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You might think the best way to get ahead at one of the world’s largest accounting firms would be to bring in more revenue. But if that accounting firm was EY you would be only partly right—if you want to get promoted to partner at this prestigious company, you’d better have a line out your door with people who call you their mentor.
At EY, it’s not enough for leaders to have followers; they need to have a particular kind of follower. “One of the things we always look at in terms of getting promoted to partner is the kind of following you have,” said EY Global Chairman and CEO Carmine Di Sibio. “How many people have you mentored? How many people want to work for you?”
EY has thrived under his leadership, generating an impressive $50 billion in revenue last year. Originally from Italy, Carmine brings a unique perspective to his role that draws from his experiences playing soccer and baseball.
At the core of this perspective is that people are at their best when they work in smaller teams and that mentoring works best when it is seen as an expectation and cultural norm rather than being left to the individual or mandated by a single department.
“Mentoring has to be built into your culture,” explained Di Sibio. “Otherwise it’s nothing more than a program.”
Di Sibio explains the difference between mentoring programs, which are driven by human resources departments, and mentoring cultures that are rooted in teams and driven by the demands of business.
“We are too big to rely only on programs,” he said of EY’s 400,000 team members serving clients in 150 countries. “In order to prevent people from just going through the motions, we have to build mentorship into our culture.”
Di Sibio believes mentoring should mirror sports team dynamics in which the more experienced players, as well as the coach, “pour into” the rookies to teach them how their team plays the game. You don’t have to have played a team sport to appreciate Di Sibio’s insights and practices for developing powerful mentoring cultures. These include:
• Turning mentorship into an expectation in your firm’s promotion structure.
• Using onboarding to hire employees who demonstrate a high probability of cultural fit.
• Making “social mobility” through professional development a stated goal of your corporate culture.
“We’re all from different backgrounds, so part of what we want to do is provide an opportunity for people to better themselves, socially and economically,” said Di Sibio. “I think back to when I was 18, and my parents and I didn’t know anything about the corporate world. I entered the business world and found people who could be advisors to me. For me it worked out well, but I think it could help so many more kids if they understood how mentoring worked.”
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