Last Updated on June 18, 2026 by Fly High Coaching
Mentoring at work only succeeds when leaders understand the generation sitting across the table from them. Most companies are juggling five generations at once, each shaped by different experiences, different communication styles, and different ideas about what support looks like. Are you confident your mentoring approach actually works across that gap?
In this episode, you will learn more about multi-generational mentoring at work. Our host Porschia, alongside guest Dr. Summer Watson, will share their insight on why ego is often the biggest barrier to cross-generational collaboration, and what it really takes to build mentorship that sticks.
They will also discuss 4 common reasons mentoring programs fail, including the lack of structure, follow-up, and oversight that quietly kills good intentions. The conversation also covers what makes mentoring work when it crosses generational lines, and why a sense of belonging matters more than most leaders realize.
Dr. Summer Watson is a Doctor of Psychology, community leadership and mentorship consultant, podcaster, author, and military spouse of over 21 years. She is the founder of KORE Women, LLC, where she runs KORE Mentorship Solutions, a cross-generational leadership framework built to foster collaboration and retention, alongside KORE Business Solutions, a virtual assistant program for entrepreneurs. She also hosts the KORE Women podcast, ranked in the top 3 percent of shows globally.
What you’ll learn:
- What mentoring at work actually requires to succeed across different generations
- The most common challenges leaders face when managing a multi-generational workforce
- Why ego gets in the way of effective cross-generational mentorship
- 4 essential aspects of building strong cross-generational leadership
- How to know when it’s time to step into a dual role as both leader and mentor
Resources:
- Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Today we are talking about multi-generational mentoring at work with Dr. Summer Watson. Dr. Summer Watson is a doctor of psychology, community leadership and mentorship, consultant, podcaster, event producer, author, and military spouse of over 21 years. As the founder of Core Women LLC, she empowers leaders and businesses through two transformational programs, core Mentorship Solutions, a cross-generational leadership framework, fostering [00:01:00] collaboration and retention and core business solutions.
Porschia: A virtual assistant program helping entrepreneurs reclaim their time and focus on growth. She is also the host of the Core Women Podcast, which is a top 3% globally ranked show. Core stands for how we kinetically connect organically, learn from one another. Reshape lives through diverse interaction and empower one another to promote meaningful change.
These values guide every program, podcast, and partnership. Dr. Watson leads. Hi Summer. How are you today?
Dr. Summer: I’m fantastic. It’s lovely to be here with you. Thank you for the invite.
Porschia: Absolutely. I am so excited to have you with us to discuss multi-generational mentoring at work. But first we wanna know a little more about you.
So tell me about 7-year-old summer.
Dr. Summer: Oh 7-year-old summer. She lived a lifetime at seven by [00:02:00] seven. There were a lot of like key points in my life at by seven that I really learned a lot. At six months of age I had a hole in my small intestine, and from there I then had to have multiple surgeries.
And so I was in and out of the hospital at one point. I spent a month at Stanford’s Children’s Hospital going to school, recovering from all these different surgeries. I had parents who had been divorced. I came from a background where there was a father that had a very heavy hand.
So there was a lot going on in the background. Even when I look back on some of the, at some of the records from the hospital, it says a child that is in distress and it’s because they didn’t know what was happening behind the scenes. As I look at some of the things that I [00:03:00] went through by seven they really were formative things in relation to survival.
And so as I grew and I looked at human behavior, I thought, how can I do one, work out my issues and make sure that I’m thriving more than surviving? What does that look like? How does that feel? And then how can I help others with that as well? So that’s summer at seven essentially.
Porschia: Thank you for sharing that with us.
And it sounds like you’re very altruistic and really wanting to pay that forward. And at the time, at the same time like reflect on that on that work. So is that why you were interested in psychology and pursued the doctorate or was there another reason?
Dr. Summer: It’s funny.
