Latest / The Career Mentor Podcast with Fexingo: Finding Mentors, Sponsors, and Career Advisors / Finding a Mentor When You Are a Senior Leader
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a quiet crisis that hits a lot of senior leaders around year three of a big role. You've mastered the technical side, you know the politics, you have a board that trusts you — and suddenly you realize you have no one to talk to who's been where you are. Luna: Yeah, the loneliness of the C-suite is a real thing. But isn't that just because there are fewer people above you? Lucas: Exactly. The traditional mentor model assumes someone older and more experienced who's happy to share their wisdom. But when you're a senior vice president or a CFO, the pool of people above you shrinks to maybe two or three — and often they're your own CEO or board members, which complicates things. You can't be fully vulnerable with someone who signs your compensation. Luna: Right. And you definitely don't want them to see your weak spots if they're evaluating you for a promotion. Lucas: So the question this episode answers is: where do senior leaders find mentors when traditional upward mentoring isn't available? And I think the answer is surprising — you look sideways, and sometimes even down. Luna: Before we get into that — and of course we will — I want to say something. If today's conversation helps you think about your own mentorship situation, or if you've ever found yourself in that lonely senior seat and wished you had someone to talk to, honestly, if it was worth a coffee to you, that's the link. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: And that kind of listener support is what keeps this show ad-free and allows us to dig into specific, practical topics like this one. So, thank you. Now, let's talk about what a senior leader's mentor actually looks like. Luna: Who's your case study today? Lucas: I want to talk about a chief financial officer at a Fortune 500 industrial company — I won't name her because she's not public about this in a formal way, but I know her story through a mutual contact. She took the job about four years ago, and within eighteen months she felt like she was hitting a wall. The technical side of the role — capital structure, treasury, investor relations — she had that down cold. But the political dimension of being at the executive table, the strategic influence piece, that was new. Luna: And she couldn't go to her CEO and say 'I'm struggling with how to influence the board.' Lucas: Exactly. So she did something unconventional. She reached out to the CFO of a major healthcare company — completely different industry, no competitive overlap — and asked if they could have a monthly call. That person became her mentor. And this mentor wasn't older or more experienced in a traditional sense — they were actually about the same age, same career stage, but they had been in the role longer and brought a completely different sector perspective. Luna: So it was a peer mentor, but from outside her world. I love that. What did she get out of it that she couldn't get from her internal network? Lucas: Three specific things. First, a safe space to talk about board dynamics without worrying about leaking back. Second, a different playbook — healthcare companies deal with regulators very differently than industrials do, and some of those tactics translated. Third, and most important, the mentor challenged her assumptions. The CFO told me the best piece of advice she got was: 'Stop trying to be the smartest person in the room. Your job is to make the CEO look smart, not to prove you're right.' That reframing changed how she presented to the board. Luna: That's a fantastic insight. And it's the kind of thing you'd never get from a mentor who's in the same industry because they'd assume the same playbook applies. Lucas: Right. So the first big idea for senior leaders is: look laterally, not upward. Find peers in adjacent or even distant industries who are one to two years ahead of you in a similar role. They understand the context but bring fresh patterns. Luna: But what about the 'looking down' part you mentioned earlier? That sounds like reverse mentoring. Lucas: It is. And I think it's underused at the senior level. Here's a concrete example: a chief marketing officer I know realized she was out of touch with how younger consumers discover brands. So she found a mentor who was a 28-year-old brand manager two levels below her. They met every two weeks. The younger person taught her about TikTok culture, about community-driven brand building, about why authenticity matters more than production value. Luna: And what did the younger person get out of it? Lucas: Visibility, strategic exposure, and a sponsor. The CMO ended up championing that brand manager for a high-profile project. So it was a genuine two-way relationship. That's the key — reverse mentoring works when both sides are clear about what they're giving and receiving. Luna: It's almost like a sponsorship agreement wrapped inside a mentoring relationship. Lucas: Exactly. And that brings up a distinction I want to make. At the senior level, you need three different kinds of relationships, and people often confuse them. You need a mentor — someone who gives you advice and perspective. You need a sponsor — someone with power who advocates for you when you're not in the room. And you need an advisor — someone who gives you domain-specific expertise. A single person rarely plays all three roles well. Luna: So for a senior leader, the mentor is the lateral peer, the sponsor is likely a board member or a senior executive in another company, and the advisor might be a consultant or a former colleague with deep functional knowledge. Lucas: That's exactly the framework. And I think a lot of senior leaders burn out because they try to get all three from their boss or from one external person. It's not realistic. Luna: Let me ask the obvious question: how do you actually find a lateral mentor when you're a senior leader? You can't exactly go on LinkedIn and search 'CFO mentors wanted'. Lucas: No, you can't. But there are two reliable channels. One is executive education programs. Many business schools run leadership programs for senior executives, and those cohorts are goldmines for peer mentoring. The CFO I mentioned found her mentor through a Harvard Business School executive program. They were in the same cohort, hit it off, and kept the relationship going. Luna: And the other channel? Lucas: Industry associations and board networks. If you serve on a nonprofit board or join a peer advisory group like Vistage or YPO, you're immediately surrounded by people at your level from different industries. The structure creates the trust that makes mentoring possible. Luna: So it's not about cold-emailing someone impressive. It's about putting yourself in environments where peer mentoring naturally occurs. Lucas: Exactly. And there's one more tactic I want to mention because it's counterintuitive. Sometimes the best mentor for a senior leader is someone who's currently a step behind them but on a rapid trajectory. Not as a reverse mentor, but as a genuine peer who happens to be younger. I've seen several successful CEOs in their fifties who have close mentoring relationships with CEOs in their thirties from different sectors. Luna: What does the older person get from that? I would think the younger person gets more obvious benefit. Lucas: Fresh energy and a different risk appetite. One CEO told me his younger mentor pushes him to move faster, to take more calculated risks, to embrace new technology. The older CEO brings stability and pattern recognition. It's a reciprocal relationship where both feel they're learning. Luna: So the key is to drop the assumption that a mentor has to be older and more experienced. At the senior level, the best mentor might be your peer, someone in a different industry, or even someone younger who sees the world differently. Lucas: Exactly. And I'll leave you with this thought. If you're a senior leader feeling isolated, the problem isn't that there are no mentors available. It's that you're looking in the wrong direction. Look sideways, look down, look outside your industry. The mentor you need probably isn't above you at all. Luna: And if you're not a senior leader yet, this is a great preview. Because the relationships you build now — the lateral ones, the ones across functions — those are the ones that will sustain you when your title changes. Lucas: That's a perfect way to wrap it. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with another episode of The Career Mentor Podcast.