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 of time 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.

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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
7
or when the junior members remind the more senior members of themselves. 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 should be a badge of honor for men to sponsor women. And のの
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