I am in Service to the Mentee: A Conversation with John McGuigan

Few people have experienced mentoring from both sides of the relationship as extensively as John McGuigan. After benefiting from mentoring himself as a senior executive, John went on to become a mentor at Global Mentors Group (formerly Merryck), bringing his own experience as a mentee into the way he works with senior leaders and teams. 

John shares what he learned as a mentee, and the principles he keeps in mind while mentoring others. 

You experienced mentoring yourself before becoming a mentor. How did that journey shape your approach? 

I first experienced mentoring through Global Mentors Group while at Telefónica, as part of a leadership programme for the top 100 leaders globally. When I moved to Standard Life, which later became Pheonix Group, I chose to continue mentoring and was paired with someone with financial services experience – a perspective I found hugely valuable. 

That experience stayed with me. Later, when I left Phoenix Group, I had a conversation about potentially joining Global Mentors Group myself. When I did, I brought with me a first-hand understanding of what it is like to have someone independent in your corner – someone who can offer a different perspective, challenge your thinking and help you navigate complexity. 

As a mentee, what do you think makes mentoring different from coaching? 

While there’s a coaching-informed approach to what we do, the big difference is that our mentors have done the jobs that many people we work with are doing. We’ve been CEOs, executives and senior leaders ourselves, so we understand not only the technical challenges of leadership but the reality of what it feels like to be in that position – the pressure, the loneliness, and the impact it can have outside work. 

That really resonates with me. We talk about making people better leaders, but we also want people to have better lives. If you’re unhappy outside work, it eventually affects how you show up at work, and vice versa. For me, that’s an important part of mentoring. 

What does a good mentoring relationship look like in practice, and what’s most important thing to you in that relationship? 

A good mentor is someone with whom you can have a really rich, deep conversation without necessarily knowing where it will go. 

I might come into a session with ideas about what we could discuss or a model that might be useful, but we may never get to it because something else is more important to the person in front of me. The skill is responding to what they actually need in that moment. It has to be bespoke to the individual and their situation. 

One phrase that has stayed with me is that you are “in service” to the mentee. Our role isn’t to have all the answers; it’s to help the individual develop themselves. That also means putting your ego aside. You may have experience that could be useful, but mentoring isn’t about demonstrating what you know. It’s about understanding the person in front of you and doing what’s best for them. 

How do you know when the mentoring relationship is really making a difference? 

I had a session recently with someone I’ve been mentoring for about a year. When we started, he was overwhelmed by his workload and unclear about what his role really required of him. He also felt his ability to manage the detail wasn’t being recognised by his boss. 

Over time, he began recruiting people he trusted, giving them more responsibility and creating space for them to operate. He started focusing on what only he could do and letting others take responsibility for the rest. 

When we spoke recently, he said something that really struck me: “I now understand my job. Before, I actually didn’t.” 

That’s a significant shift. It’s not about the mentor giving someone the answer; it’s about helping them see their situation differently and giving them the confidence and space to act. 

Can you share an experience that changed the way you think about mentoring? 

One experience with a client in the Middle East really challenged my assumptions. 

We were discussing a senior executive in his organisation who wasn’t performing well enough. Over several sessions, we concluded that the person probably needed to leave, but the client kept delaying the decision. 

Eventually, I learned the situation had much greater cultural and societal implications than I ’d understood, and that managing the departure needed to be handled very differently from how I might approach it in the UK. It was a huge lesson for me. 

I realised I hadn’t asked enough questions about the cultural context before reaching my conclusion. I had unconsciously looked at the situation through the lens of my own experience. It reinforced how important curiosity is in mentoring. You have to understand the world the other person is operating in, rather than assuming your own frame of reference applies. 

What changes when you move from mentoring an individual to mentoring a team? 

It’s fundamentally different. With individual mentoring, you’re focused primarily on the person in front of you. With team mentoring, you’re working with the dynamics of the team as a whole. 

I currently do this alongside another mentor, and the chemistry between the two of us matters a great deal. You need a shared understanding of how you want to approach the team. The objective isn’t to tell the team how to work; it’s to help them understand their own dynamics and identify how to improve their performance. 

Can you give an example of what that looks like in practice? 

With one client, we spoke individually and confidentially with each team member before the engagement began. We asked about the organisation, what was getting in the way of performance, what could accelerate it, and what they thought was holding the team back. 

We then brought the themes together anonymously and shared them with the team. 

Some people didn’t recognise what was being described; others recognised the issues instantly.But that disagreement created the opportunity for a much richer conversation: why doesn’t everyone see it the same way? Where does that difference in perception come from? People began adding their own experiences and examples. The important thing was creating an environment where people felt permission to say more. 

What have you learned about facilitating those conversations? 

You have to be comfortable not being the centre of attention. 

In one session, we expected to spend about 30 minutes on the team’s priorities. We ended up spending two and a half hours, because something important clearly needed to be explored. 

The room shouldn’t be looking at you as the facilitator – they should be looking at each other. That’s where the maturity of a mentor comes in. You need to be comfortable not being recognised for what you’ve done. You’re there to enable something to happen, sometimes by introducing a model or framework that helps the team make sense of what they’re experiencing. 

What does a senior leader need from a mentor that they may not get elsewhere? 

Someone with no other agenda. A senior executive can’t always go to the Chair, because the Chair has an agenda. They can’t necessarily go to colleagues, because they’re operating in a competitive environment. And they may not be able to have these conversations at home, because their partner may not understand the context well enough to make it useful. 

Leadership can be a lonely place. The mentor’s job is to be completely in that person’s corner, in confidence, and help them work through what they’re facing. 

What should CHROs and organisations think about when considering mentoring? 

They should be as committed as we are to developing better leaders. Once you’ve identified the right people, think carefully about what they need and how mentoring fits into their development. 

The need will be different for every individual, but the impact goes beyond the person being mentored. Help someone become a better leader, and their team benefit, and so does the organisation. 

That’s why organisations should look at mentoring not simply as an investment in an individual, but as an investment in the wider leadership culture – the same principle, in a way, that first drew me into this work as a mentee all those years ago at Telefónica.