The just released annual report of China’s giant telecommunications equipment group, Huawei, provides a fascinating insight into the highly experimental governance structure the group adopted last year under which it rotates its chief executive every six months.

Business Spectator’s Stephen Bartholomeusz has an interesting analysis of this novel approach.  Read about it here.

Some more interesting research findings from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business – this time Professor Deborah Gruenfeld explains how and why body language is critical to your effectiveness in working with other people. Read about it here.

“The window of opportunity for a CEO to execute on strategy appears to be shortening, to a period of two to three years” says investment bank Goldman Sachs in a report just released in Australia, “after which time their position may become untenable if they are unsuccessful”.

The median length of service for CEO’s of the top 100 listed companies in Australia has declined by a huge 8.5 months over the past 5 years to just 3.9 years.

The Weekend Australian newspaper notes that this trend raises serious concerns about corporate governance, with suggestions that shorter CEO tenure can negatively impact sound decision-making and lead to a disregard for long-term investment and value creation.

A contrary view says that weeding out poor performance sooner rather than later can only be good for shareholders.

And let’s not forget that, in Australia at least, poor performance can be very well rewarded with many cases of under-performing CEO’s being shown the door with quite hefty, sometimes obscenely so, pay-outs.

A useful benefit of these discussions is that you will find out what the rules of the organisation are, the so-called “rules of racing”, or the “unwritten rules” which govern so much of organisational behaviour. These unwritten rules, as I explain in a later post on Culture, are key indicators or components of the organisation’s culture and are critically important in terms of understanding the way the organisation is and how its culture was formed. These “rules” are also a good clue to the shadow of the organisation as discussed earlier.

Personality and other psychological tests

Psychological tests are increasingly being brought into play as another tool to help validate selection choices. There are a number of tests commonly used in these situations. First among these is the Myers Briggs Type Inventory, or MBTI, which is a well proven personality test (although test is not the right worse since there is no pass or fail or no better score than another score). The “test” takes only an hour or so and involves making selections from various answers to a given set of questions. Simply it helps determine or classify people’s natural personality style in normal situations. This test is particularly useful for understanding personality types and the similarities and differences that people with different backgrounds will exhibit when working together. It is useful in understanding the way people would relate to each other or how they would be in conflict with each other. It is also useful in understanding their management style as well.

Simply because one person has a particular personality type is not reason to reject their application. In some situations this may be necessary – if a position requires, for example, a particularly high level of technical functioning perhaps, whereas the test might suggest that a person’s natural inclination is more towards looking at the big picture or the overall view rather than looking at the detail or technical function. There are many excellent books on the Myers Briggs Indicator, which may be worth reading if you have a particular interest in this area.

A number of other psychological tests are often used by organisations when hiring or developing staff. These tests, which are often administered in groups or “batteries – sometimes taking up to 4 hours or more – include:

• The Cambell Interest and Skill Survey. This is a new measure of self- reported skills and interests. It is used mainly in academically-selective universities and in the occupational placement of middle managers.
• Career Assessment Inventories. This test measures and compares occupational interests with individuals “successfully” engaged in over 100 specific careers.
• Watson-Glasser Critical Thinking Appraisal Test. This test assists with the selection of candidates for any position where critical thinking is deemed to be an important attribute.

There are many other tests which essentially measure the same sorts of characteristics as those above.

These tests should be used as a guide only and as but one component of the selection process. They are not a replacement for face-to–face interviews. Be aware that these tests are influenced by situational variables, cultural factors, educational background and experiential learning. If you are asked to sit for such tests, it’s always a good idea to check that the test will be administered by someone qualified, usually a professional psychologist accredited in the particular test, who is also able to evaluate and interpret the results. Always insist on a formal de­briefing on your performance in any such test and check what the test results will be used for. Be wary of a potential employer who uses test results exclusively or as a substitute for personal interaction and judgment.

The value of psychological tests

I am not a great admirer of such tests, particularly when the results are held to show the way a person truly is. The main difficulty with over-reliance on these tests is that various distortions can creep in when they are given. Cultural differences may intervene or there could be situational issues, for example how someone is feeling at the time of doing the test or the environment in which it is being given.

