JONI: This conversation is about mentoring and about who have been our mentors, or who we are mentoring and what great advice there is that we’ve received or ever gotten or want to give out. (Find out here what advice we do give young women.)
LIZ: I was mentored by all the great men I’ve worked for – about six famous, fabulous men, in my youth. And they all helped and encouraged me and were great to me. I was a dumb, green kid and they kind of liked my nerve. But I evolved from working as a lowly assistant to being an actual writer and producer. And in television I’d get these impossible tasks to produce a show from someplace where you couldn’t even get a signal out, or to book a VIP guest. And one day I found out that I was enjoying going back to these important bosses at times, saying to them, “We can’t do it.” And I realized I was actually taking pleasure from telling them that what they wanted was impossible. As soon as I got onto that, onto myself, I didn’t need more mentoring. I realized I needed to start thinking like a boss; I had to become the boss. You’ve got to do the best job you can for management or the head guy. Your boss has to become your life work as you dedicate yourself to his point of view, the welfare of the show or project or whatever. And when you do that, everything changes for you. And so that’s the advice I give to those who ask me how to succeed. Don’t go and lay a bunch of dead kittens at the foot of your dynamic boss, even if he’s a fascist and you don’t like him. You’ve got to do the best you can. (Learn more about the importance of 'trusting your gut' from Sheila Nevins, Liz Smith and others.)
LESLEY: Liz, that’s brilliant advice.
LIZ: His problem has to become your problem. And you have to become part of the solution – or you are part of the problem. I was making a problem.
MARY: I was given jobs by women. I never worked for men. I always worked for women. Except for Bill Bernbach and he was so high in the advertising community that I never thought about him as somebody I was working for. All of my life I worked for women. But I honestly can’t say that they mentored me. They gave me jobs and they counted on me. But I wouldn’t call it exactly mentoring. It seems to me that I’ve been mentoring people all my life. And when I had my own agency I was mentoring hundreds. And I’m still mentoring. And I think mentoring is something that I enjoy doing, so I guess I probably go out of my way to do that.
LESLEY: Mary, what do you look for when you’re looking at the people who’ve worked for you, what qualities or what style do you like?
MARY: I look for people who are willing to stand on their head, work 26 hours a day, who are very talented, and who use everything they’ve got and who do more than what is expected in the job that they’ve got; who know that they’re living in a big world. For example, in the advertising business you never know from day to day who might come around and offer you the possibility of being a client. So you really have to know what’s going on everywhere, so that you will be intelligent when that person comes to you, and show them how smart you are. You have to spend a lot of time learning about what’s going on in the world, even though it has nothing to do with what you’re doing today. So I am always looking for people who would stretch, who would do much, much more than is expected. Read more.
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