- Really thought about being a pediatrician, because I thought it would be nice to help other kids in those same situations have a better understanding of children and what they’re going through. What they’re going through in secret as well. [00:04:00] Because there’s so many things that happen in the background that people don’t ask children.
They don’t ask them the questions about, how are you feeling? Why are you feeling this way? And also children don’t. Talk the same way as adults. So they do it through play, they do it through creative means. And so to get those answers, you really need to think of different ways of working with children.
But as I grew older, I realized I’m not that great in those types of sciences, so I really like human services. So I ended up going towards. A master’s in human services with an emphasis in community counseling, so I could help communities and develop programs. And then from there, I started also working in a locked facility where I would assess people who were suicidal, homicidal, gravely, disabled for three years.
And I thought, you know what? I really like triage work. I like emergency medicine, I like this. And so I ended up getting a doctorate in clinical [00:05:00] psych. Where I could work in hospitals and work with patients and develop programs. And then that led to directorships and management.
Porschia: You have an extremely interesting background and it’s also very inspiring.
So what motivated you to start your own business? Ah, that’s
Dr. Summer: a good question. What motivated me to start my own business? Being a military spouse, you move constantly. So it was really very difficult to have reciprocity in any state meaning with your license. And I wasn’t actually able to sit for a license because we were up and moving, and it’s just wow.
But it didn’t mean that. I wasn’t able to still work in a hospital and do the things I loved. So I thought to myself, once my husband retired and he got a job outside or in DC I thought what am I gonna do with all of this? Information, wisdom, skills, my abilities, what is it that summer really wants to do?
[00:06:00] How do I wanna give back to community? And that’s when I thought about creating core women, the company. But then under that, the first thing I did was I think I need to start a podcast to build community around that. Yeah.
Porschia: Brilliant. I was so thrilled to meet you because a lot of your work focuses on the multi-generational workforce and that aspect of, what’s going on in the workplace.
Clients often ask me about the differences between the different generations in the workforce. So for those who don’t know, can you explain a little bit about. The main generations in the workforce today and any differences with them.
Dr. Summer: I love that question too, because and I’m gonna look at my little cheat sheet here because we do have five generations.
We’re going onto six. Pretty soon. And we have the silent or traditional, what I like to call the traditional, some call it the silent generation. Then we have the baby boomers, [00:07:00] then we have the Gen X, then we have the millennials, and then we have the Gen Zs, and soon to be the gen alphas, right? Coming into the workforce.
So we have all these different generations and really I, there’s so much to break down, but if you even look at a generation just generally. You’ll notice that there are differences. There’s different conditioning, there’s different behaviors. There’s just different ways that we communicate. There’s different ways that we dress.
There’s different expectations of us, right? And so when we think about all of that from generation to generation, that’s a lot to balance and work with. And the di, there’s different influences too. So we’re talking about generational influences, then we’re talking about individual differences, right? So let me just give you an example.
When I look at a human being and their functioning, I don’t look at just their behavior, what they’re presenting. Like right now, when I look at is. What’s their personality like? What’s their social influences? Who’s around them? [00:08:00] Teachers, parents, siblings, who’s around them that’s influencing them? What is their wellness like, their mental and physical wellness?
What is their overall presenting symptoms? What’s happening with them right now to change behavior? And if you look at that construct you’re looking at and applying that to a generational shift from. In the workplace, you’re looking at a lot of variables. So when it comes to what are the differences, that’s really hard to say because there are so many differences amongst the generations.
But what I would say is, and let me turn this around a little bit. There are some very common things. Amongst all of us too. And I think we forget to look at that. And that’s like from a human forward perspective. And so when I say that, I mean we all have emotions. So we all feel sadness, we all feel elated.
[00:09:00] Joy. We have all these emotions, which naturally as humans, we’re going to feel all of them. And so you get that in the workplace. But what challenges us is from generation to generation. How are we communicating? How are we innovating? How are we being creative? Not just independently but together? And there’s where it looks so significantly different.