There are also issues regarding an individual’s view of what a test will do. Some people view test results in simple pass or fail terms. Even though they are told that they don’t pass or fail, some people persist in viewing them that way and hence behave a certain way. What I mean by that is that some people, because of the word “test”, immediately assume that there is a right answer which must be looked for. They will try and work out the “right answer” in an attempt to answer the test “appropriately”, rather than be honest about answering the questions. Sometimes people deliberately answer a test in a particular way because they have decided that an organisation will want someone in a particular mould.

Tests also have a problem in that if you have done one recently, you are likely to either respond again the same way or, conversely, make sure that you answer differently if you haven’t got a job as a result of doing that test before, as most organisations tend to use the same tests.

Summing up

In summary, psychological tests can have a place in the selection process – but only that – a place, one of a number of elements, all of which need to be considered in assessing a candidate. Tests are far from fool-proof and are not infallible – they can’t give a right or wrong result about someone – at best they might suggest some areas for further exploration. Use them with caution!  Allow plenty of time for personal observation of, and interaction with, candidates, preferably by several members of the employing organisation.

HIRING STAFF

It will be apparent by now that an essential theme of this blog is your relationship as a manager or leader with your staff. In addition to relating well to staff in the work situation, it should be readily apparent that the decision as to which staff to hire and, regrettably, on occasions, which staff to fire are key decisions in ensuring the success of your organisation.

In relation to hiring staff, I do not intend to go through the normal and necessary HR or personnel steps of advertising, interviewing, referee checking etc. Rather, I am intending to impart some suggestions for how you might use your intuitive skills and judgement to better effect, to supplement the more normal selection processes.

Intuition and Judgement in Interviews

When we look at the word “intuitive” we think of various things. Commonly, what we think about is our “gut feel” about a person when we meet them for the first time, say in an interview situation. People often make decisions about hiring someone based on formal objective selection criteria, which are, of course, necessary and appropriate. However, one of the most important criteria that is often overlooked is “fit” and the person’s commitment to relationships and communication within an organisation, vital ingredients if they are to be an effective manager and leader. In terms of relationships, you would be looking at how well a particular applicant knows themselves. Some of the key questions that can be asked as part of the interview are “what are your weaknesses” and “what are your strengths”? These two questions are keys to the person’s self-esteem. We recognise that these questions are commonly, if not always, asked at interview situations and interviewees anticipate that they will be asked those questions. So, how do you discern what is a real and revealing comment by the interviewee or what is simply rehearsed “mumbo jumbo” created especially for the interview?

In reply to the “weaknesses” question, some of the ‘pat’ or standard answers are: “my technical skills are not as good in this area and I am doing this and this to improve them” or “my skills in this area are not as good and I am doing this about it”. Usually the weaknesses involve some sort of technical skill. There is never a comment: “well, I have difficulties making a decision when the decision might be unpopular” or “I have difficulty relating to staff under such and such conditions”, or “I sometimes get stressed out about situations I can’t directly control” or “I can’t really stand having female staff under me”, or “I can’ stand a female boss” or “I prefer a male boss” or all sorts of other possibilities which impact on the person’s organisational effectiveness. But of course, an interviewee will not reveal these inner secrets, so how can you elicit the real truth? The only way to do so is to ask more direct and difficult questions relating to these issues. Some examples might include:

• “Can you give us a situation where you have worked under a difficult boss?”
• “What was the nature of the difficulty?”
• “How did you deal with it?”
• “How did you manage it?” “Were you successful in managing it?”
  • “Did you think of other ways later on as to how you could have managed it better?”
  • “Can you give us an example of a difficult boss or staff member whom you didn’t succeed in working with, where you failed and no matter what you did it just didn’t work?”
  • “What did you learn from this experience?”
  • “Why was it so difficult?”

The same sorts of questions could be applied to another topic – “What has been the biggest disaster that you have personally been responsible for or deeply involved in?” Again, most people will be reluctant to admit anything. But careful probing along the lines outlined above will soon reveal the person’s true makeup. You will be able to judge fairly easily when you hear their answers if the person is simply reciting ‘mumbo jumbo’ or whether the person is being, or is trying to be, honest and open and able to clearly articulate his or her insights into those events and what lessons were learned and what remedial steps were taken or what learning opportunities were seized. The issue of weakness is important, as in our work place everyone often has to take on the role of being perfect and not making any mistakes and not having witnesses. This recommended interview style is important for organisations who want imperfect people but very good managers and leaders. After all, all good managers and good leaders have imperfections, because that is what a human being is. Being able to talk about weaknesses in an open but positive way is a very special and encouraging attribute.

