The Power of Mentorship

How a Coach Can Shape Your Leadership Journey

— Written in partnership with Tina Martin at Ideaspired.com —

Leadership isn’t something you wake up with one morning, fully formed and polished. It’s built over time—through experience, observation, and, most importantly, guidance. That’s where mentors and coaches come in. If you’re serious about becoming a strong, capable leader, finding someone who has already walked that path can make all the difference. Sure, you can read all the books, watch all the TED Talks, and listen to every leadership podcast out there, but nothing replaces the value of real-time, personalized feedback from someone who has been in the trenches.

Get A Mirror That Reflects the Truth

One of the hardest things about growth is seeing yourself. A good mentor acts like a mirror, reflecting your strengths and the blind spots you don’t even realize you have. Maybe you think you’re an excellent communicator, but your emails confuse your team. Perhaps you believe you’re decisive, but your hesitation in high-stakes moments says otherwise. A mentor will call you out on these things—not to tear you down, but to help you build yourself up. Leadership requires self-awareness, and sometimes, you need an outside perspective to get there.

Learn from Real-World Experience, Not Just Theory

There’s a reason why the best leaders aren’t just textbook experts—they’ve lived through challenges, failures, and high-pressure moments that shaped them. When you work with a mentor or coach, you gain access to their hard-earned wisdom. They’ll share stories of mistakes they made so you can avoid them. They’ll tell you what worked for them and what didn’t, offering insights you won’t find in a leadership manual. Theoretical knowledge is excellent, but practical wisdom? That’s priceless.

Benefit from Accountability That Keeps You Honest

Let’s be real: self-improvement can be tough. It’s easy to set ambitious leadership goals and then quietly let them slide when life gets busy. A mentor keeps you accountable. They check in, push you when needed, and remind you why you started in the first place. Without accountability, leadership development can become a vague aspiration rather than a structured journey. Having someone invested in your progress ensures that you don’t just talk about growing—you do it.

Navigate Challenges with Confidence

Every leader faces moments of uncertainty. Maybe you’re dealing with a problematic employee, making a tough business decision, or struggling with impostor syndrome. During these moments, having a mentor or coach can be a game-changer. Instead of second-guessing yourself or making a rash decision, you have someone to turn to—someone who has likely faced a similar challenge. That reassurance can make all the difference between leading with confidence and doubt.

Expand Your Network and Opportunities

The right mentor doesn’t just help you grow—they also open doors. Leadership isn’t just about what you know; it’s also about who you know. A seasoned coach or mentor has an established network and can introduce you to people, opportunities, and resources you wouldn’t have access to. If you want to advance in your career, having someone advocate for you and connect you to the right circles can be a decisive advantage.

Develop Your Unique Leadership Style

A common mistake aspiring leaders make is mimicking someone else’s leadership style. While learning from others is excellent, authentic leadership comes from authenticity. A mentor helps you refine your own approach rather than forcing you into a mold that doesn’t fit. They’ll challenge you to lead in a way that aligns with your values, strengths, and personality. The best leaders aren’t carbon copies of their predecessors—they’re originals who bring their unique perspective.

Consider Higher Learning

If you’re serious about building your leadership skills, learning to succeed in business by earning an online degree can be a game-changer. You will sharpen your understanding of strategy, communication, and decision-making and develop the critical thinking and problem-solving abilities that define great leaders. Online degree programs make it easy to balance your education with your career, allowing you to gain real-world leadership experience while advancing your knowledge at the same time. Whether you’re looking to step into a management role or refine the skills you already have, investing in your education is one of the smartest moves you can make.

Leadership is a journey, not a destination. No one becomes a great leader overnight, and it does not happen alone. A mentor or coach can provide the insight, accountability, and guidance needed to accelerate your growth and help you become the leader you’re meant to be.

Contact us to transform your key contributors into collaborative change agents today! Learn to mentor and become an executive coach with Hervé.

How to plan for total success

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Over the past 20 years, I've visited over 30 countries, worked with hundreds of teams—over 300—from large companies like Google to modest startups. In that time, it became evident that 90% of failures stem from poor planning, from insufficient planning. In my experience, whether it’s at the inception of projects, the beginning of a year, at the start of anything you're planning, if you take the time to plan well at the beginning, you avoid most mistakes, many of the problems and errors that would otherwise show up later.

