What do you think?
Rate this book
Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring: Lean Forward, Learn, Leverage
This first comprehensive guide to helping mentors and mentees bridge gaps between and among cultures--a growing issue in today's diverse workplace--is coauthored by the founder and CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence.
As the workplace has become more diverse, mentoring has become more challenging. Mentors and mentees may come from very different backgrounds and have limited understanding of each other's cultures and outlooks. But mentoring remains the most powerful tool for creating meaningful relationships, furthering professional development, and increasing engagement and retention. Younger workers and emerging leaders in particular are demanding it.
Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachary offer a timely, evidence-based, practical guide for helping mentors develop the level of cultural competency needed to bridge differences. Firmly rooted in Zachary's well-known four-part mentoring model, the book uses three fictional scenarios featuring three pairs of diverse mentors and mentees to illustrate how key concepts can play out in real life. It offers an array of accessible tools and strategies designed to help you increase your self-awareness and prepare you to embrace and leverage differences in your mentoring relationships. But beyond tips and techniques, Fain and Zachary emphasize that authenticity is the key--the ultimate purpose of this book is to help the mentor and mentee make a genuine connection and learn from each other. That's when the magic really happens.
As the workplace has become more diverse, mentoring has become more challenging. Mentors and mentees may come from very different backgrounds and have limited understanding of each other's cultures and outlooks. But mentoring remains the most powerful tool for creating meaningful relationships, furthering professional development, and increasing engagement and retention. Younger workers and emerging leaders in particular are demanding it.
Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachary offer a timely, evidence-based, practical guide for helping mentors develop the level of cultural competency needed to bridge differences. Firmly rooted in Zachary's well-known four-part mentoring model, the book uses three fictional scenarios featuring three pairs of diverse mentors and mentees to illustrate how key concepts can play out in real life. It offers an array of accessible tools and strategies designed to help you increase your self-awareness and prepare you to embrace and leverage differences in your mentoring relationships. But beyond tips and techniques, Fain and Zachary emphasize that authenticity is the key--the ultimate purpose of this book is to help the mentor and mentee make a genuine connection and learn from each other. That's when the magic really happens.
- GenresLeadershipNonfiction
224 pages, Paperback
Published February 25, 2020
11 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Lisa Fain
2 books2 followersLisa Fain is Center for Mentoring Excellence’s CEO, and an expert in the intersection of cultural competency and mentoring. Her passion for diversity and inclusion work fuels her strong conviction that leveraging differences creates a better workplace and drives better business results.
Lisa brings her energy, enthusiasm, and engagement to any group, facilitating lively workshops and training and delivering interactive speeches with practical steps that can be implemented right away.
For almost a decade, Lisa practiced law in the Chicago office of a major multinational law firm, where she counseled employers on creating inclusive policies and practices. While in that role, she served as a Master Trainer who directed thousands of employees at companies large and small on creating better workplaces.
Lisa is a certified mediator, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Social Policy from Northwestern University, and holds a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. Lisa lives in Seattle, where she loves to hike and explore the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters. Lisa’s writing credits include Bridging Difference for Better Mentoring: Lean Forward, Learn, Leverage and the forthcoming The Mentor’s Guide, 3rd Edition (with co-author Lois J. Zachary).
Lisa brings her energy, enthusiasm, and engagement to any group, facilitating lively workshops and training and delivering interactive speeches with practical steps that can be implemented right away.
For almost a decade, Lisa practiced law in the Chicago office of a major multinational law firm, where she counseled employers on creating inclusive policies and practices. While in that role, she served as a Master Trainer who directed thousands of employees at companies large and small on creating better workplaces.
Lisa is a certified mediator, graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Social Policy from Northwestern University, and holds a J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law. Lisa lives in Seattle, where she loves to hike and explore the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two daughters. Lisa’s writing credits include Bridging Difference for Better Mentoring: Lean Forward, Learn, Leverage and the forthcoming The Mentor’s Guide, 3rd Edition (with co-author Lois J. Zachary).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 2, 2020
When I first started my career, mentoring was something only esteemed executives participated in. Managers were more interested in training teams and throwing them out there to do their job. Rarely did we receive one on one feedback, advice, or were challenged with questions to grow. Luckily, times have changed. More and more companies see the value of coaching or mentoring and ingrain it into their culture. My current employer is the first company that I have worked for that really cares about growing people through mentoring and encourages both professional and personal growth.