We can now talk about strengths. This topic is always of some difficulty to people who are placed in an interview situation. Sometimes, people are reluctant to talk about their strengths as they fear that they are perhaps showing themselves as egotistical or arrogant. The realities are that it is most important for people to be able to say what their strengths are as it actually tells us a lot about their self-esteem. What we would be looking for here is a person who can demonstrate, as in the discussion on weaknesses, that they had certain strengths in dealing with whatever was required in the position, especially in the relationship sense, evidenced by examples of where they had showed strength in the way they dealt with people. An example might be where the person was able to deal with a difficult staff member in a positive way, or a particular change was to be introduced into an organisation and the person was able to lead, manage or do both in terms of implementing the change. Another example might be, to take the other side of the coin, the ability to successfully manage a disaster that occurred in the organisation in some way. Importantly, you should be looking for the person to talk about these things in a matter-of-fact way, while at the same time revealing something of their inner souls and showing some evidence that they have understood the underlying issues that they were dealing with, rather than simply reacting in some knee-jerk manner to some unexpected development.

If you are concerned that this approach does not necessarily fit one of the criteria in your position, serious consideration should be given to incorporating it into the criteria. Usually this can fit under the criteria of interpersonal relationships or communication skills or interpersonal skills. Far too often we make judgements under such criteria based simply on superficial answers given at interview – whether the person is articulate and smiles and looks you in the eye and professes to care about people and to manage them well. Plainly this level of superficiality is far from adequate because it tends to tackle only the intellectual level, or if we refer to our earlier discussion of the COMET model, it only tackles the top three levels of C, O and M. Being able to deal with the both strengths and weaknesses in the way we have shown demonstrates capacity for dealing with the harder E and T levels.

You may encounter a particular difficulty when presented with a candidate who has been recommended by your HR department or your subordinates who they claim meets the selection criteria better than others, and is the preferred candidate. Once you apply your intuitive judgement along the lines outlined above, you may on occasion come to a different conclusion. How then do you present so-called objective reasons to your subordinates or HR people to justify your decision to ignore their recommendation? One hint to help you answer this question lays in your inner discussion or your inner dialogue, sometimes called your “self- talk”. After having discussions with the particular applicant, it could be that you have this niggling feeling, and it might only just be a feeling – without any evidence, that this is not the right person. Ask yourself whether this is just a personal dislike or is it a true intuitive feeling about this person. More than likely, it is an intuitive view that perhaps this isn’t the right person. If you have any doubts about the candidate, the answer should be “no”, but be clear on what basis. As stated earlier, the best basis to look at is from the point of view of interpersonal communication.

This means that you must look at the interpersonal communication style of the interviewee. Were they relaxed, forthright, honest? Did they answer questions directly and honestly, with a comfortable expression on their faces or did they simply try to give you the “right answer”? Was the interview full of “right answers” rather than honest ones? Did you get the impression that they were expressing their own views and not a “textbook view”? Be sure that you are selecting the very best person for the job and not the person who has quoted all the right books or theories.

The best way to present your decision to your HR department or subordinates is simply to tell the truth – which is based on your very important criteria of interpersonal skills, relationship skills and the person’s ability to show deep insight and understanding of their behaviour, their motives and the way they impact on people. In your judgement, the recommended candidate did not adequately meet those criteria and, from your experience, people who do not meet those criteria to a reasonably high standard will almost invariably turn out to be unsatisfactory performers. Their unsatisfactory performance will be particularly evident in their ability to manage their position, especially in dealing with other staff, colleagues or the organisation generally. If they are senior managers or senior executives, this will also manifest itself in difficulties in managing upwards. They become simply “yes men” or “yes women” to the CEO, resulting in a superficially happy organisation but in which, underneath, lies resentment on their part that they have no power to talk honestly to the CEO.

If you happen to be the CEO in such an organisation, your senior executives will tell you a lot about what’s going right, but will be nervous, reluctant and probably unable to tell you what’s going wrong. In this instance, you have what is known as a “halo effect”, where everything that’s reported is “good news” and the bad news is never mentioned. I know the consequences that occur when organisations are unable to deal with bad news – where it’s put into the too-hard basket and left alone. Usually such organisations will eventually fail, even to the point of bankruptcy in extreme cases.

