“I’m a white middle-class, middle-aged straight guy – and that means I don't know how most people experience the world”

Moving Ahead’s mentoring programme was a great learning opportunity – and hugely enjoyable, says mentor and Oliver Wyman consultancy partner Kent Valentine.

I was inspired to join the Moving Ahead scheme as a mentor by my Oliver Wyman colleague Rupal Kantaria. Rupal has done a lot of work articulating the benefits of diversity, inclusion, and belonging in business and has devised practical ways to improve them all, including founding Mission Include. 

Improving diversity, inclusion, and belonging is incredibly important to businesses and wider society. Plus, it’s the right thing to do. Even if you take an entirely ruthless approach to business, it still makes sense! The societies and markets companies operate in are hugely diverse, so drawing on an equally wide range of perspectives and experiences allows businesses to serve them better and more easily uncover new revenue opportunities. From a pragmatic business viewpoint, if you ignore diversity you’re missing out on a huge amount of talent and market intelligence.

NEW PERSPECTIVE

There were two reasons I wanted to be a mentor: first, I have a responsibility to sponsor and find opportunities for people who don't have my privileges. I want to help push against the status quo and mentoring is one way of doing that.  Second, being a straight, white man in business is an extremely common and narrow viewpoint. Through conversations with people from diverse backgrounds mentoring has widened my perspective on the world. It has helped me change my thinking and behaviours to better avoid biases. Both these outcomes from mentoring helps the entire business ecosystem become more inclusive and diverse.

The Moving Ahead scheme gives everyone involved lots of preparation, training, and support throughout. I did initially feel a bit daunted – what did I have to offer my mentee? Moving Ahead brought together the mentors and I realised I wasn’t alone in my worries. The support we received gave us more confidence and meant it was easier to relax into the first couple of sessions with our mentees.

MATCHING MAGIC

I don't know what kind of magic goes on behind the matching process, but it seems to work and it's been really helpful. For example, I'm in consulting and my first mentee works in finance. To begin with, she wondered out loud why we’d been put together! You could fill a football stadium with what I don’t know about finance – but it quickly became clear we had lots of overlaps.

The advantage of cross-company mentoring is that you get to view a different business culture. Workplace culture may be invisible to the people who are in it. But by mentoring or being mentored by people outside of that organisation, you get a richer perspective. It also helps unlock good ideas and expose bad ideas to sunlight.

I’ve been a mentor twice now. It’s taught me about listening to people in different and more deliberate ways and not jumping straight into solutions. And active listening is key. Mentoring is a different skill set and I had a lot to learn. You can be a great leader and communicator but still find mentoring difficult. That was certainly the case for me early on. I learned to keep an open mind about what kind of conversation was going to be valuable to my mentee, ditching any preconceived ideas of where we should get to. This ideas-sharing doesn’t stop at your mentoring meetings either. The structure of the scheme means you also hear from fantastic speakers and meet other mentors and mentees. 

INCLUSION MATTERS

From my Moving Ahead experience and conversations with Rupal, I’ve also started thinking more about the meaning of inclusion. To me, it’s about making sure everyone feels welcome and able to participate and progress – like “this is for me”. I'm in a position where I always assume it's for me, but everyone needs to feel like that. It’s not enough to offer an opportunity if you aren’t examining whether everyone can realistically access it, or whether you’ve created a welcoming environment, which could be cultural or practical.

One of the core barriers to diversity and inclusion is the accidental stuff – the biases we don't see. The Moving Ahead programme helps all involved think more consciously about these issues, which should help create a more diverse pipeline of talent and all the benefits that brings. It encourages conversations between groups of people that wouldn't necessarily otherwise have them. It’s incredibly beneficial, interesting, and enjoyable.

For more information click here or contact Maria.May@moving-ahead.org