CEOs Need Mentors Too

The authors have conducted a two-year study of how new CEOs in large organizations gain access to seasoned counsel and feedback. Although these leaders have usually experienced mentoring earlier in their careers, arrival at the top suddenly narrows the available and appropriate options. To keep raising their game—and having their thinking usefully challenged—CEOs need wise mentoring. They’re finding it, the authors learned, by turning to high-profile veteran leaders from outside their companies. But these arrangements have some tricky aspects: Special considerations must go into matching mentor and mentee, structuring their sessions to deliver the intended benefits, and prioritizing the process so that it isn’t crowded out by other demands. Total confidentiality is an absolute necessity—as are regular meetings—and storytelling is the mode of knowledge sharing both parties usually prefer. “Most interesting to us,” the authors write, “was the psychological boost that mentors’ war stories seemed to give new CEOs.”

HBR Reprint R1504J