The Powerful Mentorship Model That Builds Successful Teams

I’ve lost millions of dollars because I was incompetent in my role.

It’s an issue many companies struggle with at the leadership level, big and small. In an All-In podcast, Chamath Palihapitiya said, “We’ve gone through an entire decade of undertraining an entire generation of people in Silicon Valley.”

But it’s not just in The Valley.

It’s everywhere. It’s a problem that permeates every company. According to Chamath,

“We have undertrained and under-mentored the product managers, the engineers, the senior executive management, the CEOs. Many of these people, unfortunately, don’t have the skill set to execute at a high level.”

Early in my career, I only knew what I knew.

My higher education prepared me for book-related case studies, but in the real world, it was wildly different.

I struggled because I was trying to figure things out on the fly. I was navigating the world with no map and no co-pilot. I didn’t have a mentor to help coach and teach me along the way. I was constantly learning, trying, and improving, but the world didn’t give an F about me.

It wanted to teach me some hard business lessons — most of them people problems — and it succeeded.