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We All Need a Few Good Mentors
That’s what I tell college graduates who ask me for advice: Find people willing to take a protégé.
By FAY VINCENT
Aug. 16, 2015 6:40 p.m. WALL STREET JOURNAL
The other day a fine young man came to me for some advice. A 23-year-old graduate of Dartmouth College, he was beginning to think about graduate school and whether he should pursue a career in sports management. I did my best to give him the benefit of my old-man viewpoint, emphasizing the importance of finding mentors who would take the time to counsel him as a protégé. As I thought about the vital role such men—they all happened to be men—played in my life, I could not help but feel enormous gratitude.
Those mentors included my boarding-school headmaster, George Van Santvoord; the former Yale Law professor Dick Smith, for whom I worked in New York as a young lawyer; Mort Caplin, my senior partner in the Washington law firm where I later worked; and Herbert Allen, two years my junior, who hired me to run Columbia Pictures in 1978. My parents provided some helpful DNA and instilled a set of values more essential than any tangible inheritance. And, of course, I was lucky. As the old baseball man Branch Rickey once opined, “Luck is the residue of design.”
Isaac Stern told me once that music takes place in between the notes. Mentors do their work interstitially as well. They counsel to be careful about little things that they know can be tragically important.
Van Santvoord was 60 when I went to the Hotchkiss School as a 14-year-old freshman. He was a towering intellectual figure with a shimmering record of achievements: Rhodes Scholar, wounded hero of World War I, Yale trustee. He valued learning, curiosity, discipline and character. Many of the hundreds of students he supervised over 38 years as schoolmaster acknowledged that his influence on them was greater than that of any other person save perhaps a parent. He once took me aside to warn me that my handwriting had deteriorated, and counseled me to remedy the problem by using the Greek forms of the letters. Details mattered to him.
Years later, Dick Smith taught me the importance of directly answering the questions of a client. A superb writer, he carefully edited my efforts while never discouraging me. I recall his emphasis on the value of the first draft—my work—and how his final product built on it. The process of becoming a lawyer can be tedious, but Smith was a gentle critic and mentor.
Mort Caplin, a veteran of Omaha Beach, had been the IRS commissioner under JFK and was the main figure in his law firm when I joined it. He is now 99 and happily still comes into the office. From him I learned the merits of a leader who rarely asserted his authority and tolerated free-ranging debates on topics he had the power to decide.
For a time he taught law at the University of Virginia, and his legal talents were impressive. Yet he was avuncular, carefully building respect among his younger partners by listening patiently and accepting views from us that we knew he did not share. Mort was teaching lessons that are rooted in wisdom and character. Being smart is not sufficient even if it is essential. His firm has prospered and survived, no small credit to him.
Herbert Allen was two years behind me at Williams College. In 1978, in the midst of a media and business firestorm at Columbia Pictures, which he controlled, he stunned me and everyone else in the business world by picking me to become the CEO of that film and entertainment company. For years afterward, his stalwart support for me, a total business neophyte, was gently offered and totally vital.
From Herbert I learned to maintain balance between short-term objectives and what he always called “what really matters.” He was never focused on the price of our stock in the short run. He was constantly counseling me to be sure we were building long-term assets. One day I called to share the good news that our stock had taken a jump, and I asked him why. “My guess,” he offered laconically, “is there are more buyers today than sellers.” Herbert’s main example was to treat everyone in the company as important. He went out of his way to warmly greet all employees. He taught me that style and grace are essential to leadership.
Mentoring is an art and it requires both time and energy. Some successful leaders seem too busy to want to take the time to provide explicit counseling. One can learn from them only by observation. Yet in my life, my mentors had time for me. My good fortune was to have learned from a few whose care for me was so telling—a blessing indeed.
Mr. Vincent was formerly the CEO of Columbia Pictures Industries, executive vice president of Coca-Cola, and the commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989-92.
That’s what I tell college graduates who ask me for advice: Find people willing to take a protégé.
By FAY VINCENT
Aug. 16, 2015 6:40 p.m. WALL STREET JOURNAL
The other day a fine young man came to me for some advice. A 23-year-old graduate of Dartmouth College, he was beginning to think about graduate school and whether he should pursue a career in sports management. I did my best to give him the benefit of my old-man viewpoint, emphasizing the importance of finding mentors who would take the time to counsel him as a protégé. As I thought about the vital role such men—they all happened to be men—played in my life, I could not help but feel enormous gratitude.
Those mentors included my boarding-school headmaster, George Van Santvoord; the former Yale Law professor Dick Smith, for whom I worked in New York as a young lawyer; Mort Caplin, my senior partner in the Washington law firm where I later worked; and Herbert Allen, two years my junior, who hired me to run Columbia Pictures in 1978. My parents provided some helpful DNA and instilled a set of values more essential than any tangible inheritance. And, of course, I was lucky. As the old baseball man Branch Rickey once opined, “Luck is the residue of design.”
Isaac Stern told me once that music takes place in between the notes. Mentors do their work interstitially as well. They counsel to be careful about little things that they know can be tragically important.
Van Santvoord was 60 when I went to the Hotchkiss School as a 14-year-old freshman. He was a towering intellectual figure with a shimmering record of achievements: Rhodes Scholar, wounded hero of World War I, Yale trustee. He valued learning, curiosity, discipline and character. Many of the hundreds of students he supervised over 38 years as schoolmaster acknowledged that his influence on them was greater than that of any other person save perhaps a parent. He once took me aside to warn me that my handwriting had deteriorated, and counseled me to remedy the problem by using the Greek forms of the letters. Details mattered to him.
Years later, Dick Smith taught me the importance of directly answering the questions of a client. A superb writer, he carefully edited my efforts while never discouraging me. I recall his emphasis on the value of the first draft—my work—and how his final product built on it. The process of becoming a lawyer can be tedious, but Smith was a gentle critic and mentor.
Mort Caplin, a veteran of Omaha Beach, had been the IRS commissioner under JFK and was the main figure in his law firm when I joined it. He is now 99 and happily still comes into the office. From him I learned the merits of a leader who rarely asserted his authority and tolerated free-ranging debates on topics he had the power to decide.
For a time he taught law at the University of Virginia, and his legal talents were impressive. Yet he was avuncular, carefully building respect among his younger partners by listening patiently and accepting views from us that we knew he did not share. Mort was teaching lessons that are rooted in wisdom and character. Being smart is not sufficient even if it is essential. His firm has prospered and survived, no small credit to him.
Herbert Allen was two years behind me at Williams College. In 1978, in the midst of a media and business firestorm at Columbia Pictures, which he controlled, he stunned me and everyone else in the business world by picking me to become the CEO of that film and entertainment company. For years afterward, his stalwart support for me, a total business neophyte, was gently offered and totally vital.
From Herbert I learned to maintain balance between short-term objectives and what he always called “what really matters.” He was never focused on the price of our stock in the short run. He was constantly counseling me to be sure we were building long-term assets. One day I called to share the good news that our stock had taken a jump, and I asked him why. “My guess,” he offered laconically, “is there are more buyers today than sellers.” Herbert’s main example was to treat everyone in the company as important. He went out of his way to warmly greet all employees. He taught me that style and grace are essential to leadership.
Mentoring is an art and it requires both time and energy. Some successful leaders seem too busy to want to take the time to provide explicit counseling. One can learn from them only by observation. Yet in my life, my mentors had time for me. My good fortune was to have learned from a few whose care for me was so telling—a blessing indeed.
Mr. Vincent was formerly the CEO of Columbia Pictures Industries, executive vice president of Coca-Cola, and the commissioner of Major League Baseball, 1989-92.