Rick Schultz used to pay $35 an hour for mostly his own advice.
Earlier in his career, the president and CEO of Spectrum Surgical Instruments Corp. approached a speaker after a meeting and asked if he’d meet with him. He became Schultz’s mentor — but with a fee attached.
Schultz started searching for a pool of ideas that went deeper than a single mentor, and he landed on a question facing many leaders: Where can you get unbiased advice without the bill?
“Mentoring for a CEO, you either go to a lawyer or an accountant,” Schultz says. “But how do I talk to an accountant about my problems? He wants me to put up good numbers. The lawyer, he’s billing me. The banker wants to make sure I pay. There are CEO coaches, but that’s a billable thing.”
So Schultz looked for a true mentor instead of a paid consultant. And instead of one, he found a dozen. He joined Vistage, an international organization of CEOs, presidents and company owners that claims 14,000 members around the world.
“The CEOs have no vested interest in each other [other] than to help each other,” says Jim Mazzella, chair of the local Vistage International group. “They’re not going to benefit from their advice. It’s straight advice that you’d pay to get from an attorney.”
Mazzella facilitates monthly meetings with about a dozen CEOs and meets with each one individually just as frequently.
“The best practice here isn’t as much about finding a mentor as it is a whole system of a way of interacting one to one in a group setting so that you get the whole package of mentoring,” Mazzella says. “I’m selling them short if it’s just me and them, because the real power is all the membership together.”
Here’s how they create an open atmosphere of input and ideas in their mentoring group.