“A mentor from another walk of life or industry can look at things more holistically”

Kevin Lennon learned there’s an art to knowing how to listen – and when to talk, on the 30% Club Cross-Company Mentor programme.

Two things surprised me when I joined the 30% Club cross-company mentoring programme, three years ago: the first was how professionally it's run [by Moving Ahead]. It was just so motivating and inspiring to go to presentations and seminars and hear high-powered women talk about how they had succeeded. The other is how much I've matured and what I've learned from the programme about myself.

Before I joined, I undervalued my experiences both personally and professionally. I never had a mentor. I did get good advice from line managers, but it tended to be focused on the specific job I was doing. However, when I look back now, I've had a fantastic career – and a lot of that was through my own personal drive.

My journey is quite unusual too, compared to most people in the finance industry, who come from top tier universities. I left college at the age of 18; my first job was at NatWest stuffing bank statements into envelopes. My salary was £3,300. That’s per annum.

I'm now Managing Director and Co-Global Head of Credit Research at Alcentra, a small boutique firm of credit and private debt managers I joined in 2002. Well, maybe not so small: we manage $43bn of assets under management. So it's fairly sizeable and we're large within our niche markets.

I’ve also been a sports coach for 12 years, for kids aged six to 18; during which time I learned a lot about how to manage people and deal with certain situations. Being a coach has made me a better manager at work and I think it's made me a better mentor because it's given me more life experiences.

Different experiences

The matching process is super interesting. There’s always going to be an expectation as you go into it: if I'm meeting someone from another company, or from another industry, how is this going to work? But actually, it’s great to have mentors that come in with completely different experiences. Line managers can often get dragged into the details, whereas a mentor from another walk of life or industry can look at things more holistically: new innovative ideas that will feel like 'lightbulb moments' for mentees.

I’ve also learned there’s an art to knowing how to listen and when to talk. You don’t always have to solve the problem for the mentee, but you can lead them down the right path, to see if they can solve the problem. You also have to know when to step in with some advice.

The elevation you’ll see in people within your company who join the programme will amaze you. And it won't just be the mentor and mentee that benefit. it will rub off on others around them – something I've seen in my own company.

And the support Moving Ahead provides to mentors and mentees in the programme is exceptional. It's something that exceeded my expectations through a combination of what they provide through their website, newsletters, seminars, and the amazing speakers that appear in the Moving Ahead Summit Series. The most inspirational Summit speaker I’ve watched was Dolly Chugh, author of The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias. It blew me away. Chugh talks and writes about white privilege. I read lots of books and can't remember reading something that's opened my eyes so much and made me grow more as an all-round person.

Opening doors

Diversity, to me, comes in all forms of life. It’s gender, it's cultural, it's sexuality, it's the different experiences that people bring to the table. The most successful teams I’ve built have also been the most diverse. We need to understand how people who have come from different backgrounds have also had different challenges along the way. We need to open those doors, so everyone feels comfortable, whether they’re walking into an office, a shop, or in front of a camera. We need to treat people as humans.

It’s so important to have people who believe in you. I was very fortunate that in a previous role, I made the right impression on somebody I was working with. When she got approached to join another firm, she only agreed to join if I could come with her.

If a company wants to sign up for the cross-company mentoring programme, then my advice is: jump right in. You will not regret it. You will not look back.

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