Female business leaders share mentoring views

Several female business leaders from throughout the Corridor shared their thoughts on the importance of mentoring programs, both in their own careers and within their current business operations. Jennifer Bennett President Shive-Hattery Architecture + Engineering Cedar Rapids Impactful mentors have been a key factor in Jennifer Bennett’s career success. Ms. Bennett, president of Shive-Hattery Architecture + Engineering in Cedar Rapids, said she was once asked how she succeeded in a high-pressure industry that has forced many other bright, competent women to leave the business altogether. “They asked what made the difference for me,” she said. “I think every woman wants to answer that question, ‘well, I got my position the same way everybody else did. I worked hard, I was driven and smart, I did what every other CEO or president has done.’ But then you have to address the question, what about all of these other women entering this industry who are equally bright and driven and curious and have all the leadership potential in the world, and they leave. I do think it was my early mentors who made the difference. I didn’t have trouble back 25 to 30 years ago, even in a very male-dominated culture, because I believe I had great mentors. “I don’t know that mentorship was as big of a thing back then, and I don’t know that it was intentional on their part,” she added. “It probably was, but I guess I didn’t appreciate it until I’m reflecting back and thinking, that really made a difference.” At Shive-Hattery, mentoring takes several forms, including a formal career coaching program that matches new employees with seasoned veterans. “Anyone that signs up for career coaching will meet with one of our directors that are higher level managers, but not their own (manager),” Ms. Bennett said. “It would be somebody from a different unit or somebody from corporate. That provides a different perspective outside of the culture of their office,  because every office has its own subculture. And it’s a perspective of somebody who’s probably well-connected to other people in the firm, so that they can help connect that person to people that they might not know already.” That philosophy behind mentoring extends to the entire company’s operations. “I think there are so many advantages to mentoring, regardless of the situation, whether it’s just a new employee or someone trying to navigate a culture that is different than their own,” she noted. “When we talk about mentoring our people here at Shive-Hattery, it manages our engagement. When we’ve got people who have a great relationship with someone else in the firm who can guide them through the early stages of what it means to be an engineer or architect, that provides better engagement for our people. It provides acceleration in their career path. It provides a challenge. “People with good mentors tend to be challenged more frequently, and we do a good job hiring people with curiosity and drive, and that needs to be fed,” she added. “So when we have a side-by-side mentorship, there’s the opportunity to constantly push and use that curiosity to learn. There’s some accountability there as well. And your mentor really becomes responsible for making sure that you are challenged and that you have new and different opportunities.” The mentoring relationship can also help women overcome preconceived notions about their potential, Ms. Bennett said. “We can get pigeonholed into doing the same thing over and over,” she said. “And then we feel like we don’t have a career path. That’s why I think mentoring and coaching tends to focus on the career path. ” Deb Worm Vice President F&M Bank, Cedar Rapids For Deb Worm, mentorship extends well beyond the walls of F&M Bank — and well beyond the professional world as well. F&M has long sponsored the Women in Business luncheon series, drawing hundreds to events that offer free-flowing opportunities for networking and personal interaction. Then in the fall of 2018, that program was extended to a younger generation through Leaders Who Lunch, a collaboration with the Kenwood Leadership Academy in Cedar Rapids. The program was launched, Ms. Worm said, after several female Kenwood students came to school for a “Dress as a Leader Day” wearing men’s suits and ties. “Their teacher (Elizabeth Callahan) asked, ‘Do they not see females as leaders? I wonder why they didn’t dress as a female leader.’” Ms. Callahan was then referred to Ms. Worm to inquire about a mentoring program matching Kenwood students with professional women for one-on-one, informal lunch meetings. Ms. Worm reached out to her professional network and 80 local women quickly agreed to participate. “They saw value in teaching young students, from first to fifth grade, that there are no limits to what you can do,” she said. “There should be no traditional and non-traditional roles for women in professional careers. We were able to get women from all walks of professional life to show these girls, you can be a doctor, you can be a construction worker, you can manage a construction company. We wanted to show these young women that you really can do anything that you want and to say to them, ‘here’s what I face for challenges, here’s what I like about my job and here’s what’s really difficult for me.’” Program participants were even invited to the annual conference of Women Lead Change. “There were 1,200 professional women in the room, and these young girls got up on stage and told these women why Leaders Who Lunch was valuable to them,” Ms. Worm said. “It was quite a thing to see these girls