And so when you run a company and you have these five generations interacting, you look at that and go why aren’t we meeting our mission? What’s happening? Where are the gaps? And so as a business owner, I don’t just go into a business and say, okay, here’s a box program and let me throw this at you and this is gonna work for you.
No, I have a proprietary assessment that I do with a business where I look at these different variables that could be influencing the behavior of this company and the different [00:10:00] generations working together. And from that assessment. There will be gaps. Just naturally there will be gaps. And once we identify those gaps, that’s when I go over those gaps with the company.
This is a high touch program, and so I go over those gaps with the company and then bring in folks who can train and support that mentorship and the mentorship program. And maybe this is something that you’ll get to, so I’ll just give a quick overview. The mentorship program that I use is a cross-generational mentorship program, and we can talk about that.
Porschia: I love it. I love how you touched on the complexity really of the workforce and the different generations. We’ve discussed aspects of the multi-generational workforce on the podcast before, back in episode 1 0 1, we talked about bridging the gaps in our multi-generational workplace.
What are some of the most common challenges you’ve seen among generations?
Dr. Summer: Ooh, [00:11:00] I love this question and I’ll tell you why. Because I think the number one issue I see is ego. And the reason I say that is because ego tends to get in the way of allowing people to hear absorb. Share, get creative and get innovative together.
And so if we don’t put ego aside or learn how to do that effectively as a community, we’re stunting that community and the mission of that community. And I take, when you look at the construct of my program and having a psychology background, one of the. The leaders in psychology, his name was Alfred Adler.
And Alfred Adler was, he worked with Freud and he looked at Freud and he said, I love what you’ve got going on Freud, but here’s the deal. Not everything is. [00:12:00] Subconscious. There are other variables that influence behavior. And so as I was growing in the human services clinical field, I very much appreciated Adler because he was really one of the, he was the first humanistic psychologist, psychiatrist rather.
’cause he was an md and. He was also the first, not just humanist, but the modern psychol psychiatrist, right? And so he wanted to look at more than the subconscious. He wanted to look at all these different variables, and one of the biggest things that he recognized is people have a longing to belong. And the term that he used is Guyman.
Shaka Fool. It’s a German term. It’s a long term. It’s three words in one, right? And what it really means is community. And so when you look at that, and I look at Adler, whom I absolutely adore, there’s been [00:13:00] like, other great people out there. When you look at Adler and you look at Ska Full and you look at community and our longing to belong as human beings, we just wanna feel connected to something.
And when we feel disconnected, guess what? We fall out, we don’t wanna talk to other people. We don’t connect, we don’t, we disconnect, we silo, communication gets siloed. Innovation gets siloed. So when you don’t have that connectedness or filling a belonging, what happens is we’re not meeting the mission.
So again, if we’re talking about the context of a business community, you’re not gonna meet the mission if you’re not learning about. The different generations within that community and how you might be able to support those generations to do better.
Porschia: I love everything you said. Love everything you said.
One way I describe it to your last point is I say that a lot of times multi-generational workplace issues are an undercurrent to. [00:14:00] Everything else that’s going on. And I also, loved your emphasis on Adler and, humanism because some of the listeners know I have a undergraduate degree in psychology and a master’s in industrial and organizational psychology.
And in psychology you really study to summer’s point the d. Viewpoints, right? The different sects of psychology and these different arenas and, from different points of view. And yeah, humanism was definitely what spoke to me the most as well in study. So in your opinion, what are some of the essential aspects of multi-generational or cross-generational leadership?
Dr. Summer: Okay, so I had mentioned ego, and so how do we actually address ego in a system where it’s hierarchal? And when you look at a system, let’s say even the military, right? And you’ve got a H hierarchal system, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a [00:15:00] program integrated into that system that is flat or horizontal.
And so what I mean by that is when I look at my program, for instance. I don’t want it to be hierarchal. I want it to be a flat system, a horizontal system. And in doing so, that means that you’re gonna change, some of it’s gonna be a, like a microculture within a culture, right? And so when you’re doing that, you are looking at how do I do this and how do I implement this, where it’s actually gonna take, so we have to work on ego, ego strength, and we’ve gotta work on changing words and language.
