Leadership Lessons That Last: Empathy, Career Ownership and the Enduring Power of Mentoring

12 Oct Leadership Lessons That Last: Empathy, Career Ownership and the Enduring Power of Mentoring

Some mentoring relationships influence a moment in a leader’s career. Others continue shaping that leader for decades.

When Elsie Chapa was matched with longtime Menttium mentor Artie Lynnworth in 2004, she was a manager in Mexico navigating career growth, leadership challenges and questions about how to position herself for greater responsibility. Artie was leading business operations in Chile, and their mentoring relationship unfolded entirely by phone.

There was no Zoom, no Teams, and no opportunity to sit across the table from one another. Yet the connection they built proved remarkably durable.

During their year together, Elsie was promoted from manager to director. Their formal mentoring experience eventually ended, but the relationship did not. Seventeen years later, Elsie and Artie met face-to-face for the first time.

Their conversation on the Menttium Matters Podcast offers a powerful reminder that leadership development is rarely about one piece of advice or one pivotal moment. Growth happens through perspective, experimentation, trusted relationships, and the willingness to continually step into new territory.

Empathy Is Essential When Leading Through Difficult Change

Throughout her career in manufacturing operations, Elsie has led organizations through significant and sometimes confidential change. One lesson became increasingly clear each time: effective leadership requires empathy and an understanding of different perspectives.

During one particularly difficult situation early in her leadership career, a senior leader repeatedly listened as Elsie challenged the proposed change. He did not immediately shut down her concerns or simply tell her what to do. Instead, he gave her the opportunity to make her case.

Eventually, the business reality became unavoidable, and Elsie understood that the change had to happen. But the patience and empathy she received helped her move forward.

That experience shaped how she approached future leadership challenges. She learned to extend empathy to the employees affected by change while also recognizing her own emotional response to difficult decisions.

For leaders navigating restructurings, transformations or other high-stakes changes, that lesson matters. People may understand the business rationale for a decision and still experience uncertainty, disappointment or fear. Leaders who acknowledge those realities can build greater trust, even when they cannot change the outcome.

Authentic Leadership Creates Credibility

Elsie spent much of her career in environments where women were significantly underrepresented, including five years as a plant manager. Her approach was surprisingly straightforward: she remained consistent in how she led.

She did not try to adopt a different leadership style because she was a woman working in a traditionally male-dominated environment. She focused on being herself, delivering results and allowing her leadership to become familiar and trusted within the organization.

That authenticity also shaped how she approached competing priorities outside of work. She recalled leaving the plant at 6:00 p.m. to pick up her daughter from daycare while other directors stayed later. When someone asked whether that bothered her, her response was simple: why should it?

Her perspective on work-life balance developed from similar experiences. Balance, she explained, does not necessarily mean dividing attention evenly among every priority. For the biggest priorities in life, there are moments when leaders have to choose what deserves their focus.

That approach gives leaders permission to think about balance across seasons rather than individual days.

Innovation Requires a Willingness to Fail

Elsie also offered a simple principle for innovation: try things.

Her work focused less on product innovation and more on processes and problem-solving, but the same principle applied. Ideas cannot become innovations if they remain theoretical.

Experimentation inevitably involves failure.

Her advice was to fail quickly and inexpensively, learn from those attempts, and continue experimenting until something works.

For leaders, this creates an important cultural challenge. Teams need enough psychological room to test ideas that may not succeed. When every unsuccessful experiment is treated as a mistake, innovation becomes far less likely.

Career Growth Requires More Than Doing Good Work

When Artie reflected on helping leaders take greater ownership of their careers, he identified three priorities:

Performance establishes credibility. Initiative expands experience. Networks create connections and visibility.

Artie also encouraged leaders to lean into their strengths. Leaders certainly need to address weaknesses that could limit their effectiveness, but career growth does not require becoming exceptional at everything. People often generate their strongest results when they invest deeply in the areas where their natural abilities and interests already exist.

Just as important is reliability.

Artie encouraged leaders to make clear commitments rather than routinely saying they will “try” to complete something. Circumstances may require deadlines to change, but credibility grows when colleagues know your word carries weight.

