Build Your Own Shining City On a Hill
By: Julia E Hubbel
Tags: Business, Mentorship, Success, Personal Development, Entrepreneurship

Photo by Mohammad Asadi on Unsplash

Build Your Own Shining City On a Hill

The search for mentors begins with your doing some mentoring first

One of my favorite Medium writers, Rebecca Stevens A., inspired this story when she wrote the following article yesterday:

Rebecca points out the aching challenges that talented women, and most particularly women of color, face in the workplace. They are many and varied, and I strongly recommend you visit her piece. This is what I am responding to, as I promised her in a comment.

From her article:

So today, I’m making a plea. I’m seeking an honest to God mentor who understands. Someone I can learn from and someone who can learn from me. For the relationship to be sustainable, it needs to go both ways.

I would love to find someone who is unafraid to have those uncomfortable discussions around social justice, race, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, and gender inequalities but to name a few. I’d like to find someone open-minded, who acknowledges and is aware of all the privileges that they might have. I would like to find someone who understands the power dynamic in the world and in the workplace. Someone who sees how white supremacy and white privilege determines who has power and who does not, who is immediately conferred respect and who isn’t, who is immediately trusted and who isn’t. I would love to have a mentor who simply understands, for it is only then that that mentorship will help us both meet our full potential.

This is just my idea, so please take it for what it’s worth, and see if you can do anything with it. This is for any and all of you who, like Rebecca, seek a mentor.

First, background. In 1997, I was facing horrific financial challenges, my marriage was on the rocks. My ex and I had just moved to Spokane. I put out three hundred resumes. Got one interview. Didn’t get the job. Two things happened in quick order: my marriage dissolved, and I had to file bankruptcy.

Not things you want in the paper. But there you are.

As part of my attempt to find work, I attended all kinds of meetings all over town, from the local Chamber of Commerce to Business and Professional Women. I ran into plenty of folks who didn’t want to know me because they saw me as a threat. Big Fish Little Pond People.

And. I kept meeting simply extraordinary women of color, women of power, women who were senior execs, entrepreneurs, writers, artists, dancers, all of whom shared one key characteristic: they felt isolated and lonely. Spokane in 1997 was and still is a rather lily-white place, and home to a few too many White Supremacist organizations. I’d had no clue when I moved there.

These women didn’t feel particularly comfortable. Me neither.

Bingo.

I formed what I jokingly called The Great Broads. First, I met with a German-Hispanic woman. The following month I brought in another high-powered woman. Sparks flew. I cherry-picked women from all those groups, vetted them, for competence, a positive focus and a willingness to throw in when others needed advice and mentoring.

I cherry-picked women leaving Fairchild Air Force base, pilots and navigators (One Hispanic, one Japanese) of immense talent with multiple degrees and NO business savvy. I dragged them in and they got mentored. One of them, a woman who is the living example of how to pay it forward, is Graciela Tiscareno-Sato, whose work is all over Linked In. She is THE shining example of a woman who got mentored and is paying it forward big time.

We changed lives. Our own and each other’s.

The group later renamed itself The Hubbel Group (sounds like financial advisors). My Jewish Berkeley PhD refused to meet with the Chamber of Commerce as a “Great Broad,” which was fine by me. By that point, the group had gotten a name for itself for good reason.

We were doing damned good things for women of consequence in Spokane.

One of those women later became a mayor. Just saying.

We were featured in the book Networking Magic by Jill Lublin.

Wanna know how?

Here’s what we did:

We met one Thursday a month for lunch at a local restaurant. About 15–16 people typically showed up, always different, with a few steady regulars. The time line was 90 minutes SHARP. After I introduced the new person, we got down to business.

This was the format I used and which you are welcomed to steal for your own:

What are you good at(You MAY NOT SAY I am a people person, or risk collective groans). This is where you own your professional real estate. What are you CELEBRATING right now? What do you need help with today (This isn’t a bridge game, you don’t get to pass, you MUST ask for assistance with something.)

Each person at the table must go. Once she has thrown down the gauntlet for assistance, everyone else throws down their best ideas, referrals, suggestions and best practices. They are competing to have the best ideas without knowing they are competing.