One of my favorite aspects of being a manager is mentoring my team. I want to encourage them, identify their gifts, and help them grow – even if it means losing them. When someone moves on to a better opportunity it means that I have been successful as a mentor. Unfortunately, many of us haven’t had a mentor so we don’t really know what to do, how to mentor people from different backgrounds, and we are intimidated. Mentoring is here to stay as more companies see the real value and employees expect professional interaction with their leaders. A few months back I was scouring Amazon for an effective book on mentoring but didn’t find what I needed as a leader.
This month I finally found the book that I have been searching for. The new book Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring – Lean Forward, Learn, and Leverage by Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachery is a goldmine book for mentoring people. The book is an easy read leading the reader on a journey to learn more about mentoring and how to influence teams.
The book engages with reflections, tactics, stories that share actual mentoring situations, tools, and recaps at the end of each chapter. These help the reader bridge any differences or misconceptions that they had about mentoring before picking up Bridging Differences. I need to reinforce new principles when I read a book and this one did not disappoint.
Bridging Differences offers a multiple-phase mentoring model geared to build connections and bridge differences. Here are the phases:
1. Lean forward into difference
2. Learn from differences
3. Leverage differences
4. Enabling growth
One of the primary challenges that we all face when mentoring others or being mentored is understanding our differences and building relationships to overcome those differences. It is not easy and there are a few points that we need to remember.
1. Mentoring has to be reciprocal and both people need to engage. A mentor who does all the talking is doing a disservice to the concept of mentoring
2. Mentoring involves learning. As a mentee, be open to learning and absorb all the knowledge and advice that you can
3. A strong relationship and trust is critical to success
4. Mentoring really is a partnership on both sides.
Overcoming differences is probably one of the key challenges that we all face in the workplace today. Leaders really need to be committed to taking ownership, create awareness about issues and jointly address them. The hardest part? You need to shift your own perspectives and jump out of your own “world” or comfort zone. Cultural differences can also be an uphill battle. We all have our individual unique backgrounds and experiences that impact our ability to address interpersonal relationships. We may need to apply new rules, determine the role of the group we are working with and what is our role when it comes to emotions? What is the scope of relationships when we mentor individuals or groups? Finally, how do we even measure accomplishments or milestones when we mentor?
The mentor and mentee must be honest and set some ground rules before entering a mentor relationship. We forget how different we are from one another and we all carry certain cultural biases, differences, and the big one – social position. It can be pretty intimidating for a junior employee to be mentored by a mentor several levels up and it takes time to build trust and comfort. Likewise, there should be agreement on the monologue and ease of dialogue, how questions are addressed, follow up, and how collaborative engagement will be achieved. This area is where the stories in Bridging Differences really help. There are a few examples of a mentor doing all the talking and assuming what the mentee wants and needs. The differences in expectations were vast and it didn’t make the engagement worthwhile.
So when does mentoring end? That is a key question. That is why it is so critical to layout expectations and agreements when first mentoring someone. Perhaps it will be six months or until the mentee reaches a new goal or level in their career. Perhaps a challenge was overcome and the mentoring achieved its purpose. At my company, mentoring is a continuous process with each team member so that they continue to learn and grow under their current leader. The point is that both parties need to understand and agree on the mentoring process and relationship initially so that expectations and feedback are achieved.
Mentoring is so critical to every employee, stakeholder, volunteer, student, everyone! Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring is an excellent bible for being a better mentor and mentee. This is a must-read for leaders and every human resources leader who is looking to implement a successful mentoring program. This process even lends itself to how we treat raise our children and have meaningful conversations with them.
One of my favorite aspects of being a manager is mentoring my team. I want to encourage them, identify their gifts, and help them grow – even if it means losing them. When someone moves on to a better opportunity it means that I have been successful as a mentor. Unfortunately, many of us haven’t had a mentor so we don’t really know what to do, how to mentor people from different backgrounds, and we are intimidated. Mentoring is here to stay as more companies see the real value and employees expect professional interaction with their leaders. A few months back I was scouring Amazon for an effective book on mentoring but didn’t find what I needed as a leader.
This month I finally found the book that I have been searching for. The new book Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring – Lean Forward, Learn, and Leverage by Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachery is a goldmine book for mentoring people. The book is an easy read leading the reader on a journey to learn more about mentoring and how to influence teams.
The book engages with reflections, tactics, stories that share actual mentoring situations, tools, and recaps at the end of each chapter. These help the reader bridge any differences or misconceptions that they had about mentoring before picking up Bridging Differences. I need to reinforce new principles when I read a book and this one did not disappoint.
