Episode 64: The Ingredients of a Successful Mentoring Program with Lisa Fain

When creating something meaningful, you must have the right ingredients. In this week’s podcast, guest speaker Lisa Fain discusses how trust and inclusion are the most vital ingredients for a successful mentorship program within an organization.

Lisa Z. Fain is the CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence, an expert in mentoring and inclusion, a global speaker, and an executive coach. She works with organizations of all types and sizes to create more inclusive workplaces through mentoring.  A former employment attorney, Lisa was formerly senior director of the diversity and inclusion function at Outerwall Inc. (former parent company to automated retail giants Redbox and Coinstar). She lives in Seattle, WA.

• What constitutes mentoring and an excellent mentoring relationship
• The modalities of mentoring
• What a successful mentoring program looks like in an organization
• The four phases of a mentoring relationship within an organization
• The roles inclusion and trust play within a mentoring program
• The potential benefits of inclusion in the workplace
• How to measure inclusion within the organization
• Why trust is so important within an organization
• Why trust is vital within a mentoring program
• The four levels of trust needed within a mentoring program

• “Learning is the purpose, the product, and the process of mentoring.” — Lisa Fain
• “People can have mentors for a lifetime, but marking the end of a mentoring period doesn’t necessarily mean marking the end of a mentoring relationship.” — Lisa Fain
• “Inclusion is what you get when you leverage diversity. It’s about creating a place of belonging. It’s about creating a welcoming work environment where people feel seen and heard, and don’t have to spend their time worrying about whether they’re going to be accepted.” — Lisa Fain
• “Mentoring is a safety net, a sounding board, and a laboratory— and none of that happens without trust.” — Lisa Fain
• “The antidote to being stuck is creation.” — Lisa Fain

• An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust, The Academy of Management Review Vol. 20, No. 3 (Jul. 1995), pp. 709-734 (26 pages) 
• Or resources that
• Center for Mentoring Excellence: https://www.centerformentoring.com/ 
• Lisa Fain on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisazfain/ 

We provide every episode in audio, text, and video so you can learn what you need to get unstuck no matter how you learn best. Head to http://unstuck.show to subscribe and view past episodes.