So, the question is:

How do we make you into an excellent planner?

There are essentially three steps to a better planning process, three steps you can apply to any project, to an entire year ahead of time, or any event, personal or professional, that you want to create—you could apply it to your next family picnic, for instance.

A few years ago, I was coaching a top-level sales team at Kenzo, of the Louis Vuitton Group, and their goal was to organize a conference to focus on their luxury items. I challenged the sales team: “So, how good is this conference going to be?” I asked.

“Well, you know,” they admitted, “we are a little bit behind in planning.” “Some things we need to do a little bit later,” someone added. “Yeah, it's on our to-do list.”

Waiting until the last minute to do something. It’s a signal of less-than-optimal success ahead because it's basically reactive. It’s adapting to whatever happens at the time and pray that it’s going to go well. In most cases, people say, with relief, “Well, we made it!” And celebrate a marginal, reduced level of success.

That’s is not what we want! We want to achieve the maximum potential from the event. How do we do that? By reverse-engineering it.

So now, let me introduce these three highly effective steps to planning for success.

1 – Visualize Success

The first step is really exciting. Actually, it's a mind shift. You have to allow yourself to imagine total success. Some people will resist this. They will argue, “I am a realistic person. I can't just fantasize about things.” Well, I don’t want you to just fantasize. I want you to visualize total success. And you can do it alone, on your own: Take a piece of paper and write things down to capture how this would look. Or do it as a team, which can be a lot of fun—people love doing this. But you must explain that everyone needs to be inclusive, and welcome any idea or suggestion—no filtering.

The first thing I ask my clients is, “What would be top, the ultimate outcome?” For instance, with the sales team I mentioned above, I asked, “What would be topmost for your big sales event?” And they went wild! “We want this guy… We want that… We should do this…, and this, and this, and that…” I encouraged them further. “What if you had all the tools, all the means, to make it great? What would you do?”

They noted every idea they had on separate pages, loads of them. And we collected them all and put them in buckets, pulling them out one at a time and reading them. “Okay, what about this idea?” “And what about this?” When we were done, we had a real view on what an amazing success of their conference would look like.

That's step number one. I call this “creating the green dot” in my best-selling book What Color Is Your Sky? Creating the green dot. Doing this means that at the end of the year, you can ask yourself, “What is the story I want to tell?” That’s what you write. You write your story, the story of success you envision for yourself.

2 – Set clear ownership goals

In step one, you wrote a lot of things, free flow, with lots of permission. You gave yourself full permission to write ambitious things, yet some of these things are not so crazy. They're simply ambitious.

Now, the idea is to make all of these buckets of ideas your realistic goals. Here is an effective way to do this: “WWWH.” You start by writing on a piece of paper what needs to be done, and by whom. That's really important because you need someone to own this task. So often, in companies, the whom is not very clear. It's a bunch of people, it's a committee, it's whatever. But nobody's accountable.

The what needs to be very specific: What will we observe? What will we get? What will be done? The whom is a person, and the person can have a team around them, but one single person needs to be named—not two, not three. And then, when is it supposed to be done? This needs to be a realistic date.

The H should not be how we will do it, or how we will control it, and not how we will micromanage these things. The H is: How will we know it's done? This is the best way to avoid a bunch of micromanaged tasks centered on it and to free your time.

“WWWH” is an extremely effective system. I taught this to most managers at Nespresso, and dozens of managers at Louis Vuitton, and they loved it. It simplifies everything.

Now, if you are the manager above, all you need to do is to really make sure people manage those WWWHs. This is a good high-performance habit.

3 – Anticipate failures and broken agreements

Step three is about anticipating. Now that you know what you're going to be doing, you want to plan for disaster. You are going to do the opposite of planning for success. Instead, you're going to say, “Imagine the worst thing that can happen”—some of them probably will happen. You want to brainstorm with your team about what could go wrong: Do we have the right resources? Is this the right person? Are people are going to be involved with it? What is the worst thing that can happen? You can also perform this as a team-building exercise.

The idea is to share your plan, your goals, with people and to listen to them after you ask, “What will derail my plan?” They'll come back to you very creative suggestions, such as: “You will not get a sufficient budget,” “The budget will come too late,” “Your suppliers are not going to make it,” “You're going to get sick”—all of these make you more aware of possible failure points.

