Insights

My lessons mentoring agency people

Most of my agency clients know me for my Commercial workshops (Negotiating and Selling as a Trusted Adviser). Over the past few years, I’ve been asked to mentor a variety of different agency people, some in quite challenging situations.

For example:
An agency CEO on helping prepare their agency to sell.
A senior agency director setting up an agency office in Asia. 
A business director on a global client trying to get 22 different agency country offices to all move in the same direction. (Harder than you might think!)
A newly promoted agency MD.
A newly promoted client services director.

What’s the difference between coaching and mentoring?

• Mentoring uses the mentor’s personal and business experience whereby a solution is either arrived at by discussion or by guidance.
  
• Coaching is professional and personal development to develop strategies. often by questioning to allow the coachee to arrive at a solution.

There are overlaps between the two. Both are focused on the individual’s development – the relationship and trust are vital. Both are goal orientated, organisationally aligned and focused on improvement.

My focus is on mentoring senior agency directors and agency owners. I was delighted to recently receive this message from an agency client CEO:

“…we’ve had our best year yet at the PC Agency in terms of profitability, and there is no doubt your previous team training and mentoring has helped to make such a difference!”

What have I learnt as a mentor?

1. The change required to substantially improve an agency’s profitability, success and direction can be hard for the senior team to embrace. There can be a tendency to cling to the old strategies, techniques and beliefs, whether they worked previously or not. We are creatures of habit and those habits aren’t always the right way forward.
   
2. Often very senior agency people have few people they can get independent and objective advice from. Having an independent perspective enables me, the mentor, to provide objective solutions and suggestions that sometimes are hard for the individual mentee to see. The answer can be hidden in plain sight. With distance can come perspective.
   
3. Several of my mentees have told me they are so busy ‘delivering’ they don’t get the opportunity to stop, reflect and think about how they should move the business forward. It’s the classic case of ‘working in the business rather than on the business’. One described our time together as provided a ‘decompression’ time to really think about fundamental business decisions.
   
4. ‘Business problems’ are rarely just business problems. Generally there are ‘people problems’ involved! This adds an extra layer of complexity. Managing people is one of the hardest tasks in an agency. Achieving a motivated engaged smart team isn’t easy. Recruiting and retaining great people is critical.
   
5. The end solution isn’t always what was envisaged at the start of the mentoring engagement. Other factors come out in the discussion. It is common for a change in ‘course direction’ to take place as the mentoring process can be iterative as new information arises or things change.
   
6. Conversations are so important and powerful. Not just between the mentor and mentee but often conversations between the mentee and their colleagues and their team. I found this fascinating helping mentees plan and guide their conversations. Sometimes a conversation, an idea, a question to a mentee can fundamentally change someone’s life. (I’ve had individuals contact me, sometimes years later, talking about how their life/work had adjusted direction, positively).
   
7. Bosses don’t always realise the impact they have on their people’s lives and thinking. Many years ago I remember being told “how you come into the office in the morning is how your people go home in the evening”
   
8. After a lifetime working in agencies and working with agencies, I still don’t have all the answers! But that’s fine. Having worked with over 180 agencies I can provide real examples of what I’ve seen does and does not work.

Is mentoring right for you or your agency?

A review and discussion to align your plans to grow and improve your agency for 2025 and beyond might be useful for you. A fresh perspective could be very productive. If you are a senior director in an agency and want to have a 30 minute complimentary personal consultation then let’s book in a time. The complimentary session could help identify new strategies, some key opportunities, suggest some ways to overcome a challenge or problem and help you decide if mentoring is right for you and your agency.