Advisor, RRA: The first thing to think about is the agenda of the chair and the agenda of the mentor. They both hold the interests of the organization as very important. But for the chair, that's their ultimate priority. Whereas in these conversations, the external mentor is invested in the development of the CEO and their progression.

We already ask so much of the chair. To expect them to be incredibly capable at developing the CEO as well as everything else is a heavy burden. A mentor can actually decrease the pressure on the chair and provide greater balance.

Ultimately, the chair is the CEO's boss. And if you're lucky, your boss is also a great mentor, but it's a different relationship to someone who is independent of your ecosystem. An external mentor allows the CEO to have consequence-free conversations. I don't mean consequence-free as in that they're frivolous. I mean consequence-free as they're not reported back.

How do you know when a mentoring relationship has run its course?

Suzanne Bose-Mallick, Leadership Advisor, RRA: Often it’s when the relationship is either not challenging you enough, or it has become too transactional. It’s common to outgrow your mentor. It may be that after a certain period of time, or because of a structural change in your organization or your situation around you, a different mentor might be more relevant.

About the author

Suzanne Bose-Mallick is a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates and leads the Russell Reynolds Mentor Program for Europe. She is based in London.