grab a microphone and talk to that large group.” Leaders Who Lunch was so successful, Ms. Worm said, that Franklin Covey, the globally recognized leadership organization, created a video to document it. The program was put on hiatus for the 2019-2020 school year due to COVID-19, but Ms. Worm said she’s reached out to Kenwood about reinstituting it this fall. F&M also has a robust mentoring program, both for employees and in the community at large. Ms. Worm said she values those efforts highly, especially as they reinforce both formal and informal relationships between women. “I do believe that there is a lot of value and natural interaction when it comes to women mentoring other women,” she said. “I think it’s easier for me to admit to a female colleague that maybe I have a weakness or that this is my goal. Sometimes it’s just a more safe space than if I would go to a male colleague. Part of that is perhaps the culture we’re brought up in, but in my experience, women are very comfortable taking mentoring from other women and mentoring other women.” For Ms. Worm, the structure of mentoring is less important than the results. “You don’t have to be a formal mentor to mentor,” she said. “A lot of people, and I’ll say women especially, mentor on a daily basis, and it’s not part of a formal program. I think that’s really important to remember.” Sandy Steil Project Manager Iowa City The term “mentoring” can mean different things to different people. For Sandy Steil, it means teaching independence. By day, Ms. Steil is a project manager in Iowa City. But her mentoring efforts reach well beyond the company’s operations. In January 2020, Ms. Steil launched a project called the Home Improvement Confidence Course for Women. The program’s initial run spanned 12 weeks and focused on teaching participants some “basic and not so basic” home construction projects — skills that Ms. Steil found many women were lacking. “A lot of women weren’t exposed to this growing up, and they’re scared to even try,” Ms. Steil said. “But remodeling and doing trim work and upgrading your home — it doesn’t take brute strength. You just need the confidence to try and learn.” Ms. Steil said she got the idea for the course from an interaction with her father in 2017. “I didn’t know how to fix the front steps on my house, and my dad had to come down and fix them,” she said. “It was hot, and things weren’t working, and he just got mad at me and said, ‘When are you going to get a husband?’” At the same time, Ms. Steil said, she was working with Dick Schwab as he developed his 132-acre property along Sugar Bottom Road in Iowa City, just before the land was acquired by the Johnson County Conservation Department for public use. “(Mr. Schwab) came from a corporate background and then at 50 years old decided he was going to learn how to do woodworking and building,” she said. “And I had also become friends at the time with Amy Pretorius (of Elevation Home Builders), so these two things were happening at the same time in my life. Amy was the first woman I had ever met that was like me. She looked like a Barbie doll, but she knew how to build. And what that said to me was, it’s okay if you like nail polish and makeup, but still want to know how to build. And I put the two together and it was kind of a perfect mix, because getting married didn’t seem like a good solution, and I needed to learn how to do these things.” Ms. Steil took courses at Kirkwood Community College for basic skills, worked with the Iowa Valley Habitat for Humanity to locate a home in need of renovations, and the class was born. Nearly 50 women expressed initial interest but she “weaned it down” to 18 for practical purposes. The project involved a range of tasks from replacing all the floors, trim, and doors to electrical work, kitchen renovations and installing a new bathroom. “It was all the things that you would want to do if you bought a house,” Ms. Steil said. “And that gets into the bigger picture. In Iowa City, housing is so expensive, and the only house that most women are going to be able to afford is probably going to need a little work. But a lot of these women would walk in and think, ‘I can’t handle this, I don’t know how to do anything.’ Ms. Steil said the City of Iowa City, Kirkwood and the Greater Iowa City Home Builders Association are interested in adopting the class as a tool to teach women. She also said she sees herself as a mentor in this realm, because not only does her course teach women basic home improvement, it may provide a window to career opportunities. Jen Neumann Owner/CEO de Novo Marketing Mentorship is part of the company DNA at de Novo Marketing. Owner/CEO Jen Neumann said both she and her team members have frequently participated in formal mentoring through the Women in Business program. “That’s been a really great partnership,” she said. “But even internally, the way we approach management is one of mentoring and empowerment, making sure that we are developing a culture of learning and support at all times across our team, which really has been an interesting change over the past couple of years. “In a way, it’s been kind of hard for me,” she noted. “I now work with four direct reports instead of 14 or 18. But that really allows me to be much more focused on their individual needs. And I encourage all my staff, if they don’t have an internal mentor here, or they need a mentor because of their specific training, to take advantage of that. When I was starting my career, I know I didn’t have formal mentorships. But I really did gravitate toward people who supported me and helped guide and shape