As Executive Director at Catalyst Canada, Alex Johnston is charged with shaping Catalyst’s strategy for continued growth. Her role is to lead initiatives to advance gender equity in Canadian business, including mentorship of staff. She advises and builds Canadian leadership of tomorrow and is a natural fit to share best practices on forming and maintaining relationships that exemplify excellence in today’s competitive marketplace. Catalyst’s mentorship-focused culture recommends that organizations take responsibility to help employees achieve their full potential. When organizations help staff grow, advance, and develop, it benefits all parties involved.

In offering your time as a mentor, through formal and informal relationships, there are a lot of best practices to take into consideration, most of which involve being open and generous with your time. Johnston relates this to how she interacts with fellow Catalyst staff. “Whenever I can bring someone else along, I do. That way they can observe, learn, and grow,” she explains. “I try to bring one of the younger people on our team to many or most of our public events. This has been very useful in terms of their growth. This also helps me get to know them better, to know who they are, and to learn about their life, inside and outside the office. That knowledge helps me get a better sense of how to support them. There are formal and informal relationships, but a lot of really good leaders do this naturally throughout their day. I try to model that behaviour.”

Sponsorship vs. Mentorship

Johnston also addressed how some common misconceptions about mentorship impact what both mentors and protégés can gain from a match. “We often talk about the difference between mentorship and sponsorship: A mentor is someone who speaks with you, and a sponsor is someone who speaks about you,” she explains. “The role of a sponsor is to champion you in situations that impact your own advancement.” Johnston also stressed the importance of maintaining those relationships over the long term. “You need to cultivate both sponsorship and mentorship relationships throughout your career. It’s important to recognize that creating a sponsorship relationship doesn’t happen overnight,” she said, adding that “Catalyst developed a list of board-ready women that we make available to companies. As champions of these candidates, CEOs are helping build this list.”

Two key steps towards meaningful mentorships are to seek feedback and to be clear about your own expectations (for the relationship). Johnston also added, “Mentorship doesn’t have to all be from one person. Many people have helped me grow and develop as a person. BMO’s CEO, Bill Downe, is the chair of the Catalyst Canada board. Any time we do an event or have an important meeting together, he always offers me informal feedback that helps me continue to grow as a leader. Cultivating that kind of feedback is a two-way street. He knows that I value his advice, and appreciate that he takes the time to offer it. My father has been another great mentor, modelling values around treating people well and shaping how I expect to be treated. I go to him for advice even when I don’t always want to hear it.”

Johnston also stressed the importance of being genuinely yourself while you build your career and professional brand, noting that “when you build your career around who you really are, you’re at your best and can have a great career and set a great example.”