Lean In

just submitting his section, Justin took the initiative to pull the group together and integrate all the ideas. I have been “mentoring” him ever since, which in his case means that I often turn to Justin to solve problems. This helps the company and creates ongoing opportunities for him.
    Getting the attention of a senior person with a virtuoso performance works, but it’s not the only way to get a mentor. I have seen lower-level employees nimbly grab a moment after a meeting or in the hall to ask advice from a respected and busy senior person. The exchange is casual and quick. After taking that advice, the would-be mentee follows up to offer thanks and then uses that opportunity to ask for more guidance. Without even realizing it, the senior person becomes involved and invested in the junior person’s career. The word “mentor” never needs to be uttered. The relationship is more important than the label.
    The label itself is open to interpretation. For years, I kept an eye on an enormously talented young woman on my team at Google and advised her each time she had a major decision to make. I never used the word “mentor,” but I invested a lot oftime in her development. So I was surprised one day when she stated flatly that she had “never had a mentor or anyone really looking out” for her. I asked what a mentor meant to her. She explained that it would be someone she spoke to for at least an hour every week. I smiled, thinking,
That’s not a mentor—that’s a therapist
.
    Few mentors have time for excessive hand-holding. Most are dealing with their own high-stress jobs. A mentee who is positive and prepared can be a bright spot in a day. For this same reason, mentees should avoid complaining excessively to a mentor. Using a mentor’s time to validate feelings may help psychologically, but it’s better to focus on specific problems with real solutions. Most people in the position to mentor are quite adept at problem solving. Give them a problem to solve. Sometimes high-potential women have a difficult time asking for help because they don’t want to appear stumped. Being unsure about how to proceed is the most natural feeling in the world. I feel that way all the time. Asking for input is not a sign of weakness but often the first step to finding a path forward.
    Mentoring and sponsoring relationships often form between individuals who have common interests or when the junior members remind the more senior members of themselves. 7 This means that men will often gravitate toward sponsoring younger men, with whom they connect more naturally. Since there are so many more men at the top of every industry, the proverbial old-boy network continues to flourish. And since there are already a reduced number of women in leadership roles, it is not possible for the junior women to get enough support unless senior men jump in too. We need to make male leaders aware of this shortage and encourage them to widen their circle.
    It’s wonderful when senior men mentor women. It’s even better when they champion and sponsor them. Any male leader who is serious about moving toward a more equal world can make this a priority and be part of the solution. It shouldbe a badge of honor for men to sponsor women. And since we know that different perspectives improve performance, companies should foster and reward this behavior.
    Of course, there are some tricky issues to be solved here, including the perceived sexual context of male-female relationships. Once during my Treasury years, Larry Summers and I traveled together to South Africa, where we holed up in the living room of his hotel suite to work on his speech on fiscal policy for the next day. Jet-lagged and oblivious to the time change, we suddenly noticed it was 3:00 a.m. We both knew it would look awful if anyone saw me leaving his hotel suite at that time. We discussed the options. Maybe he should check to see if anyone was in the hall? Then we realized we were stuck because there is no difference between trying not to be seen leaving someone’s hotel room late at night and
actually
leaving someone’s hotel room late at night. I strode into the (luckily) empty hall and made it to my room undetected.
    Junior women and senior men often avoid engaging in mentoring or sponsoring relationships out of fear of what others might think. A study published by the Center for Work-Life Policy and the
Harvard Business Review
reported that 64 percent of men at the level of