Being a leader is not just about standing at the helm and steering the ship. It’s about fostering relationships, nurturing talent, and creating an environment where everyone can thrive. In this context, three key roles emerge: the mentor, the bodyguard, and the promoter.
The Mentor: Coach and Guide
As a leader, you are inherently a coach. You guide your team, provide direction, and help them navigate challenges. But mentoring goes beyond coaching. It involves investing in someone else’s growth, not because it benefits you directly, but because you genuinely care for their success and happiness. There is a unique opportunity in professional relationships to truly invest in someone else.
Mentors are a source of guidance and support backed by experience and expertise. The best mentors go beyond professional development, focusing on the whole person.
While you must coach everyone on your team, you don’t need to mentor everyone. Mentorship is a reciprocal relationship that requires a deep connection and mutual respect. If such a bond exists, embrace the opportunity to mentor, as it will enrich both your professional life and theirs.
From my experience, being a strong mentor comes down to a few things.
- Listen first. Ask more questions than you give answers, to truly understand your team member’s challenges and ambitions.
- Share your own lessons. Be open about mistakes and what you learned from them. This humanizes you and accelerates their growth.
- Invest beyond the role. Support them in ways that consider their whole self: career, well-being, and aspirations.
The Promoter: Elevating Others
The best way to promote yourself is to elevate those around you. As a leader, if your team members are successful, you are successful. This principle forms the basis of the promoter role. Think about the first person who starts clapping at the end of a speech, the one who instigates applause from everyone else. These are the promotors, the vocal advocates who amplify your accomplishments and bolster your success.
In a leadership context, promoting your team members means acknowledging their achievements, advocating for their ideas, and giving them opportunities to shine. When you do this, you not only help them grow but you establish a culture of recognition and positivity.
When I think about being a promoter, I try to do three things consistently.
- Recognize publicly. Celebrate wins in team meetings or company-wide forums to amplify impact.
- Advocate behind closed doors. Speak up for your team members when opportunities, promotions, or projects are being discussed.
- Create visibility. Give credit in presentations, bring team members into executive conversations, and give them the stage when possible.
The Bodyguard: Protector and Ally
Finally, every leader needs to be a bodyguard, someone who watches over them, providing protection and support. This role is crucial because it fosters trust and loyalty.
Some people adopt a lone-wolf approach, believing they don’t need help and can handle everything on their own. But having someone watching your back is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strategic advantage. As a leader, protecting your team members will help them feel valued and safe, leading to increased productivity and commitment.
For me, being a bodyguard is about intentional action, not just good intentions. That means making deliberate choices to:
- Shield from unnecessary noise. Filter distractions, conflicting priorities, and political battles so your team can focus on delivering results.
- Stand up when it counts. Defend your team’s work and decisions when they’re being challenged unfairly.
- Foster psychological safety. Create an environment where people feel safe taking risks, sharing ideas, and admitting mistakes.
The mentor, the promoter, and the bodyguard are all roles based on genuine relationships. As a leader, if you can successfully embody these roles, you will not only enhance your own success but also contribute significantly to your team members’ success.
What Leadership Is About
Leadership is not power or control. It is about creating opportunities for others to grow and succeed. If you have the opportunity to lead a team and grow an organization, it’s likely that you can look back at your professional journey—or look around at your current support system—and find that you are where you are because you, yourself, had a mentor, a promotor, and a bodyguard.
I would like to thank mine.