And so when we change the language, part of the language that I integrate into my program is we take away the mentee portion of that and just leave everybody as shared learners and mentors. And so with that said, how do people [00:16:00] respond to that? And you see some resistance to that because again. We have ego at play.
And so when you look at this, you think, ah, gosh, how are we gonna break down those walls in relation to I’ve been here, I’m a traditionalist, and I have all the wisdom. Offer. And then what happens is, again, those silos start building, right? And maybe our Gen Zs are like they don’t wanna talk to us.
They don’t wanna hear my opinion. They don’t wanna know, some of the innovations that have come about that might influence, the work that we do. And so the system starts getting a little wonky. So if you lit look at a chain, like of links, and if one of those links is out of whack, it’s that chain isn’t doing its job effectively.
[00:17:00] And so there are a lot of things, as I mentioned earlier in our conversation, a lot of variables that we need to look at. I just don’t jump in and go here. I’m gonna throw this box at you and it’s gonna work. We have to study and look at and research and do a needs assessment of sorts to understand what is actually happening in within that ecosystem.
And and once we do that and we see the gaps, we can then help them with that whole over overarching structure [00:18:00] that we’ve created to implement where the real needs are, whether it is communication gaps, whether it is innovation gaps, whether it is effective listening and communicate. There’s so many things that we need to look at before we jump and say, okay, this is what it is.
We know what it is. No. We have to study the system. And so when you look at it from that perspective, that’s just very clinical for me because when I come from a clinical background. Somebody, lemme give you an example. If somebody says to me, and this has been done a lot, I am absolutely sure my kid has got what that kid’s got that kid’s got a DHD, they’ve been diagnosed with a DHD.
My kid’s acting out the same way. So I know that’s gotta be what it is. And I’m like, wow. Is that fair to say about that child without actually understanding the influences or factors that, or the factors that are influencing that child’s behavior before you put a label on that. [00:19:00] And so to me, when I correlate that with what we’re talking about here, I just absolutely, I’m not gonna put a label on something if I haven’t done my due justice and, due diligence rather, in examining what’s happening and why the gaps are there.
How they began. And so that’s where I stand with this and this program that, I’ve created because there’s so many nuances to it that it’s just not a package that you just say, okay, you’re gonna fit right into this package and it’s gonna work for you because that’s not true.
Porschia: I love that.
And when we work with organizations, we generally do some type of organizational assessment, or for some of our training programs that don’t include the organizational assessment we do different surveys. Because to your point I do not think just off the shelf training is super effective, and I’m sure we agree on that.
Dr. Summer: We do.
Porschia: So summer leaders often serve [00:20:00] as mentors as well. But we know not every leader is a mentor. So from your experience, when should someone step into that dual role as a leader and a mentor?
Dr. Summer: I think we all have the capacity to be leaders and we all have the capacity to be mentors and whether it’s a direct or indirect way of being a mentor, we have that capacity even as models.
And so I think when you ask, when do we step into that, it’s when there’s. It’s really when there’s a comfort level, right? And yet there might also be that this person is a leader, but. They’re not taking the opportunity to mentor because they’ve been never been, it’s never been modeled for them, or they’ve never been taught.
And so I think it’s incumbent upon the community to recognize who’s a great leader, but how can [00:21:00] we actually support their mentorship skillset? And so when we are able to recognize that. We can ask them, do you feel comfortable? Here are the parameters, here are the, some of the things that we’d be asking you as a mentor.
And but again, I believe that anybody entering the job force, anybody entering a company can be both a leader and also a shared learner or mentor. So to step into that role, I think we need to recognize that and then ask questions and draw out from those folks. Would, is this something that you’d be interested in doing?
Is this something that, and again, we are all mentors in a way, whether it’s directly or indirectly, even just merely by modeling.
