For most business owners, the entrepreneurial journey is full of challenges, but the experience is very rewarding. There are moments when they hit an obstacle or arrive at some crossroads along the way. Having someone to guide them can be a huge help in leading them where they want to go. And that’s what mentorship does.
“It's been the biggest game-changer for me,” said EO Member and Davidson Technology Consulting Director Gary Lorden regarding the EO Mentorship Program. He continued, “It has provided me with a lot of value around growth. It has added an even further challenge on how I approach things and look at things in terms of connecting the key rocks in my life.”
Gary is grateful to have as his mentor in this program Greg Tucker, former CEO of Maurice Blackburn Lawyers and Chair of Claims Funding Australia and now Non-Executive Director of Thompsons Solicitors LLP, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network.
Mentor Greg Tucker and Mentee Gary Lorden.
Having the right match of mentor
Although Gary admitted that he wasn’t open at first to join the program because he had a mentor at that time. He was thankful that EO Melbourne Mentorship Chair James Murray never gave up on inviting him to take part in the program. “James persisted and followed up and said, ‘you'll be surprised with the different matches that you can get.’ I was certainly open to looking at how I could take the next step in my journey and luckily I got matched up with Greg from there, which was good,” he recalled.
Similarly, Greg was also convinced by James to be a mentor for the EO program. “I've mentored a fair bit in the past, both as a CEO of a big organisation, where I mentored people internally for years, and when I left that organisation in 2019, where I have mentored senior people in all sorts of walks of life, mostly in professional services.”
Having somewhat of a different setup now as a minority shareholder after a previous business transaction, Gary has been going through different challenges where he needs support, advice and guidance from someone articulate on shareholding, legalities, and the like. He then pointed out that Greg’s skills and experience fit the profile that he’s been looking for in a mentor. “There were a couple of things I highlighted. Greg has a strong background from his professional career in financial markets and shareholding, and he comes from the legal profession as well. On paper, we matched up from day one. I was really surprised, and it surpassed expectations around that alignment. Everything I asked for was pretty much matched up in the person that I was looking to be matched with,” shared Gary.
The beauty of the EO mentorship
With his experience on mentorship, what Greg finds special with the EO Mentorship Program is that “it provides a structure at the start so that both parties understand how to get going.”
Greg expounded, “My experience in mentoring is that once you've got that structure, you then take off where the mentee wants to go. You need a structure to start with, which EO does. There are regular check-ins, six-monthly or something, which is good because some mentoring relationships can go off the rails. I think having guard rails at the start of how you should begin it and then having check-ins is a really good idea. That's different from what I've experienced. Mostly it's been me. At the organisation I was at, we had our guidelines for establishing mentor-mentee relationships. So, I'm used to that. This is a little bit more structured. With Gary and I, we look at what the areas are, and then it's all about refining those and then doing whatever EO wants us to do in terms of reporting back and shaping the journey further.”
As for Gary, he sees mentorship as a way for him to be challenged and to grow. “From a mentee perspective, I want to be challenged. Ultimately, the success of it is that you feel like you've grown and matured in different ways. The journey is probably not where I expected it to necessarily go completely at the start, although I believe it will still cover all the initial goals and things I wanted to cover. It's probably encapsulated in different areas of my life around joining the dots, around how they all need to come together from a personal perspective – health, business, personal assets, and family. They’re all interconnected and we're bringing all these together. It’s probably a bigger journey, and it challenges my thinking around and approaches to things. It feels like I'm on that pathway of growing. Particularly with COVID, mentorship has helped me around how I'm supposed to be coping with that and progressing as well, which is good.”
Getting great value from the mentorship journey
Through mentorship, Gary was able to break down the various things in terms of the hats he wears professionally and personally. “In my business, I've got four different roles that we've identified and broken down. I need to understand how I'm performing in each of those roles separately and then how they interact together to get the best outcomes and the best interest of my business. I also need to have that approach around the hats I wear in my family, with my friends and in my business. I need to focus on them separately but also on them as they connect, which will ultimately give me the best outcome that will make sure that I’m happy and healthy and driving towards the goals that I want to do personally.”
Gary went on, “I talked about health and family and business and personal assets. We're building out to four quadrants, then understanding that they all impact each other around how you are personally. The success of one results in the success of another one, around how they're interconnected. So, by actually breaking them down, it has simplified things around how I view some key components in my life. But I also need to make sure that I'm focused on all of them individually to make everything work in the right direction. So, that's been real learning for me, around focusing on core areas of my life, both business and personal, and driving towards making them better.”
Yet, it’s not only Gary who reaps the benefits of mentorship. Greg acknowledges that he, too, is learning in this mentorship journey. “There's that learning part, which I think a mentor needs to have. If they’re interested in learning and listening, there are those, and then there's the giving back. Making that difference is rewarding that's why I mentor because of making a difference to someone. Then, there are the challenges along the way. In my life, I've always found it beneficial to be able to articulate or vent my challenges. Just doing that alone helps. Having trust in someone enough to articulate your challenges helps in itself, let alone anything that comes out of the discussion,” Greg noted.
Greg further added, “I certainly get something out of it. The learnings we tease out between each other in the sessions always give me insights into my own life. That's the value of it for the mentor. I guess a lot of people would ask, ‘why would you do it?’ But it's got value because it clarifies your way of thinking and gives you insights into your own life. That's a powerful way of providing a mirror to yourself like self-learning, and that's a learning in itself for me.”
Like Greg and Gary, you, too, might find the mentorship program a game-changer in your entrepreneurial journey or professional growth. If you’re interested to become a mentee or mentor in the upcoming EO Mentorship Program, apply now at https://www.eomelbourne.org/mentorship.