Once you finish this third step, you will, very likely, need to go back to step two to refine your goals. You may even add a few more tasks because now you're seeing a few potential loopholes: “We don't have insurance on this,” “We didn't double-check [you know]”, or “We need to double down on making sure they make it there.” All of these are issues to double down on—doing it, for sure; being intentional—these make a whole big difference.

In summary: first, visualize success—open permission; second, set goals, identifying specific owners of the delivery of each goal; third, anticipate the worst and adjust accordingly.

For this powerful process to deliver its promise, you must become intentional about following up on the delivery of WWWHs, hold regular meetings to check progress and adapt to unpredicted events. In most cases, the people involved become self-managed and more creative in resolving their problems. The results are systematically well beyond all expectations.

To fully develop your leadership impact, learn more about our accelerated leadership program XCELERATOR. If you have any questions, please comment below. I read every single comment and am happy to offer you my help.

Empower yourself at work, now!

When I start my workshops, I ask people, "Who wants job security? Raise your hand if you want job security." It should come as no surprise that everyone raises their hand.

"Who wants to work less and achieve more?" I ask. And I hear, "Oh, me," as they raise their hand again.

"Who wants to get out of the rat race, and control their destiny?" I say, at which point I’m greeted with broad smiles, and everyone shouts, "ME!"

If you would answer these three questions, in the same way, you are exactly where you need to be — right here, reading this.

To start, one very important question I want to ask you, the same that I ask of all of my students, my participants, my executives, is:

What level of play do you want?

By that, I mean: Do you want to play in league three? Or do you want to play in league one? Are you content to play in the minor leagues? Or do you see yourself playing in the major leagues?

First off, if you are reading this you are likely quite assertive and ambitious. So I’m guessing you’re like most people who would say league one, right? Because nobody’s goal is ever to settle for mediocrity.

Now, if you don't want to settle for mediocrity, you have to be willing to learn. You have to want and learn to develop the best version of yourself. How do you do that?

Most companies, unfortunately, don’t approach this the right way, because they approach it one-dimensionally, one way, in one direction, something that, regrettably, produces little change or result. They do pieces of training. A lot of people might read a book or watch a YouTube video and feel themselves getting really motivated. But it doesn't last. It’s not enough sustenance. It doesn't create lasting results. You need to continue to feed the hunger in yourself a steady diet of what motivates you. So, the question is:

How do you transform yourself?

I am going to share with you the three dimensions of how to succeed at work.

1. DEVELOP YOURSELF IN 3 INTERDEPENDENT WAYS

2. CHANGE HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF: YOU ARE NOT AN EMPLOYEE — YOU ARE THE SOLUTION

3. MAKE 1 + 1 EQUAL MORE THAN JUST 2

Let’s look at each of these.

1. DEVELOP YOURSELF IN 3 INTERDEPENDENT WAYS

I want you to see yourself as investing in developing yourself in 3 complementary aspects. The first aspect of success at work is to develop yourself consistently, all the time. It means focusing on your mindset, your motivation, your engagement, staying positive, being proactive, and being self-aware. You want to solicit feedback, know where you are, and really be aware of your mindset. The mindset dimension is foundational.

The second aspect is your discipline and consistency. Most CEOs I work with, most senior managers, most mid-level managers, most contributors — all over the planet — come with the same problem. “I'm not being consistent,” “I'm not disciplined,” and “How do I stay disciplined, daily?”

It's hard. I’m not saying it isn’t. Yes, it's hard, but there are simple high-performance habits that you can learn, that I can teach you. And I provide lots of complementary videos and short courses on the right simple yet foundational habits and methods designed to develop your discipline. This is fundamental.

Finally, the third aspect is to remove toxicity, from both outside and inside yourself. Outside is generally the programming you get from the society around you. From the people around you. From preconceived opinions. From the imprint we all have — which is toxic. You may have people around you who are relentlessly negative. Well, we need to get rid of them. We need to get rid of the toxicity. Become aware of the toxicity outside of you, and the people who may be dragging you down.

Okay, now it’s time to work on the toxicity inside of you: the voices that whisper: You’re not good enough. You’re not the right person. Success is not going to happen to you. You don't deserve this. All of this internal toxicity is about self-awareness. Maybe calming your mind and we will work on that.

