by Patrick Durkin
http://www.afr.com/brand/boss/david-gonskis-tips-for-getting-ahead-20150212-13cqn3
Australia’s most connected businessman, David Gonski, has revealed his top secrets for choosing a mentor and getting ahead in your career. Do not pick your boss, take more than one mentor and realise you are never too old to learn new tricks.
The ANZ and Coca Cola Amatil chairman says he has made the most of mentors in his professional life, his philanthropic work and recently adopted a “reverse” mentor at ANZ to brush up on his social media skills.
“Mentors have helped me in two ways, one they gave me the guts to do things,” Mr Gonski told AFR BOSS magazine for a cover story published on Friday. “I spoke to my mentor [the late NSW Supreme Court judge Kim Santow] before I stepped out at Freehills, if he had said don’t do it, I’m pretty sure I would have done it a few years later but I needed to test it with somebody,” he said.
“The second thing a mentor can give you is a piece of their knowledge because so many times you’re doing something that an older person or even a younger person has seen or done before in their way and that’s useful to hear.”
Mr Gonski, a polymath who is chairman of the Sydney Theatre Company and headed the former government’s review of school funding, said Kim Santow had been a mentor in his professional life, property tycoon Frank Lowy his mentor in business and Fred Street a mentor for philanthropy. He has also recently adopted “digital native” Sarah Anderson at ANZ to teach him about social media under the bank’s “reverse mentoring” program.
But Mr Gonski cautions people against taking their boss as a mentor.
“I’m not totally convinced that your boss can be your mentor because if you’re great, the boss really wants you to stay as their underling because you make them look good,” he said.
Mr Gonski’s career advice is worth heeding. The men and women he has mentored now occupy a coterie of senior leadership roles.
Suncorp and Coca-Cola director Ilana Atlas, director of Breville, Investec Property and Premier Investments Sally Herman, and director of IAG, Westpac and Cochlear Alison Deans, were all formally coached by Mr Gonski through the Australian Institute of Company Directors mentoring program.
Then there are a host of executives, particularly women directors, who tell BOSS Gonski has been instrumental in promoting their careers, including Coca-Cola, AMP and Boral director Catherine Brenner, Origin Energy and Qantas Airways director Maxine Brenner, ASX company secretary Amanda Harkness, recently departed head of Philanthropy Australia Louise Walsh, and chief executive of the Sydney Opera House Louise Herron.
“There’s never a time I go out somewhere that I don’t have one or two women saying, ‘Oh, I just saw David last week.’ And I say, ‘What, just in passing?’ and they say, ‘No, no. He was giving me some advice.’,” Maxine Brenner told BOSS.
Ilana Atlas pinpoints Mr Gonski’s skill as a mentor to three key attributes. First, he always finds the time: “You send him a text, he will always make himself available.” Second, he gives direct, useful suggestions: “He goes out of his way to know you, your aspirations and background, so his advice is very specific to you.” Third, he’s an advocate for those he mentors.
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