Raise Your Hand Before Someone Makes the Decision for You

One of Elsie’s most practical career lessons came from an opportunity she did not receive.

She learned that her boss had considered sending someone abroad but had not considered Elsie because her daughter was still very young. When she asked why, she realized her manager had made a reasonable assumption based on information available to him.

But Elsie believed the decision about whether the opportunity worked for her family should have been hers.

Her takeaway was clear: leaders cannot expect managers to know their ambitions, interests or personal readiness for a new opportunity. They need to communicate them.

“Raising your hand” became an important part of how she managed her career.

Career ownership requires making aspirations visible before an opportunity appears, rather than assuming good performance will automatically lead someone else to identify the perfect next step.

Volunteering Can Expand Both Skills and Visibility

Elsie also reinforced Artie’s advice about volunteering.

At one point, she volunteered to help her boss develop a PowerPoint presentation. On the surface, the assignment might not have seemed particularly significant. But creating the presentation exposed her to parts of the organization that fell outside her existing responsibilities.

She gained a broader understanding of the business while simultaneously demonstrating her willingness to contribute.

That combination can make stretch assignments especially valuable. The immediate task may matter less than the perspective, relationships and organizational knowledge gained through completing it.

Authentic Self-Promotion Starts With Knowing Your Results

Self-promotion can feel uncomfortable, particularly for leaders who believe their work should speak for itself.

Artie offered a more practical way to approach it.

First, stay closely connected to your goals. Rather than waiting for an annual performance review, he spent decades voluntarily updating his leaders every quarter on progress toward his objectives.

Second, keep track of your “STARS”: Situation, Task, Action and Result examples that demonstrate specific skills. Maintaining those stories helps leaders understand both what they have accomplished and which capabilities they still need to develop.

Finally, use performance conversations to discuss future growth. A review is an opportunity to connect personal development with organizational needs and identify how expanding your capabilities can contribute to the business.

Self-promotion becomes more authentic when it is grounded in results, learning and contribution.

Influence Begins With What People See You Do

When asked about influencing without authority, Elsie returned to another straightforward principle: lead by example.

If leaders want employees to care about people, they need to demonstrate that care themselves. If they want to understand operational problems, they need to go where the work happens, speak with employees and understand their perspective.

Influence grows when others can observe both the behavior and the results.

Artie expanded on the idea by emphasizing continual learning and positive reinforcement. Leaders are constantly communicating through both their actions and their inaction, and their behavior becomes part of the example others use to determine what is valued.

Growth Lives Outside the Comfort Zone

Looking back across her career, Elsie identified three lessons that have been particularly important:

One of her most rewarding professional experiences involved opening a plant without having prior expertise in doing so. The challenge forced her to question assumptions, learn quickly and direct energy toward something entirely outside her normal responsibilities.

Rather than simply being uncomfortable, she found the experience energizing.

Artie offered a complementary summary of his own career lessons: focus on your strengths, help others, and build your reputation.

Leadership reputation develops slowly through the commitments leaders keep, the results they deliver, and the way they treat the people around them.

A Mentoring Relationship That Lasted Far Beyond the Program

Perhaps the most powerful lesson from Elsie and Artie’s conversation comes from the relationship itself.

When they were matched in 2004, Artie told Elsie what he tells his mentees at the beginning of their partnership: if the relationship is valuable, they do not have to close the door when the formal program ends.

Elsie took him up on that offer.

Years might pass between conversations, but when Elsie reached a career crossroads, she knew she could contact someone who understood her history, believed in her potential, and could provide an objective perspective.

Then, 17 years after they were matched, mentor and mentee finally sat across from one another for lunch.

As Artie described it, those years seemed to collapse instantly.

That enduring connection captures something fundamental about the value of mentoring. Development may begin with goals, competencies, and career questions, but the most meaningful mentoring relationships create something deeper: a trusted source of perspective that leaders can carry with them long after the formal experience ends.

And in a fitting continuation of that story, Elsie has now become a mentor herself.
The impact of one mentoring relationship can continue moving forward through careers, organizations, and generations of leaders.

That is the enduring power of mentoring.