The generational shift of the next seven years will be an unprecedented opportunity for those who are qualified to ascend to leadership. There simply aren’t enough Gen Xers to fill the vacuum that will be left by retiring Boomers. For every two people who retire, there’s just one Gen Xer to take their place.

FACT: There are 81 million Boomers in the U.S, 51 percent are women. Yet, in the Fortune 1000 companies, there are just 42 women CEO’s.

FACT: According to Catalyst, the average board of a Fortune 500 company in is just 16 percent female.

FACT: There are only 46 million Gen Xers in the U.S., 52 percent are women.

To survive, companies will need to cultivate the young leaders they have so the Boomer Brain Drain has as little impact as possible on their organizations and their stock options (which could dramatically affect their retirement plans).

For those organizations that don’t prepare, the leadership gap could cause a greater economic downturn than the current recession. That’s because people with little or no leadership experience will be catapulted to positions they’re not ready to fill. Companies could poach qualified people. But there won’t be enough experienced men to fill those positions. Organizations that don’t create effective succession plans will be at risk.

For GenXers and a significant number of Millenials who aspire higher, now is the time to prepare yourself for leadership and management roles no matter where you work. Think about the knowledge that will be lost when Boomers retire and how you can begin to acquire that knowledge now.

• Take advantage of knowledge transfer opportunities in your organization and professional associations.

• Get a mentor and be a mentor. Mentors advance more quickly and can earn up to $25,000 a year more than their colleagues who don’t. Mentees learn the ropes more quickly than experience alone can teach them.

• Earn that degree you’ve been putting off.

• Volunteer on a non-profit board so you can learn and practice collaborative decision-making. Choose a board where you’ll be able to work alongside high-level executives. This will increase your confidence and expand your network.

These next seven years will usher in opportunities for people from all backgrounds. More women and people of color than ever before will be able to rise and take their place among the leaders of U.S. corporations and non-profits. You could be one of them.

Susan Bender Phelps runs Odyssey Mentoring and Leadership. She is the author of the best-selling book,” Aspire Higher,” true career and business mentoring success stories that inspire readers to use mentoring to create breakthrough results.

According to Inc. writer, Maeghan Ouimet, a recent report found that bad bosses cost the economy $360 billion a year, that’s BILLION, in lost productivity. She adds that, “Terrible managers have a trickle-down effect: They bring down the quality of your employees work and your bottom line with them.

How pervasive is the problem? Well, three out of four employees report that their boss is the worst and most stressful part of their job. And 65% of employees said they’d take a new boss over a pay raise!

In addition to costing you in productivity, this can also cost you your best and brightest. 50% of employees who don’t feel valued plan to look for another job within the next year. Now that the recession seems to be loosening its grip, that timeline will likely speed up.

What’s the answer? Create a learning environment. Teach your leadership to educate employees. Give them the mentorship and leadership skills that will make it possible. These skills include: Listening powerfully, being a keen observer of patterns of behavior and results, asking thinking questions that lead to breakthroughs and giving actionable feedback. My new e-book, “Aspire Higher,” tells compelling true stories of how mentoring boosts engagement, success and career growth.

After all, good bosses are teachers and mentors. In fact, their teaching accounts for 67% of a boss’s effect on employee productivity,” says Katheryn L. Shaw, Stanford University Professor of Economics and author of “The Value of Bosses.”

Click here to read more.

It is my pleasure to announce the release of my new e-book on effective Career Mentoring.

People rarely achieve success on their own. Whether a parent, friend, teacher, coach, pastor, or boss was the one, we have all been given a hand up to get where we are today. Yet, there are many unfulfilled dreams and so much untapped potential because people don’t have active mentors in their lives.

In this book, I tell compelling stories of mentoring success that will challenge you to appreciate the value of the mentors in your life, and then inspire you to pass that value on through active mentoring of another person in your life.

Featured is my own story and how I came to be an expert on mentorship. Read about Sara Mensah, one of the top women executives in the NBA, Bibby Gignilliat, CEO of Parties That Cook, science fiction writer, Mike Saxton and others who used mentoring to advance their careers. Each story serves to distinguish the qualities of effective mentoring.

The book is available in Nook, Kindle, ipad and pdf formats.
Click here to purchase.

Twenty-five cents from the purchase of every book will go to New York Youth at Risk as my way of honoring my mentor, Claudette C’Faison, Executive Director. Her guiding hand made it possible for me to reach the level of professionalism and success I have today.

