Gill South: Good listeners ease the burden for business owners and managers

Some business owners and managers haven't even told their wives and families they think their business is in trouble. What an incredible pressure to put themselves under. The relief when they discuss the situation with someone will be enormous; they could well have their first good night's sleep in ages.

Business Mentors New Zealand was established by the not-for-profit organisation Business In The Community in the early 1990s. Founded by Dr Grahame Craig, its aim was to support small to medium-sized enterprises. Supported by people such as Douglas Myers and Stephen Tindall over the years, it is also partly funded by NZ Trade and Enterprise and 80 private sector companies.

Ray Schofield, Business Mentors' chief executive, says requests for mentors have been up by almost 50 per cent since January. On offer are 1600 mentors, and the organisation takes on 30 new ones every month. Many of the mentors are retired or semi-retired accountants or experienced business people who want to give something back. Some are managers from the trust's sponsor companies.

Each company wanting to take advantage of their wisdom pays a one-off $100 membership fee, and Business Mentors has helped 49,000 businesses since 1991.

"We are independent and don't have an agenda; we are just there to try and make a difference," says Schofield.

He matches the skills and personalities carefully before pairing a mentor with a company.

Mentors will often work on two key areas - financial management and marketing are typically areas where small businesses can improve - but it is a case of mentors determining what the need is.

Andy Collyer, of Christchurch business advisers Bishop Collyer Leadbetter, has been a volunteer with Business Mentors for over three years.

"Business owners are, as a rule, not very good at talking to people. Mentoring is about having someone that is prepared to listen to you and give you non-judgmental feedback," he says.

Talking to someone else can be a huge relief, he says. "A lot of the time, it's a bullish male business owner who can go home for the first time and tell his wife he's in the crapper."

Collyer says people don't get the difference between coaching and mentoring. Coaching is trying to improve someone's existing choices, while mentors are non-judgmental, supportive, great listeners, he says. "They give feedback, and advice based on experience, and right now that's about as valuable as you can get."

Alison Quesnel, country manager for health-products company Blackmores New Zealand, is on the board of Business In The Community and mentors for Business Mentors as well as running her own mentoring consultancy, www.defino.co.nz. She says the difference between mentoring and coaching is that mentors are "walking alongside" managers. Coaches tend to have a more specific task - looking at Key Performance Indicators, for instance. "I have been a business mentor since 1990. The biggest thing is having that sounding board, saying that you are doing the right thing, but you might want to think about x, y or z."

Many businesses' budgets for the year are down 20 or 30 per cent, she says. "Now it's about how you manage the business through a vacuum, adjusting buying patterns, keeping stock at a minimum. Small businesses are lonely. You can't have a discussion with another senior manager.

"You often don't want to discuss things with your wife or family because they're too emotionally or financially involved. The advice from a mentor is totally independent. They are seeing things with a new eye."

owners and managersA mentor can help with staffing issues, says Quesnel. "Having to make someone redundant is extraordinarily hard. You might only have five people there and if two people go the dynamics change."

People often talk to accountants in tough times but many smaller businesses find that their accountants speak a different language. A person who is experienced with SMEs can be a vast improvement, says the mentoring expert.

"My husband is a business mentor, he owns a small business himself. Every company he has been to see has been so overwhelmed with gratitude to talk to someone who understands GST and PAYE," says the Blackmores manager.

Some people are good at the technical side - they're good at landscaping, for example, but they're not necessarily all that good at running accounts or buying wisely, says Quesnel. "What the business mentor programme does is rounds out that experience."

Ideally mentors should not be brought in at the final hour. It's good practice to have a mentor continuously. "I mentor a couple of small businesses and I've been with one of them for two years now, in the good times and the bad. It's about having that sounding board available on the telephone. They can ring me and say, 'We just want to talk to you about something'."

Mentoring can just be a helping hand to keep your talent engaged or help acclimatise a new member; it doesn't have to mean dealing with cries for help. For example, McCarthy Mentoring, an Australian consultancy run by Wendy and Sophie McCarthy, advises companies to mentor their talented female staff during maternity leave. They stay connected with their employer and are ready to return to work when the time comes.

Quesnel mentors a woman who is in her first CEO role. When she started she was having to do a lot of change management. At the end of the first meeting the woman said to Quesnel: "I thought someone must have briefed you about the organisation." The experienced mentor says: "I'd been there, done that. It was absolutely fantastic for her to talk to someone who understood what she was going through."

Gill South is a freelance journalist and author of the newly released Because We're Worth It, a "where to from here" guide for today's working mother.