The Serendis Blog
11 March, 2025
Addressing the Authenticity Paradox in Mentoring
There’s a common trap in mentoring relationships that’s easy to miss. It occurs when both parties try and shape the mentee into a “carbon copy” of their mentor. This creates an “authenticity paradox” in which the very relationship meant to…
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12 August, 2024
4 Ways Mentoring Develops Senior Leaders
If sending the entire executive team to a tailored workshop at Harvard Business School isn’t going to happen this year, developing your organisation’s most senior leaders is still within reach. You don’t have to look far or even outside your…
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1 March, 2024
Is the gap widening between people leaders and team members’ perceptions of what good management looks like?
As an executive coach, I have the privilege to be invited into people’s minds. They share their frustrations, their moments of joy and their day-to-day experiences…or rather their perception of their day-to-day experiences. I have learnt over the years that there is…
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3 July, 2023
Our cross-industry mentoring programs’ secret sauce
‘The structure and support provided by Serendis on this program made it a uniquely valuable experience for me’ (2022 Mentee) ‘I have been a mentor on this program many times but still learn at each session as the art of…
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29 June, 2022
Insights from Three Harvard Legends…
Harvard University is devoted to teaching, researching and developing leaders who make a difference globally. The University is at the forefront of behavioural science and I recently had the incredible privilege to learn again from three Harvard legends: Amy Edmondson,…
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7 June, 2022
How do I nail a performance review conversation?
There is an ongoing body of research demonstrating the impact performance conversations have on both recipients’ and managers’ brains. The level of anxiety it generates, often prevents team members from engaging their pre-frontal context and remembering or learning from the…
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26 April, 2022
How Do You Make It Past Two Mentoring Sessions?
Ask any senior successful individual in the corporate sector and they will tell you that a mentor, a sponsor, or a coach has, at a point in time in their career, contributed to their success. Some share the story of…
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3 July, 2020
Mentoring Relationships Prove Their Deepest Value During Covid19 Lockdown
Mentoring has proven to be the best possible form of leadership development in times of change and crisis and we have found a surprising and impactful way to achieve results virtually. Now we wait for the ‘big reveal’, where we…
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2 April, 2019
Why you need a mentor and how to get one
I have a three-year-old son. He is always asking me for a boost. He wants to climb higher in the tree, sit on the counter to help me cook, or stand on the most precarious obstacle at the playground. He…
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28 July, 2017
The power of mentoring and how to do it effectively
Much has been written about the merits of mentoring. From personal experience, having facilitated cross-sector and internal mentoring programs for several years, I have observed how structured mentoring operates as a powerful lever to accompany individual, organisational and sector change. Serendis’…
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27 April, 2017
Mentoring or Sponsorship?
Is one approach better than the other to enhance gender diversity? In spite of the prolific literature produced around this topic, the lack of gender diversity at the top levels of our corporate world is a very complex, multifaceted issue…
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