I also suggest that, for any management or executive position, the executive group above that level should all be involved in the selection process to some extent. I am not suggesting a selection committee comprised of every senior stakeholder, rather, it is important that each senior executive have the opportunity to have a one-on-one discussion certainly with the preferred candidate, if not a short list of two or three candidates. I recommend this course because then the organisation takes ownership of the hiring of this person and does not take the easy way out where the HR department will be blamed for a poor selection. A further reason is that if there are any issues that arise with the candidate, they can be brought up at the executive circle and resolved. Normally such a process is also quite useful because it introduces the applicant to the executive team and that is a two way street. It could be that the applicant doesn’t want to work for the organisation because s/he doesn’t necessarily connect with the executive management that s/he meets, so it has a twofold benefit in preventing an unfortunate match which would only fail in time.

Strengthening the recruitment process

Hiring the right staff, and doing it carefully and properly, is receiving much more attention these days given the difficulties that often occur at the other end when staff do not turn out well and must be terminated. We all know the personal trauma engendered by terminations, as well as the legal minefield we increasingly have to negotiate in terms of unfair dismissal laws and so on. It is not surprising, therefore, that many enlightened companies and CEOs are initiating a number of innovative approaches to extend and strengthen the recruitment process in order to hopefully “guarantee” a better and more certain result.

Increasingly, the old fashioned interview often conducted by the Human Resources department initially, with the CEO or an executive interviewing a short list of three or four people, has not proven to be fail-safe or as successful as it might be. Alternatives are needed. Among the many approaches now in evidence, the following have some interesting and innovative features:

1. One company has a system whereby those who are short-listed following the screening interviews by HR, and even a preliminary meeting with a senior executive or even the CEO, are interviewed by a panel comprising typically the CEO and two staff members who may be peers or in some cases subordinates of the position to be filled.I have seen such questioning directed at the interviewee by these other staff members which is particularly direct, incisive, forthright, penetrating and revealing, as often they are not restrained by feelings of protocol (“I must be nice to a peer”) and similar feelings. We are not suggesting that the staff members have some voting rights or power of veto; rather, they are there to expose attitudes and behaviours and other issues which might not otherwise surface.
2. Another approach is, again after screening interviews and perhaps one or more preliminary interviews with the CEO, to have a short list of senior candidates, typically no more than two or three, spend some extended period of time in the executive area of the organisation, separately of course, to meet with peer executives informally on a one-to-one basis. At the end of this process, the observations and impressions of your colleagues about the interviewee(s) can be obtained and a more comprehensive and balanced picture formed as a result of their contacts. Again we are not suggesting a voting system for selecting a candidate. The CEO will need to be careful to have established some ground rules prior to the process starting so that his or her colleagues know what their role is to be and understand clearly what the parameters are in terms of their assessment of the suitability or otherwise of the candidate. The CEO also needs to be prepared to hear some negative, sometimes unwanted, views expressed about even a preferred candidate. It would obviously be unwise to automatically discard those views when put to you by senior colleagues. You should give them very serious consideration indeed before rejecting them. It’s important to listen to these views and not be defensive and simply “dig in” in favour of your preferred candidate. While your senior colleagues will not be exercising a veto, you need to be especially sensitive to the “gut feelings”, both good and bad, that people have about others. Almost invariably these “gut” or intuitive feelings turn out to be right. This is especially important when the “gut feelings” being reported to you are negative. This is a huge warning sign which you should ignore at your peril.

Using outside help

There are some advantages in using an external selection process, whether it involves “headhunters” or other external professionals who are able to assist. External assistance helps avoid the tendency for cloning in an organisation, whereby people will tend to select people who are like them and, in so doing, may ignore important attributes that are required or ignore some negative signs which need to be followed up on.

Headhunters could be used to do the entire selection process or perhaps to just come up with a list of candidates. Internal candidates are often made to go through some kind of external process, even when they are considered a very suitable candidate, to make sure that the very best candidate is in fact selected.

