Bonnie Hammer: Women in Business Should Seek ‘Tough Love’ Mentors

Some professional mentors are like close friends. Others are who you depend on to widen your network of contacts. Then there are the kind of mentors who provide invaluable feedback, no matter how harsh, that can help people really grow in their careers.  

The latter are who women in business, especially those early in their careers, should really form relationships with and seek out feedback – even if it is difficult, said Bonnie Hammer, Vice Chairman, NBCUniversal, at the 10th BMO Forum for Executive Women in Chicago.   

“The mentors I’m really talking about—the ones who I believe if it weren’t for them in my life, I’d have never done or achieved what I’ve achieved—I call them challenging mentors,” said Hammer, during a riveting on-stage conversation hosted by my colleague Kim Liautaud, Head of U.S. Real Estate and Infrastructure, BMO Commercial Bank.  

“They push you. They put the ‘tough’ in tough love. And trust me, sometimes it’s very, very tough,” she said. 

Drill sergeants 

In her recent book 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work…And the Truth We Need to Succeed, Hammer referred to mentors who have this role as “drill sergeants.” However, these people, as unvarnished sources of professional feedback and career advice, can really help women grow as business leaders.

Hammer recounted her own experience with her truth-telling mentor, the media mogul Barry Diller, who would push her to self-analyze the fine details of her own arguments over and over.

While she greatly appreciated the male mentors in her career, Hammer also encouraged the audience of primarily women to be “tough love” mentors to other women—which she called “womentors.” This is something that she said is becoming more common as women gradually take on C-suite roles. This was a common theme throughout the day’s event.

What’s important is that women seek out these kinds of mentors, who may not always have flowery things to say.

“Women shy away from them because often times what they tell you does not feel good…I’m not talking about abusive bosses or really lousy people,” said Hammer. “I’m talking about those [people] that will tell you the truth about something you’ve done that doesn’t feel good, but when you go home or go into the stall in the bathroom, you know they’re right.” 

The importance of zig-zagging

During the conversation, Hammer also did some myth busting when it came to the assumption that people in their careers should always move higher and more senior in terms of roles and responsibilities.

“We’ve been brought up [to think] everything is a ladder, and rung by rung you get to the top,” said Hammer. But with today’s pace of technological and corporate change, it is no longer sound career advice to stay only focused on the next rung higher.

“When you are close to that rung, you have a single skill set and that industry may be gone, just doesn’t exist anymore. So, I’ve always been a believer in zig-zagging—sometimes taking jobs that aren’t necessarily a step up, you may not get more money…but you are gaining skills that you would never get in another way to broaden who you are and what you can do.” 

(From left to right: Shalini Hanoman Campbell, Managing Director, BMO Capital Markets; Bonnie Hammer, Vice Chairman, NBCUniversal; and Erica Kuhlmann, Managing Director, Food, Consumer and Agribusiness Group, BMO Commercial Bank) 

Wrestling with wrestling

Hammer’s own example of making a beneficial lateral move in her career resulted in the creation of the pop culture phenomenon, World Wrestling Entertainment. In the 1990s, her boss asked her to oversee the USA Network’s professional wrestling franchise—something Hammer knew nothing about.

“I never watched wrestling in my life. I have neither gone to an event in my life nor did I ever intend to in my life,” she said humorously. Nevertheless, Hammer combined her knack for character development and drama with wrestling’s sport and physicality. She also acquired valuable experience in the process.

“Even though things may seem really weird and not connected to what you want to do, the skillset that you can gain from it and, for me, the ability to go toe to toe with anybody after I lived through that experience, nothing ever scared me again.”

Lift each other up

In addition to advising women business leaders to focus more on broadening their experiences instead of being fixated on moving higher, Hammer also emphasized the importance of women helping other women to advance in their careers.

Too often, she said she had witnessed women professionally jostling with each other for a seemingly limited number of leadership positions, particularly in male-dominated industries. Hammer encouraged women to support each other, especially the next generation of leaders.

“It doesn’t have to be ‘his’ world or ‘her’ world. It can be both of our worlds,” Hammer said. 

“And the more women we bring up with us, the more women we help and empower to be there with us will mean that there will be more women in c-suites, which will help everybody.”