Exciting NEWS!!!! My first book, “Aspire Higher” will be out this fall. You will be among the first to know as soon as it is released.

In the meantime, you can visit my new publisher, SlimBooks – where you could win a copy of every book they publish this year! – so if you win, mine’s included in the giveaway. I think you will be almost as excited as I am about how Slimbooks is going to change the way we read. It’s why I chose them. Please share widely AND let me know what you think.

Recently, I had an a wonderful conversation with Audrey Shah of MO.com. We talked about how I started Odyssey Mentoring & Leadership, my take on the distinction between competent and great leadership and I shared one of the mentoring stories from my upcoming book, “Aspire to Go Higher: Get a Mentor, Be A Mentor,” due out at the end of August.

From the Interview:
“The best leaders should be expected to identify and cultivate leaders and peak performers to keep the organization growing and successful. When I interviewed Sarah Mensah, Chief Marketing Officer of the Portland Trail Blazers for my book, she could point to major turning points throughout her career where mentoring helped her to grow and develop. I live in Portland and often run into members of her staff, they all tell me that Sarah maintains a culture of mentoring that makes them feel honored to work with her. They know they have a future and that they are valued. That is the secret to high employee engagement and productivity.”

“I was lucky because Bob was a natural mentor and sponsor. He was a professional colleague who readily stepped up to become my mentor. This is clearly the ideal of informal mentoring. Bob and I had been working together on a project for the chamber for two years. We met through our jobs, but didn’t work for the same companies. Our relationship began as a situational acquaintance and over time warmed into a collegial friendship and then mentoring.”

To read more click here.

What makes a leader effective? Sound decision-making, knowing how to manage people, taking charge, and inspiring others to achieve goals are a few of the qualities. But helping others develop their full potential is also an integral part of successful leadership.

According to a new Catalyst report, mentoring pays off for both emerging talent and those who invest time in cultivating them. And high-potential talent who have been mentored, coached, or sponsored to advance in their careers are more likely to “pay it forward” by developing the next generation of leaders.

Paying it forward pays back: For both mentees and mentors, we see tangible career advancement. Most exciting is that for mentors and sponsors we see serious compensation growth — up to $25,075 in additional compensation between 2008 and 2010, say the report’s authors.

Why? It may just be that developing emerging talent creates more visibility and a following within the organization for the high-potentials who are doing the developing, and that leads to greater reward and recognition for the extra effort.

Women, the report finds, are even more likely than men to develop other talent. Sixty-five percent of women who received career development support are now developing new talent, compared to 56 percent of men. Seventy-three percent of the women developing new talent are developing women, compared to only 30 percent of men. This finding helps bust the often-cited “Queen Bee” myth that women are reluctant to provide career support to other women and may even actively undermine each other.

Overall, the report finds that high-potentials who are paying it forward today recognize that others once took a risk on them and gave them their chance—and now it’s their turn. The men and women who are more likely to be developing others:

• Received developmental support (59%) vs. those who did not (47%).
• Were sponsored (66%) as opposed to not receiving sponsorship (42%).
• Are in senior executive/CEO level positions (64%) vs. those at non-managerial levels (30%).
• Are more proactive when it comes to their own career advancement (63%) vs. those who are relatively inactive (42%) with regard to their own career advancement.

The report poses key questions for companies to consider. For instance: How is your organization creating a culture of learning and talent development? What will motivate your talent to “pay it forward” to the next generation of leaders? How can more men be encouraged to develop women at their organizations? How can organizations disarm stigmas about spending time with the opposite sex at work?

Mentorship and Leadership training can increase the numbers of high producers and potentials who can and will be effective mentors and sponsors in your organization.

Access the Study at Catalyst

Leslie Truex, author of the Work At Home Bible, interviewed Susan Bender Phelps, CEO, of Odyssey Mentoring and Leadership for an audio podcast on her website www.Work-At-HomeSuccess.com this week. You’ll learn how she started Odyssey Mentoring and Leadership and hear why mentoring skills and mentoring are so critical for professional development, employee engagement and productivity: http://workathomesuccess.com/wahs-podcast-163-susan-phelps-of-odyssey-mentor (you’ll have to copy and paste the link into your browser to get there).

An actively engaged employee is a productive member of your organization. They care, they’re motivated and they are actively contributing. In fact, a large part of your company’s success is the direct result of their accomplishments, creativity, drive and talent.

A 2006 Gallup poll found that higher performing companies have a significant difference in the ratio of engaged versus disengaged employees than lower performing organizations. That’s 8:1 for the best, and just 2:1 at the average companies. If yours is one of those high-performing companies, that’s very good news.