Limitations of internal selection processes

One of the problems in using internal people for staff selections is that, if they have been in an organisation for a long time, say 5-10 years or so, and they have worked together with candidates who are applying for a senior position and they know the senior people well, there is likely to be what is known as a “family effect”, where the senior people will tend to want to pick people they have worked with before. This could, in fact, be quite detrimental to the organisation as sometimes there is a block to seeing the negative side of these people. Of course, this can work the other way around, where we take the positive qualities for granted and over-emphasise any negatives. Hence the process could be prejudicial, one way or the other.

In the next post, part 2 of this topic, I will look the role and value of personality and other psychological tests.

Most of us use information we have about another party to reach agreement when negotiating.  But recent Stanford Graduate School of Business research warns that knowing our negotiation partners too well or having the wrong kind of information about them can actually produce less successful negotiating results than having no information.

Read about this interesting research on this important topic here.

Successful leaders share five traits that are more important than where they rank within their organisations, a retired McKinsey senior partner, Ian Davis, told a Stanford University MBA audience recently .

These traits, based on 30+ years of experience and observations and very briefly stated, are:

• set a clear direction
• initiate action
• follow through
• motivate workers
• lead by example.

While some leadership skills can be taught, Davis believes other traits come only through doing.

Read more about these interesting and worthwhile views here.

There is a great video of his address here.

Professor Gary Hamel, of the London Business School, reported some disturbing numbers at the recent World Business Conference in New York.

Of people at work:

•   only 14% are fully engaged,
•   62% are moderately engaged, while
•   24% are disengaged.

Some more disheartening findings – according to staff surveyed:

• just 40% of managers communicate decisions effectively

• only 38% of managers communicate openly and honestly

• a paltry 30% of managers are interested in employee wellbeing.

The leader’s job has a long way to go!

“SUCCESSFUL” MEN

If any of our male readers have not already read the previous post on successful women, I suggest you read that first, as many of the issues discussed there also apply to men. There are, however, some significant differences between the way men and women achieve and deal with success. This postdeals particularly with men suffering from a lack of balance in their approach to their organisational lives, often as the result of childhood conditioning.

Where a male child has been fortunate to have had two parents who were equal partners in the relationship, he too, like the female child mentioned in the previous post, will generally exhibit behaviours which suggest an organisation that has both male and female people of equal power. You may find the executive team has a balance of both men and women. The women are not “token women” and the men are not “token men”.

“Father of the Organisation” – Childhood Experiences Repeated

A common characteristic of successful men, men for example at the CEO level, is that anecdotal evidence suggests that they have very poor relationships with their families. They have usually been the provider for the family and as a father they have been more focussed on the provider role, rather than having a deep relationship with their partner or, commonly, with their children. These men have often come from families where their own father was not there physically or emotionally but basically was the provider (see earlier post on Childhood Experiences which discusses the “copy what we have seen” syndrome). Many of these men try to become the “father of the organisation”. In some ways, this is because they themselves can’t be or haven’t been a father to their own family or they haven’t had a good relationship with their own father as well. They will do everything in the world possible for that organisation, to be a ‘good dad’.

For example, successful CEOs such as this might introduce “helpful” activities like mentoring and various management-related programs where staff can go and learn about all the different aspects of being a good manager. Considerable effort might be expended by this CEO to ensure that his staff receive as much knowledge and information as possible because that CEO himself didn’t have a lot of this. Unfortunately, the way human behaviour works is that it often works in the opposite way too. The same CEO could decide, instead, to give nothing to his staff and be purely a hard-nosed CEO who is only interested in the present, the money coming in and nothing else. So we can have both – at opposite ends of the spectrum – on the one hand, a successful, nurturing CEO, on the other hand, a successful, tough, firm CEO.

Do men suffer the same effects as women from the way they interact with their mother and father as children? They do generally. For example, a male child with a dominant father will tend to take on the characteristics of the father because he sees it as a way of being in control and being powerful, just as a successful woman does. If his mother is subservient, he will then expect women in the organisation to be like that also. On the other hand, if the child has a very good relationship with his mother, then in later life he will usually be sympathetic to women who are “subservient” in the organisation. That would be part of his make-up even though he might come across as tough as his father did. If the father is domineering, however, and perhaps often absent from the home, then they themselves will become absent from the home (even though that’s the very last thing they want to happen) and will develop a very strong organisational life – e.g. excessive hours, workaholism etc. So, you get a situation where a son grows up with an absent father and becomes an absent father himself, while definitely being ‘present’ as a CEO as seen by the organisation. The shadow in this male CEO is “how to be both a present father and a present CEO”.

