How mentoring can help women get to the top in development

LONDON — Mentoring schemes are increasingly seen as a valuable tool to support women climbing the career ladder and address the enduring gender gap at the top of the international development sector, where men still dominate the majority of senior management positions. The recent spate of stories of sexual abuse and harassment emerging from the aid sector, as well as from other industries, also serves to reiterate that there is a long way to go before women are likely to feel equal in the workplace. But while women working in professional services firms often have access to formalized mentoring schemes, such as the 30 Percent Club, female development workers have fewer options. Some organizations do offer mentoring schemes — for example, Oxfam GB has been running a mentoring scheme specifically targeting women at the headquarter level for three years; while the Aspire Foundation connects mentors with a business background to aspiring female nonprofit leaders. However, there is currently no cross-organizational or cross-development mentoring option out there for women. The Women Working in Development networking group, which launched earlier this year, is working to address this. It recently hosted a session in London where speakers shared insights on how to find a mentor, how to get the best from a mentoring relationship, and how to run a successful mentoring scheme. The networking group, which meets quarterly, is jointly run by two development consultancies, BDO and Centre for Development Results. It was conceived of as a space for women in aid to convene “on issues of interest with inspiring women from across the sector,” according to Jessica Toale, executive director of CDR, who organized the event. The mentoring session was organized in response to strong demand from the group’s members, Toale said, adding that while important across all careers, mentoring is especially valuable for aid workers due to “the specific challenges of working in the development sector [such as] whether to take an overseas placement and balancing travel with personal life,” she said. Here are seven key takeaways. 1. The magic is in the matchmaking The Cherie Blair Foundation has been running a formal mentoring program to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries for the past six years and has to date built a community of 5,000 mentees and mentors from more than 100 countries, according to Allison Kahn, who coordinates the Mentoring Women in Business program. She said careful matching of mentors and mentees has been the key to the program’s success — “the magic is in the matching,” she said. Oxfam GB’s Catherine Kernohan runs a “bespoke mentoring scheme” as part of the organization’s women’s leadership program, launched three years ago. Kernohan said the scheme has received very positive feedback from staff and as a result will be relaunched later this year. Part of the success is down to the “hands-on” and “purposeful” way in which she and her team have been matching people. Would-be mentees are asked to fill in a form outlining what specifically they are looking for; mentors fill out a similar form about what they can offer; and they are matched from there. “We ask people to get very specific about what they might need as a woman in the workplace,” Kernohan said, explaining that this could cover anything from building and maintaining confidence as a leader, returning to work after maternity leave, or making flexible working hours work. While many of the elements mentees want help with are common to all sectors, some are more specific to the aid industry, she said, such as help with “working in cultural environments where women are not seen as equal as men,” the Oxfam adviser said. She also said that managing long work hours, travel schedules, and heavy workloads are all things that can disproportionately affect development workers. 2. A two-way street Finding good matches also means making sure the mentoring relationship is “a two-way street,” according to Kahn. It is crucial that the Cherie Blair Foundation’s mentors — who give up a few hours a month to coach their partners online — get as much out of the experience as the entrepreneurs they are helping. Evaluations of the program show that nearly all of the foundation’s mentors say they gained personal and professional benefits from the process. Eighty percent of the program’s mentees have gone on to mentor others, Kahn said. 3. Put aside time for planning Having found a mentor or mentee, it is important to put aside some time to plan the relationship, Kahn said, to ensure both parties get as much out of it as possible. “We have found that people have different definitions of mentoring,” she said. It is important to agree on definitions and talk about roles and expectations. If you find that you don’t see eye to eye with your designated mentor, don’t be afraid to move on, said Jo Gilbey, a partner at London-based business advisory firm BDO, which also does some donor-funded technical assistance work in developing countries. “Get to know your mentor early on and make sure you like and trust them, or it won’t work,” she said, adding that if it is not a good fit there is nothing wrong with moving on. “It’s really important to be brave about the person you’re matched with,” she added. 4. Look for mentors outside your usual sphere While organized mentorship schemes are a great resource, it is possible to find mentors through more informal channels, especially among women, according to Baroness Anne Jenkin, who co-founded Women2Win in 2005 — with Prime Minister Theresa May, before she took office — in a bid to increase the number of female Conservative politicians. Speaking at the networking lunch, Jenkin advised would-be mentees to make friends and seek advice from others, especially older people working in the sector. “A lot of this is about making friends and we [women] just do it automatically … We support each other and it’s really important,” she said. “I genuinely think if you ask people for advice they would love to give it,” she said, adding that older people especially like “to help young people on their journeys.” Women2Win is a voluntary mentorship program that matches both male and female MPs with up-and-coming female candidates. Since it started, the share of women MPs in the Conservative Party has risen from 9 percent to 21 percent. Jenkin, who is also co-founder of the Conservative Friends of International Development group, and a member of the House of Lords, said she hopes to increase this to 50 percent in the future. 5. Consider male mentors BDO’s Gilbey said working with male mentors can be a useful experience for women in the sector. “You work in the real world, and that means working with men and taking advice from men who are older than you and also giving advice to men younger,” she said, adding that “working in a women-only mentoring bubble … is not the way forward.” Furthermore, Baroness Jenkin said, in her experience running Women2Win, male MPs were often highly active on their mentees’ behalf, partly due to their “competitive instinct.” “You need to play to a man’s strengths. They are more competitive in a lot of cases and that helps the women they support,” she said. 6. Later career professionals need mentors too While the focus tends to be on older people mentoring those earlier in their careers, older women need mentoring too, according to Geraldine Murphy from international development consultancy Nathan Associates, who was in the audience during the event. “Once you’ve got to a senior position the expectation is you know how to do everything,” she said, but “it’s really important to say that mentoring isn’t just for women entering into the profession but for women at various levels,” she said. 7. Setting up a mentoring scheme doesn’t have to be expensive Gilbey, who runs a mentoring scheme at BDO, said it is possible to begin with something as simple as sending out an email asking for mentors and mentees and then matching them. “It doesn’t need to cost much,” she said, but it offers good value for money. “Mentoring programs are quite easy to set up,” she said, and while they “do need someone looking at it and taking feedback … in terms of costs versus benefits, I don’t think it can be beaten.” Kernohan said Oxfam has invested in online training manuals and other tools in order to help reduce the amount of time staff spend coordinating mentoring activities. While she acknowledged that the hands-on matchmaking her team did to help connect mentors and mentees proved very effective, it also took up a lot of time. Going forward, she said, she hopes the mentors and mentees will be able to lead the process, which could also make the system more flexible and responsive, she said.