Porschia: So to your point mentoring is another hot topic that we
Dr. Summer: Okay.
Porschia: Covered on the podcast before. Yes. What. Aspects do you think are important to have in successful mentoring [00:22:00] programs?
Dr. Summer: I think that willingness, I think opportunity and willingness to be a mentor. I think those are two critical factors that real, really play a part in developing a good cross-generational mentorship program is if you’re willing. That means you’re open to learning. If there’s opportunity for everybody, right?
And so when a company starts to implement something like this. It’s not just throwing a pitch or selling it, it’s actually explaining why it is important to the foundation of the company. And here’s the big part of it and the result of it. If you have a good program in place and you’ve identified some of the assets and some of the the things that the community needs to learn, then you’re looking at [00:23:00] sustainability.
And so when you’re looking at that sustainability, and I even looked at, years ago I was doing my research on the effects of war in Iraq, on military marriages, and I thought, how is the military gonna keep folks? In the ecosystem, how are they gonna have sustainability with their folks?
And when I went studied those variables, some of the things that I looked at were big things, communication, connection, like all these things we’re talking about right now. And communication was one of the biggest issues impacting that ecosystem. And the reason being is because, let’s say for instance, the military, we’ll use this as an example.
Again, they would be given. Direction about A, B, or C. They would be told this is what’s gonna happen. And that person would take that, those notes that they had written maybe about that direction, put it in their [00:24:00] pocket, go home and forget it until they got back to work. But what they forgot to do. Which tell their spouse.
Or the person that they’re closely connected with. And I say this because again, we’re looking at longevity. Look, we’re at sustainability of an ecosystem, right? And so when you wanna keep folks in and you want them to grow with the, within the ecosystem. That means they would probably start off maybe in their mid twenties, early thirties, and maybe they’re looking at like 20 years of service.
We’re again talking about the military and if you’re, and if you’re looking at that during those 20 years, most likely that person’s gonna pair with somebody, maybe get married to somebody, maybe have children. And if that ecosystem is such that they’re not commu, the people within it are not communicating with their significant others, guess what?
That’s gonna fall apart. They’re not gonna wanna stay because the spouse or the significant other is gonna be like you never told me that. Is this what this system is creating? A lack of communication. They’re just taking [00:25:00] you, they’re using you, and they’re doing A, B, and C, and I don’t have anything to do with you, and I’m feeling disconnected from the community.
So when you’re looking at these different variables, you may think, oh gosh, that’s not important. But in actuality, when you’re looking at communication styles of communication, how you’re innovating, what you’re asking your employees to do and how you’re asking them to be either leaders or mentors and how that impacts their life, it’s like that pebble in the water.
You throw the pebble in the water and you get those concentric circles. It’s just not one ask. That ask is that pebble in the water? It’s creating concentric circles. So if you want sustainability and longevity with your workforce, you’re gonna have to address some of the long-term effects and impacts that you’re having by those asks by what you’re teaching or not teaching.
Porschia: Wow. I agree with that. And I think you said a whole, there were a whole lot of gems in, in what you mentioned [00:26:00] there. Can you explain a little bit in terms of your thoughts on how you’ve seen mentoring across generations be successful?
Dr. Summer: Okay, so I am part of the gen. Gen X. Okay. And so I’m dating myself a little bit.
I’m in the middle, middle of everybody right now. And so when I came up the, just the letter of, the in within the workforce, let’s put it that way. When I came through the workforce, the mentorship was such that the wisdom came from. You’re, somebody’s been in there for a while.
The traditionalists the folks that had been already in the system or in systems for some time, they didn’t really look at us as mentors, and yet it still worked. That paradigm still worked that that the way that mentorship was set up coming from the [00:27:00] traditionalist, so to speak. It worked where we were learning from them.
And I do feel like just naturally and organically there was such an exchange where they were probably learning from us too, right? And so when I look at these different generations and how we’re working or what’s been successful or not successful, it doesn’t matter, I don’t think what formula you’re using, as long as you’re doing something to help your community and also.