my career.” In Ms. Neumann’s case, mentors have emerged from all walks of life. “Whether it’s conscious or not, women tend to be a little bit more open to being mentored and seeking a mentor than I have found men to be,” she said. “And I’ve found several women willing to be a big support to me or other women in their career. But having said that, I have several professional support relationships, even with men, who are further in their careers than me, and some in parallel ways to me, that I find to be very supportive of me and very supportive of men, too. And honestly, if you only seek out people who might have similar experiences, you’re probably missing a big part of the picture.” In general, women are often seen as more relational in their business interactions, while men are seen as more transactional. Ms. Neumann, however, said she doesn’t always see those differences. “I’ve seen that work both ways,” she said. “Over the last 10 years, I have seen men’s leadership change a lot, and a lot of people are understanding that approaching things in a more relational way is not a sign of weakness, that it builds really strong teams. This is why gender diversity is really important, and while right now, we’re probably about two-thirds female (de Novo employees), I want to stay in balance. I want to make sure that I never completely lose control of that, because all viewpoints are important. Among the team-first programs at de Novo is Skillshare, which involves team members providing information on areas of expertise to each other in a communal setting. It’s a prime example of how mentoring can move in all directions especially between newer and long-term employees, Ms. Neumann said. “We were just talking about how work expectations have changed so much from when some of us of a certain age came into the workforce,” she said. “There are things that people can now say to their supervisor, to express how they really feel. Had I done something like that in my 20s, I might have not been afforded some of the opportunities I’ve had. It’s just changed, and it’s acceptable, and frankly it should have been all along. People are humans, and with newer generations coming into our workforce, we’re learning that it’s not a vulnerability to talk about an issue they’re having.” Susie Makinster Vice President Five Rings Financial Cedar Rapids As Susie Makinster sees it, mentoring is less about the nuts and bolts of insurance and financial advising and more about the development of personal and professional relationships to nurture success. Ms. Makinster, vice president of Five Rings Financial’s Cedar Rapids agency, said the company utilizes mentors for incoming agents throughout the company’s operations, but noted the terminology is slightly different. “Our company is quite different than most insurance companies,” Ms. Makinster said. “We have a formal process that we call a field trainer. And right now, we’re at 63% women agents, which is unusual for this industry. Our president and CEO is very mindful about supporting women and that women would rather work with another woman, as far as their financial information and insurance needs. And we know that right now in this country, about 50% of all women in America are divorced or single, so we know there are more women out there alone, and we want to support them.” New agents have a field trainer with them during their first few meetings with a new client, Ms. Makinster said. “They sit and listen, then they’ll get to a point where they can do more things on their own,” she noted. “We have people that have been with the company since the beginning of time that will continue to use a mentor or someone else in our organization, because they feel they might be a better fit for the person to work with.” Five Rings also sponsors a program called “Wine, Women and Wealth,” focused on expanding financial knowledge for the company’s female clients and preparing them for potential career leadership roles. “It’s part financial education and part women’s night out,” Ms. Makinster said. “It’s a good way to learn what’s out there. It’s not taught in school how to manage your money, so most people do what their parents did. And there’s so many more opportunities out there now besides the stock market, so you can put your money someplace and it’ll either go up or go sideways — you won’t ever lose money.” As Ms. Makinster describes it, Five Rings agents are constantly encouraged to learn from each other, regardless of career tenure. “We have a proven model that’s worked for over 30 years,” she said. “There are people that will get up during our training and say, ‘I thought I had a better way of doing it, but it didn’t work.’ And it’s because they aren’t doing what the model says. It’s like a greatest chocolate chip cookie recipe, and as long as you follow the model you can be successful. And there’s always somebody there to help you. You never feel like you’re alone, even if you’ve been in the business for 30 years.” Through years of working with groups like the Professional Women’s Network and Toastmasters, Ms. Makinster says she’s become comfortable with working with peers for mutual support and success, particularly in a field that’s traditionally been dominated by men. “We’ve come a long way since I went to college,” she said. “The choices you had were to be a teacher or hairstylist or get married and have kids. I didn’t want to do any of that. There are so many more opportunities now, and there’s more than one way to go. I would tell women: Don’t take your foot off the gas.”

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