Mentoring With A Twist At ANZ

(Article printed with permission from ANZ. For further information please contact Virginia Matthews, Diversity, ANZ Institutional Virginia.matthews@anz.com)

The roles are being reversed at ANZ's Institutional Division, where senior managers are being mentored by less senior people from across the same division. Trading Places is a reverse mentoring program managed and implemented by Virginia Matthew's, ANZ Institutional's head of Diversity (with some help upfront from Xplore). Around 40 people volunteered for the program and the Group Managing Director, Steve Targett and his, direct reports were matched with mentors. The matching was carefully based on common interests and an agreed need for exposure to a particular area of diversity - gender, cultural difference, age, religion, sexual orientation and disability.

Sarah Hearn, a Strategy Analyst and 2005 graduate, is mentoring Mark Whelan, joint Managing Director Markets and chair of the Institutional Diversity Council. "It's a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between senior management and the rest of the organisation," says Sarah. "The dynamic is really interesting, sharing things in both directions and getting out of our comfort zones. I hope it becomes the norm, a natural part of what we do." At Sarah's suggestion, she shadowed Mark for a day in December gaining valuable insight into his day as Managing Director and providing Mark with feedback on real examples of what she observed. Mark Whelan says the program has the full support of the leadership team. "Information doesn't always flow upwards so this program will give us a better appreciation of the real issues. We need our leaders to understand their assumptions and unconscious bias. It's one of the ways we can identify what is suppressing our improvement on diversity issues.

Mark continued: "Changes are already happening, such as diversity being top of the agenda at management meetings, but real change is cultural: people embracing diversity and knowing it is safe to speak up and express a view. "There is no magic wand; it's persistence and a combination of things that will make the difference."

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