High-Impact Mentoring: A Practical Guide to Creating Value in Other People's Lives

by Bert Thornton, Sherry Hartnett

Mentoring Transforms Lives and Organizations. Here’s How to Do It Right.Why is there such a huge and ironic need in today’s business and organizational world? On one hand, we have a multitude of rising high achievers who would benefit greatly from the experience and wisdom of a skilled mentor. On the other hand, we have thousands of savvy, experienced business and organizational leaders who would, could, and should fill that bill…but they aren’t getting together. Why is that? How can we fix it? And how can we hang onto our top talent?Former Waffle House President and COO Bert Thornton and Founding Director of the University of West Florida’s Executive Mentor Program Dr. Sherry Hartnett have combined to answer those questions and more in the first ever practical guide written for remarkably effective one-on-one mentoring and scaling that effort up to build your own organization’s outstanding mentoring program for rising stars.Mentoring is no longer a “nice-to-have” but a “must-have.” At a time when people crave strong work relationships and a sense of connection—and employees expect to be developed—a good mentoring program is your secret weapon for attracting and retaining high performers. High-Impact A Practical Guide to Creating Value in Other People’s Lives is a blueprint for hardwiring the program into your culture so every mentee gets a consistent experience, every time. Finally, a chapter on virtual mentoring ensures that people reap the benefits of Bert and Sherry’s wisdom, whether they work from home, at the office, or both.

300 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 12, 2021

About the author

Bert Thornton was president of the student body at TR Robinson High School in Tampa, Florida and attended Georgia Tech on a full football scholarship. He was on officer in the US Army and served a year in Vietnam. Bert worked 2 years with NCR’s IT department (back then it was called EDP–electronic data processing) before joining Waffle House, Inc. as a manager trainee. Four years later, he became vice president.

Bert was appointed President and Chief Operations Officer of Waffle House, Inc. and helped build the company to its present iconic status; one of the largest 24-hour restaurant chains in the world. He retired from restaurant operations in 2011 and remains as Vice Chairman Emeritus.

If you are a fan of Waffle House, he is also the Bert of “Bert’s Chili”. Bert developed the recipe in 1983 and it is one of Waffle House’s most popular items with over 11 million servings sold each year.

Bert and his wife, Kathy, have three daughters, all Georgia Tech graduates, as is he.

He is an active mentor of high school and college-aged students as well as young and middle-aged businessmen and women.

Bert thinks excellence in early education, guidance and development is critical and he has a Board role with a charter public elementary/middle school in DeKalb County, Georgia. Bert enjoys golf and hunting.

Reviews

[Kevin Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute must read for professionals who mentor. High Impact Mentoring is a quick and informative how-to written by subject matter experts with C-suite business experience on how to mentor effectively and how to implement a mentoring program in your organization. Entertaining and enjoyable too. Highly recommended.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Business research repeatedly proves that the vital skill of mentoring enhances the odds of career success among mentees. Further, it provides a sense of fulfillment and purpose among mentors. It helps with imposter syndrome and makes both parties feel a sense of belonging. Further, it can help both sides of the relationship keep in touch with the latest trends and overcome new challenges. So why don’t more organizations take advantage of this type of relationship? Well, because setting it up is somewhat complicated and requires deliberate, wise effort. In this book, Thornton (a former COO for Waffle House) and Hartnett (director of the Executive Marketing Program at the University of West Florida) team up to make this process a bit simpler.

Together, they dissect what makes mentoring work. In the first half of the book, Thornton approaches it more on an individual level. He explains how he has strategically created value in his employees’ lives. Then in the second half of the book, Hartnett explains how mentoring can be implemented across a large group. By dividing up the book in a micro vs. macro fashion, they try to demystify this complex but important topic.

To be honest, this book almost reads like two separate books glued together into one. My personal taste favored the second half of the book on organization over the first half on personal attributes, but I suspect that is more telling of my personality and experiences than anything else. Professionally, I develop software that enhances mentoring relationships, and this book benefitted me by giving language and understanding about what successful mentoring looks like.

It provided a few new conceptual tools about how to understand mentoring. Mentoring consists of more than mere teaching. Rather, it centers on building relationships to aid a mentee’s personal make-up. In so doing, it can also help the mentor push herself/himself towards greater growth and integrity. I personally engage mentoring on several different levels, and the authors provided some concepts to understand these different relationships. Some relationships are built around moving a good leader (a 5/10) to become great (7/10). Other relationships are about bringing a 7/10 to a 9/10. Et cetera.

This book stands poised to encourage mentoring relationships in businesses and non-profit organizations. Having been written in a pandemic year, it ends with a bonus chapter on virtual mentoring. Although this was and is relevant to current culture, the chapter lacks the depth that the rest of the book offered. Thornton offers a more salesman-like approach while Hartnett is clearly a master organizer/administrator. These contrasting styles might appeal to two different types of readers, readers who might not appreciate both styles equally. Still, much stands to be learned about mentoring. I fully agree that mentoring needs to be measured in some way, but that measurement is often elusive. There’s a lot of work that can be done in research and implementation. This book’s varied approach represents a worthy start into that endeavor.