2 . CHANGE HOW YOU SEE YOURSELF: YOU ARE NOT AN EMPLOYEE — YOU ARE THE SOLUTION

The second dimension is to reframe how you think about your job, your function, your role. You may be pretty high up there, or somewhat below that, but, regardless, you have a job to achieve. And the first way to view this is to stop defining what you do as that you “have a job.”

Instead of approaching it from your skillset, what you can do, ask what are the problems that you can solve. See yourself always as the solution, and your goal as being better and better at becoming the person who delivers a solution at work. That's really important. In order to deliver the solution, you must know how to manage meetings, manage people, work better with your managers and your boss (i.e., manage your boss) — you must learn how to do that and practice it continually.

You need to cut down on wasting time. You need to orient people.

And here is the hardest thing that most people don't do: They don't think enough. They don't take the time to ask the right questions. People love doing. That’s why, in most projects where people start too early, most projects fail. In contrast, if you are the person who can come in and say, "Wait a minute, let's think this through. Let’s analyze more deeply, identify the real problem, ask the ‘Why?’ question." When you do that, you become priceless. And that's the opportunity available to you at work.

3 . Make 1 + 1 greater than 2

The third dimension is the collective. It comprises how you work with other people, and how you get a team or group to collaborate well. See that as your being the super app. That's where there's basically no competition. When you become really good at doing this, you erase any of your competitors at work, or outside your company, outside your business.

So, how do you get people to collaborate? To speak to each other? To listen to each other? To work together? To align? To think together? Your goal here is to make one plus one equal more than just two. If you can do that, you're home. The challenge? Rarely does anyone do that.

That’s why I am sharing with you how to create consistently high-performing teams and groups. You will be the facilitator, the one who coaches the manager, the project manager, or the influencer in there. Believe me: That's the whole piñata.

Are you ready? Because, now, you can see my system is not about doing a one-shot thing, making a one-off effort. You don’t just read a bucket of books or attend a whole bunch of workshops and find yourself magically transformed. It's about developing your success system and getting really good within this framework, and making it work for you, day in and day out, both professionally and personally. Because once you make these changes professionally, you’re going to use them in your personal life too, to improve the communication and collaboration you experience with everyone. It’s exhilarating!

Think of it as moving your life, your own self, from 2D to 3D. Every small step makes a positive difference, so even when you’re only starting, when you make just a little progress on these 3 dimensions, you will feel and act differently. You differentiate yourself and make yourself unique, immediately. And you’ll find that the results will be just short of amazing. Astonish and impress yourself, and you’ll astonish and impress those around you.

Doesn’t that sound exciting? Let’s accelerate your development. Learn more about our accelerated leadership program XCELERATOR.

If you have any questions, please comment below. I read every comment and will get back to you with the answers you need.

3 key characteristics of resilient people

In my book What Color Is Your Sky?, I introduce the concept of living on the green curve, a resilient, focused, proactive way of living daily. Learning and perfecting specific life skills and attitudes can be a game-changer. In particular, I encourage you to read and practice the Deliberate Morning Program.

This implies that, over time, you learn from hardship and persist. How can you suffer real setbacks and not falter? During these times of anxiety and deep change, what helps people ultimately bounce back? Find out how resilience at work can literally save lives.

“More than education, more than experience, more than training, a person’s level of resilience will determine who succeeds and who fails. That’s true in the cancer ward, it’s true in the Olympics, and it’s true in the boardroom.” — Dean Becker, president, and CEO of Adaptive Learning Systems.

Resilience can be learned. I recently read an excellent article from Harvard Business Review: “How Resilience Works,” by Diane Coutu, director of client communications at Banyan Family Business Advisors, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which introduces 3 characteristics that may reinforce this:

• Face and accept reality:  Resilient people have down-to-earth views that matter for survival. Pushing for a sense of possibility is powerful, but for longer or bigger challenges, a grounded sense of reality is far more important. Ask yourself: “Do I truly understand—and accept—the reality of my situation? Does my organization?”

• Search for meaning:  Reframing your situation and seeking a deeper meaning to what is happening can mean the difference between giving up and hanging in there, believing in a better-constructed future. The reference book on this matter is Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. I encourage you to spend time clarifying your personal purpose and that of your company’s.

• Become a bricoleur: Keep bouncing back by doing the most with what you have. You may need to improvise solutions from thin air. This calls for agility, positivity, and enthusiasm.

Are you facing serious transformational challenges in your company? If you are, simply drop me a line at sky@herve.com.