And I’ll step back in that a little bit because I do think there do, there does need to be some changes and some dynamic changes in that because we have these generations that are so different and have been influenced by so many unique things within these last few years. Let’s even take, let’s for instance, COVID.
When you look at COVID and [00:28:00] you look at our Gen Z workforce right now, some of those young folks, when they were asked to look or be in a system, they weren’t able to, they were at home and they were learning digitally. And so when we go to school, that is a system. And in that system, and probably better than I do.
Coming from an organizational psych background. When we are part of a system, say for instance, school, we’re learning how to get up, how to be on time, how to turn in our homework, how to be responsible to our teachers, how to integrate and communicate with our peers, like there are so much to that. As we’re learning.
So when we ask these folks to be part of a system now, when maybe the last five years or six years of their life was working, at home digitally, we’re asking them to do something [00:29:00] that maybe they haven’t learned a lot of. And yes, there is a family system that they can, but it is different once you get out of the house.
And many articles that I had been reading about Gen Z was they were getting hired and they were getting fired quickly. And I was like, oh no. Oh no. What are we not doing? What? What are we missing? And I really feel like because of this isolation, because of this digital work, the influence to some of this is the impact of how they’re absorbing and understanding a system.
And how they’re working within that system. And then if they don’t know who to ask or if they’re feeling uncomfortable, if they’re people, if there aren’t good mentors or people who are teachers who are open to new ideas, new open to creativity, and open to the way that they’re communicating, then we’re missing a lot because they’re gonna silo.
They’re gonna shift and [00:30:00] they’re gonna say goodbye, or they’re not gonna even, they may not even be doing it purposefully. It may be that unintentionally they’re not communicating because they don’t know who to ask or what to ask because they don’t understand the system. And so when we’re looking at what works and doesn’t work, we, I, it’s hard, honestly, it’s hard to answer because when you’re looking at the impacts of these generations and what has happened from generation to generation, there are several different influences that are crossovers in.
From the life that we live to what we are living at work. And again, when you’re looking at that, you’re looking at how many days are we, how many hours are we spending on the job, right? And a good portion, eight to 10 hours are being spent at the job. And so when you’re not able to communicate effectively or integrate into that system because you don’t know how to do that, then we’re failing somewhere.
We are [00:31:00] failing as society. So when I read those articles about what’s working, what’s not working, or not necessarily what’s working, but they’re getting hired, they’re getting fired quickly. I’m like, then what is not working, not just in leadership, but in our mentorship programs, do we even have them in existence?
Because you might even go to accompanying and ask, let’s say during your interview, do you have a mentorship program? And they’ll say, yeah, we absolutely have something where we can offer mentorship. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a mentorship program in place. And so it, you have to be really clear when you go into a company and not just look at their values and their mission and all that, but look at the, some of the things that you are in alignment with, or that you are, you need as an employee.
What is it that you need or that you are looking for at in a mentorship program? Do you want it to be a hierarchal mentorship program? Do you want it to be more of a flat mentorship program or a horizontal mentorship program? [00:32:00] What are you looking for? But if you don’t know, you don’t know what you don’t know.
So as leaders, we need to offer these things. The opportunity needs to be there. But as mentors, I think it’s more than that. It’s teacher, it’s learner, it’s a shared experience. It’s human forward.
Porschia: Yeah I agree. And I think to your point, a lot of people believe that they have a mentorship program, but really what they really have is some job shadowing going on or the opportunity to shadow someone.
Yeah. And that’s what they’re calling mentorship. What, from your perspective, what would you say are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen professionals and executives have with. Multi-generational mentoring programs,
Dr. Summer: one, that they’re non-existent. Two, that there’s no follow up or oversight.
Three, that there’s a disengagement where it’s starting and it [00:33:00] stops. There’s no structure. Four, I could go on and on, right? Because there’s so many issues that I see. Happening when they say we do have some mentorship going on, but in actuality there’s no parameters.