Each person walks away with a slew of ideas and information. Everyone else gets to listen to others ,and invariably they contact each other offline. Business relationships form, deals happen, closer mentoring connections evolve. This is what happens when we offer guidance, advice, help and nurturing. We end up getting it ourselves.

Why this worked:

I vetted EVERYONE. I selected members specifically for diversity, high levels of professional competence, a willingness to give and an ability to receive. Nobody got in but through me, which ensured the quality of person, which protected the group’s integrity. If anyone got ugly or negative or nasty, they were removed from the group. One and done. It was a protected space. Everyone came away with value, everyone gave value, and it fed all of us from a business standpoint while also supporting all of us emotionally. And to that end, we added a once a month Friday girls night out where we could talk about anything other than business.

I built what I could not get with women who were, like me, feeling isolated and lonely. Those connections lasted a long time. The Hubbel Group ultimately got me back on my feet, I found work, and a way to serve. So did everyone else.

Every single time after lunch when I finally got out to the parking lot, several women would still be out there next to their cars, talking business. Never failed.

If I hadn’t had to return to Denver to care for my dying mother, this group would still be my passion. As it was, the sixty some women who were part of that group saved my butt, and were great servants to each other, with friendships lasting to this day. The Hubbel Group, back in 2000, was the most diverse group in Spokane. That’s because I built it to ensure extraordinary diversity.

When you and I are in need, the single best way to ensure that you get it is to give it.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

While we are indeed in challenging times due to Covid, there is no reason why you and I couldn’t form an online Zoom community of cherry-picked folks who could benefit from collaborating.

I’ll repeat that: they need to be able to benefit from collaborating. That means that the exchange of wildly diverse ideas, driven by the diversity of color, culture, religion, business, experience, age, etc. automatically guarantees free and divergent idea exchanges.

If you want to be mentored, consider who else might also need mentoring, and why. Who else could benefit from a regular meeting where, if you set courageous ground rules, each person could benefit hugely from other’s experiences?

Courageous ground rules would mean things like: no bitching, complaining, no personal attacks, whining and nothing toxic. If you need to discuss difficult issues, by all means lay out the challenge. But do so without toxicity, outline the issues and state what you are seeking. What are potential resolutions? What are the experiences of the group? What are the potential ways forward? How are you going to measure progress?

Brainstorming rules apply: all ideas are valid. WE NEVER SHOOT DOWN AN IDEA. Because why? An crazy-ass idea might just have a kernel of great genius within it.

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

This group taught me a few things. First, that if I want friendship and support, the fastest way to get it is to find others who need it and make sure we ALL get it from each other.

The other is that a tight set of rules protects you, protects the group. You as former of the group, facilitator and monitor have the sacred responsibility to stand by those rules and protect people, as I had to constantly do, from women who wanted to crash my community.

Why? They were MLM folks. They saw my group as sitting ducks for their down line. They were furious that I barred entry. My group loved me for it. You have got to set rules, and stand by them.

If you are going to work with execs, you MUST honor the time frame. With a Zoom meeting, you might keep it to 45–60 minutes. End on time every time without exception. People want to hang out longer, that’s on them. YOU honor their executive time, they will love you for it.

I chose not to charge anyone. That worked for me, because each time we met what I gained in insight, education and friendship far outweighed any fees. Ultimately the group steered me to legal help that got me my VA disability and a lot more. You cannot put a value on such things.

Rebecca wants a mentor. She, and you, and I all deserve one. My primary mentor died in early early nineties a few years ago, and in doing so she shoved the torch into my hands. I am paying it forward. This is the formula as I built my group. My suggestion (and I am happy to build on this) is consider how you might turn this into a mastermind group, or any other kind of collaboration for the greater good of all.

I just threw down the gauntlet. We need each other. My challenge is how will you give others what YOU need, and in that magnificent way that the Universe works when we commit ourselves to service, get everything we needed and much, much more to boot?

For a Medium example of mentoring, please see Dr Mehmet Yildiz. There’s a reason he has legions of raving fans (me included).

Lots of ways to do this, but he began by cherry-picking writers he most favored. Created an accepting, supporting, diverse community. Worked incredibly hard to protect it. Still does.

Hm. Sounds familiar.

Something to that. What will you do to turn your need into a gift for others?