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.

We live in an “I want it now” world. We often expect instant and perfect results from ourselves and the people we lead.

How often do we see something once or see an expert demonstrate a new skill and we either expect to be able to do it just as well right out of the chute, or we dismiss it as being too hard to learn? Or perhaps we try it once. But it doesn’t feel natural, it takes effort and we feel inept or uncomfortable. I know I hate that feeling.

Let’s say, however, that we’re really determined. This looks like something worth learning. We try it a few more times. But more often than not, we say, “Well that didn’t work!” And then, we never try it again.

News flash: It takes time to gain competence, let alone expertise and mastery. This is where your mentor can provide you with invaluable support, coaching and a realistic perspective on what tangible progress should look like.

When you want to adopt a new practice, or learn something new, tell your mentor what it is and what you intend to accomplish. Research by behavioral psychologists has shown that simply identifying a new practice that can become a positive habit sets you up for success. For even more insurance, set a specific and measurable goal. Work out an action plan and report your results as you go.

Give yourself at least 90 days to reach your goal.

During the first two weeks, check in with your mentor daily to report progress or setbacks when they happen and for support and encouragement. After that, depending on how you are doing, weekly or bi-weekly check-ins should be sufficient.

These steps will help you to be genuinely confident that you will practice your new behavior, despite occasional slips. Psychologists call this self-efficacy. It’s different from general self-confidence; rather it is the specific conviction that you can change the behavior.

Initially, you might find your mentor’s encouragement and your delight in the vision of accomplishment inspiring. But inspiration is short-lived. At best, it will last about a week or two. Henry Ford once said, “…after that, it’s 90 percent hard work.” Inspiration may get us started, but it won’t keep us going. This is where motivation makes the difference.

Motivation

And you can’t just go to the store and buy a case of motivation. According to behavioral psychologists, motivation is a series of small behaviors. Reporting your progress to your mentor and tracking it by recording or charting the behavior in question between meetings will give you a solid framework to stay accountable and in action.

Reward Your Successes

Reinforce yourself for each step with a healthy treat. Mentors, here’s where a specific and inarguable acknowledgement will reinforce your mentee’s confidence and resolve. You and your mentoring partner may want to create a reward contract. You will also want to arrange your environment to help, rather than hinder you – limit exposure to any high-risk situations, create reminders. We don’t need to think of motivation as something we have. Motivations are specific behaviors we build into our day.

My latest behavior change is in making certain that I enter every appointment I make in my smart phone calendar, with enough of a reminder alarm to ensure I keep the appointment and get there on time. For the most art this is easy to do, except when I am very busy or when setting up the appointment takes more than three email exchanges, or the meeting gets re-scheduled. That’s when I can lose track and end up missing an appointment altogether or get there late. Both results are bad for business an extremely embarrassing for me.

The plan, which I put into place on January 6, after missing an appointment, is to enter every meeting or appointment as soon as a date and time is identified. Set the reminder alarm for 2 hours ahead or up to 2 days ahead, depending on how much preparation I need to do for the meeting. Next, I review the upcoming week’s appointments on Sunday. I let my mentor know I have done that via a text message.

It’s been a week and a half, and I found a flaw in the plan. When the reminder pops up on my phone I am also going to text or email the person or people to confirm the meeting. That means I have to set the reminders so there is enough time for people to adjust if they have to. Details are not my forte, so this is a challenge. I am confident, though, that I will be able to make this practice a habit that will allow me to be more productive and happier in my work.

Susan Bender Phelps runs Odyssey Mentoring & Leadership, training and consulting company for organizations that want to thrive and survive the Boomer Brain Drain. Her new e-book, “Aspire Higher” is available at Slimbooks.

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.

What makes any mentoring program successful, no matter the size of your company, is this: “A mentorship program needs to have a path to leadership or advancement for the mentees.” That’s what I told writer Katie Morell of American Express Open Forum in a recent article.

Here I would add, the path to advancement needs to be just as clear for the mentors as well. Once you have built that into the design, and back it up with tangible results, your program will be highly regarded by your employees. They will compete to be involved.

In the beginning, though, you can follow some simple steps to start things off in the right direction. Read more here.

I have talked about this distinction so often. In a February posting on Talent Management, writer Valerie Pelan summarizes the work of authors Mark David Nevins and Stephen A. Stumpf who state that talented human capital will be the prime ingredient of future business success. I couldn’t agree more!

They assert that one way current leaders can support future leaders is to commit to an organizational culture that values mentorship and coaching and includes constructive and timely feedback. Coaching is about strategizing ways to handle situations; mentoring is about providing guidance.

Read more at Talent Management.

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.

Who will I acknowledge so they feel appreciated down to their toes?

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