How To Be A Good Mentor for First-Time Diverse Founders
If you want to be a good mentor, it is incredibly important to understand the diverse founder as a whole person. Whether it is outside commitments, cultural considerations, or community support, under-represented founders have an uphill climb in the “traditional” startup world.
Acknowledging The Power Of Perceived Authority
Many cultures teach young women to “do as they are told”, and to respect their elders, teachers, or people with authority. This causes the women to feel that they need to do whatever a mentor tells them to do, when in most cases, the mentor may have little or no experience in that specific business/sector. This perceived authority and associated advice can lead founders to trust without understanding the underlying assumptions or biases a mentor has. It is important for mentors to be self-aware and acknowledge to the founder that your advice is based on your own personal experience and that they, as the founder, know the details of their business better than anyone.
Understanding Cultural Differences
To be a successful mentor, you need to consider where the founder came from, what their cultural teachings are like, and where the challenges are, present and past. Often times, entrepreneurship goes against what they were taught, giving up a life of stable income. There may be a lack of support from friends and family, and confidence is often an issue. In that case, having someone in their corner that believes they can succeed at whatever their dream is, can be more important to the success of the business than actual business advice.
Understanding a founder, where they came from, challenges they have faced and conquered, past traumas, and how to build the founder’s confidence, are key components of empowering a founder with impostor syndrome to push forward and execute.
A successful mentor sometimes holds the key to a startup network that a diverse founder was not born in, teaching simple things like email etiquette to often complex discussions when talking to investors. A successful mentor is a non-judgmental sounding board where the Founder can feel safe to be transparent, make mistakes, and grow.
Providing Psychological Safety
Mentors need to understand that first-time diverse founders are often afraid to make mistakes. For fear of being wrong, they often don’t tell the whole story, even though their plans are well thought out and well researched. It may be helpful to ask open questions like “tell me more” so that mentors can dig deeper to understand whether decisions were based on fear, or limiting beliefs. Teaching founders that mistakes are just opportunities to learn and grow can be incredibly empowering.
Mentors should also understand that the under-represented founders (especially females) often have the job of caregiving of elderly parents and children on top of their work at the startup. There needs to be an understanding that not every startup starts from an Ivy League University dorm room. Being flexible on scheduling meetings around childcare, supporting self care and founder mental health are simple but impactful ways to provide psychological safety and avoid burnout.
From my experience, once a founder has a good footing and feels accepted by the startup community and are confident of their skill sets, that is when you’ll see a founder make huge strides. It often does not take much, just an understanding that they are supported, they have a community in which they belong, and that it is ok to make mistakes.
Through mentoring, you will learn about yourself, your own cultural competence, hone your listening skills and give back to your community. The ultimate reward of mentoring is when you see founders move forward in the world with confidence, resurfacing in the news with all the great things they’ve accomplished, and all the people they’ve impacted through their businesses.
That is when you know that you were a successful mentor.
