Mentorship: The personal path to building a better workforce

Anyone successful in any line of business can point to at least one person (and more likely several) who helped guide them in the early stages of their career and ride out the rocky moments: a mentor. Mentorship can be powerful. After all, who doesn’t benefit by learning from someone with experience and knowledge?

A Forbes article published last fall listed some key benefits of mentorship:¹

1. Boosting employee engagement and productivity.
2. Improving employee retention.
3. Building a culture of collaboration and sharing knowledge.
4. Developing high-performing employees and a leadership pipeline.
5. Building a healthy work environment.
6. Increasing company profitability.

Backing up the last point above is a recent study showing that the median profits for Fortune 500 companies with mentoring programs were more than twice as high as those without such programs.²

Yet, many mentorship programs within businesses fail or yield minimal results at best. So, what makes a mentorship program successful? There’s no single set of answers to that question, but Zurich’s Direct Markets team has benefitted from the development and growth of its F.A.S.T. mentorship program and some of the basic tenets of the program are universal and can certainly be applied to a dealership’s business operations.

Mandatory participation may be one strike against a budding mentorship program. Buffy Graham, Senior Organizational Strategist with Direct Markets, who is the F.A.S.T. Coordinator, noted that Zurich’s program is entirely voluntary and not overly regimented. There is a committee approach to pairings, considering the goals of prospective mentors and associates (or mentees). And, perhaps most importantly, the program is never used in job evaluations.

“No one is giving information for performance reviews,” explained Graham. “We want a trusting relationship for constructive career development.”

While mentors can be managers or supervisors, often the best are not tasked with training or managing the “newbie.” They are simply veteran colleagues who take an interest in seeing a fellow professional reach the full capacity of their abilities.

As Zurich North America CEO Kristof Terryn put it during a leadership panel discussion on mentorship, “Getting advice from somebody who is not your direct boss, but somebody who can actually look at your career and sometimes push you in a direction that you may not immediately see … that is a really good investment in terms of how you build out your own skills set.”

A productive mentorship program also focuses on the day-to-day duties of employees. It provides practical and detailed guidance.

“Successful mentors are there when needed to offer advice on different situations we experience in the field,” said Rob Reddish, National Account Executive and a current Co-Chair of Zurich’s F.A.S.T. program. Reddish remembered how that kind of advice led to an early career highlight for him.

“One of these conversations helped me overcome an objection before a proposal that helped me acquire a $300,000 account. Hearing that different point of view comes in handy all the time.”

Mentorship in a successful program is not a one-way street, either. Graham said in a successful program, “The mentors get as much out of the relationship as the associates. They learn as well. And a lot of them become lifelong friends.”

That dual-value relationship can be a powerful, personal way to build a strong business team, as any good team ultimately depends on the performance of each individual.

“The only thing that separates our company from our competition is our people,” said Richard J. Garber, President of Garber Automotive Group, during a guest speaker appearance at an event for Zurich’s F.A.S.T. program. “In order for us to win, we have to have the best people.”

Garber added that while good mentorship is always amicable, it needs to be deeper than just an affirmative pat on the back.

“I think the key to mentoring, the key to developing people is honesty,” he said. “Be honest with them about what your true assessment of their talent is. It can’t be all negative, but don’t sugarcoat things.”

In an era when workers are more selective than ever about where they work, mentorship can make a real difference in attracting and retaining the best and the brightest.

“Dealerships, like any business, want to keep their talented employees,” said Phil Rosu, Head of Sales for Direct Markets, who has also been involved with F.A.S.T. during his time with Zurich. “To that end, I think any dealer — and especially large dealership groups — should seriously consider having a mentorship program led by someone who’s passionate about its potential. If mentorship can help make employees better at their jobs faster and then, because of the success they enjoy, encourage them to stay with your team, what’s the downside?”

1. Reeves, Matthew. “6 Benefits Of Mentoring In The 2023 Workplace.” Forbes. 6 October 2023.
2. Cook, Sam. “40+ Definitive Mentorship Statistics and Research for 2024.” MentorcliQ. 2 February 2024.

This article was originally published in the Spring/Summer 2024 issue of Dealer Principal magazine.