There’s no nothing set or in place to say there’s no check-ins, there’s no milestones, there’s no follow through. There’s no key point person. Because the problem is everybody is feeling overworked and overloaded, and so to take on one more program. Could be exhausting because everybody’s looking to that person, that one point person and saying are you running this?
And are you doing your job? And are you doing the A, B, and C? So that can be a hurdle, a major hurdle, but how we overcome this hurdle, again, I’m gonna take us back to the military. If from top down, it looks like they’re supporting a mentorship program and to not only put one in place, but put key players in place to.
Make sure that there’s oversight and that there’s structure to it. [00:34:00] That’s what’s gonna make it successful. That’s what’s gonna help it, is that buy-in from everyone within that system. And so how do you do that? And honestly, that’s where that hierarchal structure comes in, where it is from top down, where it’s okay, we believe in this, we understand this.
There’s a county that. You know that I recently a person, a point person within a county in California that I had been talking to, and she said, we had these great systems in place, but because, and here’s another issue that’s we’re confronting because of all the cutbacks. Right now they’re having to cut back on programs and one of those big programs is mentorship.
And so right now, if you’re going into a new system. If you’re trying to look for a new job and you want that sense of connection or belonging, it really is. If they don’t have a mentorship leadership type of program. Search that out. Ask the questions. If you’re already in the [00:35:00] system, connect with somebody, match with somebody, put together a framework for yourself.
But if you’re just starting out, ask the company, are you invested in this? What do you have? What is your structure? What does that look like? What’s the oversight? Because I’m gonna give another, example of this. So when I, as a military spouse. I was moving from place to place, and I realized that if I sat for a license, that didn’t mean I had reciprocity somewhere, because even though the law had been changed, and Michelle Obama was behind this and she was like, gosh, I really want these people these women and these spouses to have reciprocity in different areas, in different different, in different capacities with their jobs.
She helped put this thing in place and what happened to it was when we, I was going from state to state and I was talking to other military spouses. Yes, law may have been passed, but the state was like we just don’t know what to do with it. We don’t have [00:36:00] anything in place, so it’s that’s great, but there were no key players to talk to help us get that reciprocity we needed.
So there was no oversight. It was falling through the cracks. There was no program in place. So I see the same in smaller systems.
Porschia: Yeah, absolutely. This is a huge topic and it is, I think that people can definitely hear why they need to dig deeper into their programs and, work with a company like yours.
And we’ll be providing a link to your website and social channels in our show notes so people can find you online. Now, summer, I wanna ask you our final question that we ask all of our guests. How do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career
Dr. Summer: building community? I think going back to that whole ideology that Alfred Adler set in place by mentioning that word, Guyman. Chaska full.
[00:37:00] Understanding that people have this need to feel connected and belong is so critical, and it is important that leaders recognize that and do something about it.
I recently was talking to a university academy and. There were a bunch of administrators and educators there, and I had this talk and I was talking about this very thing and I could see the heads nodding and they were from all different generations and the. Yes, we need more of that. At the end of the talk, they said we could have taken another hour and a half of this, and it’s like we just wanna feel a sense of purpose and belonging.
And so we also wanna feel valued, right? And so if that’s not there, or if people aren’t getting that from their community or that ecosystem, they’re gonna leave. There’s not gonna be sustainability and they’re gonna fall out. [00:38:00] So I would say build that community, nurture that community, educate each other and be open to it from Gen Traditionalists to Gen Zs.
So that would be my tip.
Porschia: I love it. And I caught at the very beginning when you talked about starting your business, you said the first thing you did was start a podcast to build community. Gotcha. So this has come full circle. So summer, you’ve shared a lot of insights with us today and I’m sure our listeners can use it to be more confident with their mentoring programs.
We appreciate you being with us.
Dr. Summer: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. I love this conversation. [00:39:00]