Bridging Differences offers a multiple-phase mentoring model geared to build connections and bridge differences. Here are the phases:
1. Lean forward into difference
2. Learn from differences
3. Leverage differences
4. Enabling growth
One of the primary challenges that we all face when mentoring others or being mentored is understanding our differences and building relationships to overcome those differences. It is not easy and there are a few points that we need to remember.
1. Mentoring has to be reciprocal and both people need to engage. A mentor who does all the talking is doing a disservice to the concept of mentoring
2. Mentoring involves learning. As a mentee, be open to learning and absorb all the knowledge and advice that you can
3. A strong relationship and trust is critical to success
4. Mentoring really is a partnership on both sides.
Overcoming differences is probably one of the key challenges that we all face in the workplace today. Leaders really need to be committed to taking ownership, create awareness about issues and jointly address them. The hardest part? You need to shift your own perspectives and jump out of your own “world” or comfort zone. Cultural differences can also be an uphill battle. We all have our individual unique backgrounds and experiences that impact our ability to address interpersonal relationships. We may need to apply new rules, determine the role of the group we are working with and what is our role when it comes to emotions? What is the scope of relationships when we mentor individuals or groups? Finally, how do we even measure accomplishments or milestones when we mentor?
The mentor and mentee must be honest and set some ground rules before entering a mentor relationship. We forget how different we are from one another and we all carry certain cultural biases, differences, and the big one – social position. It can be pretty intimidating for a junior employee to be mentored by a mentor several levels up and it takes time to build trust and comfort. Likewise, there should be agreement on the monologue and ease of dialogue, how questions are addressed, follow up, and how collaborative engagement will be achieved. This area is where the stories in Bridging Differences really help. There are a few examples of a mentor doing all the talking and assuming what the mentee wants and needs. The differences in expectations were vast and it didn’t make the engagement worthwhile.
So when does mentoring end? That is a key question. That is why it is so critical to layout expectations and agreements when first mentoring someone. Perhaps it will be six months or until the mentee reaches a new goal or level in their career. Perhaps a challenge was overcome and the mentoring achieved its purpose. At my company, mentoring is a continuous process with each team member so that they continue to learn and grow under their current leader. The point is that both parties need to understand and agree on the mentoring process and relationship initially so that expectations and feedback are achieved.
Mentoring is so critical to every employee, stakeholder, volunteer, student, everyone! Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring is an excellent bible for being a better mentor and mentee. This is a must-read for leaders and every human resources leader who is looking to implement a successful mentoring program. This process even lends itself to how we treat raise our children and have meaningful conversations with them.
December 31, 2021
In the modern workplace, getting ahead is not only about performing at work, but is also often about challenging yourself to go above and beyond, establishing your name and presence, expanding your network, and broadening the horizons on what you think is possible. Often times, all these are not directly achievable from your daily job, which is where mentoring comes in. A good mentoring relationship is supposed to help the mentee advance their career and help the mentor learn by updating their knowledge and perspectives.
In my own experience though, knowing that mentorship is important and actually knowing what to do in a mentoring relationship is very different - if you are just thrown into that relationship without knowing what to expect, it often ends up a disappointment and a waste of time.
Enter this book, which literally gives you (mentors AND mentees) a lowdown of the entire mentoring process and a step-by-step of what to do in each stage. It is both general and specific - general enough to be applied to any industry, specific enough to outline the key steps to perform and outcomes to expect at each stage of the process.
Points in the book that I really liked:
1. The concept of how difference is something that exists between people, not within someone (i.e. no one is inherently 'different' - to every single person on earth, they themselves are normal and others are different).
2. The exercises and questions peppered throughout the book that help us reflect upon our experiences and thoughts: it really helped me to process the concepts better
3. The emphasis on self reflection and self awareness and how it will impact our relationship with our mentor/mentee: this is true of any relationship, not just mentoring, but I'm glad that the authors highlighted their importance in a work relationship as well, as it is often overlooked
4. How the authors used stories of 3 pairs of mentoring partners to illustrate the possible scenarios and problems that could arise throughout a mentoring relationship: the scenarios and players were all realistic. I've not only gotten a more in depth understanding of how the mentoring process could play out, but also feel like I've gotten more insights into the struggles that different types of people in different industries might face in different stages of their career.
