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.”

The role of mentors

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.

Sky Behrens, a Regional F&I Manager and F.A.S.T. Co-chair, explained how one of her mentors helped her find a new and far more productive method in her work. “My second F.A.S.T. mentor taught me to always find the ‘why,’ whether in a training situation, working with a current dealer, or time with a prospective dealer customer,” Behrens said. “Understanding the reason behind a situation helped shift my approach from ‘I’m telling you’ to ‘Now I understand.’ It helped me become more consultative, dynamic and effective in closing new business.”

Mentorship in a successful program is not a one-way street, either. “I think if you asked anyone involved with F.A.S.T., nearly every person would agree that the mentors take away as much, if not more, than the associates do,” said Kerry O'Sullivan, Regional F&I Manager, who co-chairs a F.A.S.T. initiative to give less experienced leaders an opportunity to learn from seasoned manager-mentors.

Todd Kaminski, Zurich’s President of Direct Markets, helped launch F.A.S.T. and he remains very involved with the program. He reinforced what O’Sullivan said about the mutual value of mentorship.

“Mentors are getting different perspectives…new perspectives,” Kaminski said. “And somebody who’s newer to the company, who’s been through a more recent training that you haven’t gone through in maybe a decade; they’re coming in and funneling those ideas back to the mentor, which can help sharpen skills. The associates can help bring the basics back into your world to help you deliver.”

Building a strong business team

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.

“Perspective and camaraderie are invaluable,” said Behrens. “Being able to connect with others, learn new approaches, and exchange ideas is really what the program is all about.”

Mike Carbonneau, a Regional F&I Manager who is co-chair along with O'Sullivan on the manager-mentor initiative, added that the program has had a positive effect in introducing Zurich’s culture to new hires.

“As a manager and a leader of a sales team, the most important thing we do is build and develop the team — identifying talent, acquiring talent, bringing people into the organization,” explained Carbonneau. “And F.A.S.T. is a logical extension of that.”

Though the program’s work is internal, Kaminski emphasized that its positive effects ultimately benefit the dealerships we work with.

“Our job is to serve our customers,” he said. “And if you’re better at that because of having a mentor — having been a part of the F.A.S.T. program — then the customer wins.”

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.