Why so few women in executive ranks?

Is there perhaps some clue here as to why more women are not found in male dominated executive ranks? A common explanation is that there is a shortage of women to fill these positions (some people even say that women have tried positions of authority / power and have preferred to give them up). But I suspect that there is another equally valid explanation. Many senior men are, for the various reasons I have described, afflicted in terms of their relationships with women because of their childhood experiences and therefore may seek to avoid creating further perceived opportunities for such conflict from introducing more women into their organisational milieu.

You will sometimes encounter situations where men are somewhat reluctant to work for women. Sometimes this can be explained by cultural differences where, for example, some Sri Lankan or Greek men, for cultural reasons, find it difficult to be subservient, as they perceive it, to women. These cultural differences can, as I have shown, be attributed to childhood experiences in those countries when men act as the dominant party in relationships and boys and girls are trained accordingly. It is important to understand these cultural differences, rather than adopt a “can do” approach to try to change them.

 The “personal life” of the successful male CEO

It is not uncommon to find successful men who have experienced more than one failed personal relationship. This is generally because, on their logical side, they are too busy working, while from their relationship or emotional side, they haven’t spent as much time working on their own self in terms of their relationship with their particular partner.

I have also encountered situations where senior male executives could even be described as being “petrified” of dealing with women. What would cause such strong feelings in such men? Again, the usual connection is that their childhood experiences may well have been that they had a very powerful mother and an absent father, or a father who was physically home but you wouldn’t know he was home in an emotional or relationship sense. That connection may not be quite clear at first – just because these men have been dominated by a woman as a child, why should they be afraid of other women? Is it because they fear that a woman will become another mother who will exert negative power over them as happened in their childhood? The answer is ‘yes’, this is precisely what happens, because there is what is known psychologically as a form of transference.

“Transference”

Transference is where you look at a given relationship situation and there is an immediate flashback to a past situation. The two situations are not separated in the mind but become mixed together or blurred and therefore there is an immediate perception that the woman is going to become powerful because as a child they were influenced by a very powerful woman who happened to be their mother. Our society is now seeing, and will continue to see, the results over the next ten years of a society where there are almost no fathers at home and the mother usually raises the boys as well as the girls; but certainly where the mother alone raises the boys.

We will see more and more male CEOs being reluctant and nervous about having strong contributions from female senior executives.

In this age of “political correctness”, the unfortunate result will be that we will tend to have more female executives selected purely from a token point of view – to “make up the numbers” – unless the CEO concerned is very self-aware and has insight into his shadow (which generally won’t be the case).

 Correcting “negative” male behaviour towards female colleagues

What can men do to help recognise these traits in their own behaviour and then deal with them in an effective manner to minimise their negative or harmful impact? The answer is essentially the same as we gave in the previous topic on successful women.

We would recommend that men in such situations seek the services of a psychologist, but take care to select one who is very experienced in relationship work. They might also identify a mentor – a colleague at the same level as them and preferably a male (because relating to a male means that you are relating to someone of the same sex and there are no issues of power or the like).

Let me be clear as to why a successful male executive should not seek advice from a female counterpart. There is nothing wrong in seeking advice from a female counterpart; it is more to do with the nature of mentoring. The assistance ought to be from a male because of the way men behave, which is very different to how women behave. Men and women are different, after all! This suggests a very poor attitude or behaviour on the part of men if they cannot relate openly to a female colleague of “equal” status. There is, in fact, nothing wrong with these men’s ability to relate to them; however, from a mentoring point of view, it is probably better that it is a male mentor because they will learn to have more respect for themselves as a male, and in doing that they will then learn to have more respect for females. We learn respect for females through respect for ourselves, just as a female learns respect for a male through respect for the same sex. It does not work the other way.

Common sense might suggest that if a male doesn’t respect a female he should go and see a strong or dominant or confrontational female counsellor who will “sort him out”. The reason that common sense does not work in this instance – why it is best for that male to see another male to confront the issues of women and respect for women, in the same way that a female who hasn’t got respect for men ought to see a female mentor or counsellor to confront the same issues – is because we understand about another person’s sexuality through our own sex. Respect for our own sex and our own self then leads to respect for others. This all happens because our mentor and / or significant friend / counsellor acts as a role model for our own sex.