But, according to a 2010 survey by global consulting firm BlessingWhite, only 31 percent of the global work force is actively engaged. Overall, they found that 52 percent of the work force is not engaged. That means they come to work and do what’s expected or less. If that isn’t an eye opener; it turns out 17 percent of the workforce is actively disengaged: they show up when they feel like it, and continually undermine and work against you.

This is important because employees who aren’t engaged lower overall productivity and add to turn over and that costs you. Before the recession, the cost of replacing an employee averaged $17,000 and those who made more than $60,000 per year cost more than $38,000 to replace. Now human resource managers tell us to look at an employee’s annual salary and figure 100 to 150 percent is what it will cost you to replace them. This includes lost productivity, recruitment and training. When you consider managerial and C-suite compensation packages, the total cost is sobering.

It turns out that the best predictor of high performance is that ratio of actively engaged employees at every level of the company. And employee engagement is most positively impacted when managers have excellent people skills. Managers who have great relationships with their direct reports out-perform those who rely solely on management actions.

This leads me to conclude that mentorship skills (people skills) and a mentoring environment (learning and support) are important tools for improving employee engagement at all levels of your organization. Once you have hired the best and brightest, mentoring is one of the most effective ways to ensure they stay engaged and committed to your organization. Mentoring enhances loyalty by placing high potential employees on the fast track with the extraordinary benefit of high quality senior level guidance.

Mentoring programs deliver three proven outcomes:

• While the best skills training can produce a bump in productivity of 33 percent, training combined with effective professional mentoring improves productivity up to 88 percent.
• Mentees form stronger bonds with you and your company because they can see a worthwhile future that includes them.
• Mentors experience a stronger sense of purpose and satisfaction when they use their knowledge and expertise to cultivate and develop another person.

Costly employee turnover will be reduced because employees in an effective mentoring relationship feel appreciated, have the opportunity to give and grow. Mentees get personal coaching, sponsorship and encouragement, enhance their skills, and increased levels of confidence. Both sides of the mentoring partnership experience a greater sense of satisfaction in their careers and often in their personal lives.

Here’s where you can see the complete study: http://www.blessingwhite.com/eee__report.asp

The people skills employees need in order to have effective mentoring partnerships can be learned and Odyssey Mentoring provides the training that empowers effective mentorship.

Has the door to the executive suite and the board room slammed shut for women? Is it still possible for other capable and talented women to join the ranks of leaders like Brenda C. Barnes, Chairman and CEO of Sara Lee, Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO of Avon Products, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of Pepsico, and Patricia Woertz, Chairman, President and CEO of Archer Daniels Midland?

The evidence is disappointing. In a recent article, about the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Board Directors and the 2010 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners, released Monday, December 13, Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst president and chief executive officer told FOX Business, “The first look at our census numbers over the last years shows little progress for women as top earners.”

• In 2010, women held 14.4% of executive officer positions, up from 13.5% in 2009 and only 7.6% of the top earning positions compared with 6.3% in 2009.
• Women held just 15.7% of board seats in 2010, a mere 0.5% gain over the 15.2% in 2009.

One bright aspect of the report, according to reporter, Barbara Mannino, showed that men and women with mentors were placed higher in their post-MBA first jobs, with men benefiting more than women over time. Men with mentors were 93% more likely than men without mentors to start out at middle management or above. Women with mentors increased their odds of being placed at mid-manager or above by only 56% over women who did not have mentors.

Throughout their careers, men received more promotions than women and higher salary increases. Each promotion earned men an extra 21% in compensation; for women, each promotion amounted to an extra 2%.

High- potential men and women with senior-level mentors advance further and earn more than those with less senior mentors. Overall, though, women’s compensation still lags men whether or not their mentor is at the top.

With top tier leadership and board rooms having so few women among their ranks, it is less likely these executives will choose a woman to mentor. Historically, leaders choose the person most likely to be just like them as their own careers advanced.

Forward-looking companies can boldly address this issue by creating and supporting mentorship programs that are open to a wider pool of future leaders. To launch such a program, both mentors and mentees should receive training that prepares both partners for success – regardless of gender, culture and generational differences.

Mentoring at the senior level is not about showing another how to do something, rather it is about cultivating the kind of thinking that experience provides. It includes being able to have a conversation that leads to insight, action, accountability, and learning. It provides a support system for the learning process. Finally, as the mentee proves herself it includes career sponsorship and network sharing to help her advance in her career.