Highly recommended to everyone - from those who are just interested in how the mentoring process works, to those who have had many mentoring relationships before. I genuinely think that if you followed the process outlined in this book throughout your future mentoring relationships, they will most definitely end up a fruitful one. Major kudos to the authors for building such clear structure out of a process as amorphous and subjective as mentoring.
*Minus one star because I thought that the book could be a wee bit more concise at certain points, but it is a minor bone to pick and completely does not take away from the utility of this book.
In my own experience though, knowing that mentorship is important and actually knowing what to do in a mentoring relationship is very different - if you are just thrown into that relationship without knowing what to expect, it often ends up a disappointment and a waste of time.
Enter this book, which literally gives you (mentors AND mentees) a lowdown of the entire mentoring process and a step-by-step of what to do in each stage. It is both general and specific - general enough to be applied to any industry, specific enough to outline the key steps to perform and outcomes to expect at each stage of the process.
Points in the book that I really liked:
1. The concept of how difference is something that exists between people, not within someone (i.e. no one is inherently 'different' - to every single person on earth, they themselves are normal and others are different).
2. The exercises and questions peppered throughout the book that help us reflect upon our experiences and thoughts: it really helped me to process the concepts better
3. The emphasis on self reflection and self awareness and how it will impact our relationship with our mentor/mentee: this is true of any relationship, not just mentoring, but I'm glad that the authors highlighted their importance in a work relationship as well, as it is often overlooked
4. How the authors used stories of 3 pairs of mentoring partners to illustrate the possible scenarios and problems that could arise throughout a mentoring relationship: the scenarios and players were all realistic. I've not only gotten a more in depth understanding of how the mentoring process could play out, but also feel like I've gotten more insights into the struggles that different types of people in different industries might face in different stages of their career.
Highly recommended to everyone - from those who are just interested in how the mentoring process works, to those who have had many mentoring relationships before. I genuinely think that if you followed the process outlined in this book throughout your future mentoring relationships, they will most definitely end up a fruitful one. Major kudos to the authors for building such clear structure out of a process as amorphous and subjective as mentoring.
*Minus one star because I thought that the book could be a wee bit more concise at certain points, but it is a minor bone to pick and completely does not take away from the utility of this book.
February 25, 2020
“Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring” is more than a book on mentoring. While the authors state it is not a workbook, it is a workbook within a book. Several things about this book are important. First, it takes a deeper dive into many factors not normally associated with mentorship …. but should be. Second, each chapter includes opportunities for reflection (hence the workbook within a book) and a chapter summary of key points. Third, Fain and Zachary provide three sets of mentor-mentee scenarios that affirm the concepts presented. The authors prove that mentoring, and being a mentee, can be effective if an authentic partnership exists. A must read for mentors (and would-be mentors) and mentees who desire a more fruitful relationship in this important leadership development process
February 22, 2020
I got this book as part of a early review process. It is very detailed, yet explains the concepts well by laying it out in story form. Those stories introduce you to characters that help you see varying viewpoints and different approaches. I really liked the push throughout to learn from each other rather than stepping on or over each other. Added bonus was all the questions to reflect on the chapter.
February 25, 2020
This text uses case studies, author examples and self-evaluation forms to walk the reader through the mentor and mentee relationship and process. Written in an easy to digest manner that is easy to implement and follow. This is a text that should be kept close at hand for any mentor or mentee. The authors foundation's in the mentoring process is clear. An enjoyable read well worth the time investment.
February 25, 2020
A mentoring book for today. No longer is mentoring a one way street but an actual relationship. Usually with someone very different from you. This book takes you through steps and examples to help you learn this crucial skill.
September 8, 2025
One of the best books on mentoring I've read, full stop.
Plus on top of that, as someone who works and lives abroad and deals with cross-cultural relationships all the time, this was exceptionally useful.
Plus on top of that, as someone who works and lives abroad and deals with cross-cultural relationships all the time, this was exceptionally useful.
February 21, 2020
Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring offers excellent guidance, especially in how to determine and manage differences between mentor and mentee. It provides practical advice and step-by-step how-to guidance to strengthen the mentoring process in your organization to include and appreciate diversity. Divided into three parts, it explores preparation, communication, and goal achievement. The exercises are pertinent and the case studies offer real-life like examples of the problems that can arise and how those problems can be addressed successfully. Mentoring can be a powerful development tool for individuals and for organizations. Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring is a map for making the process successful. I received an ARC for review.
June 5, 2022
Finished this book today. Great read. Worth returning to in the future for another visit. Many new ideas on mentoring explored for both mentors and mentees.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews