Today we’d like to introduce you to Shavon Lindley.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My career began in the financial services industry where I was one of three women in the Southern California office. I was the #1 top performing advisor for the region within my first 2 years and due to my success was asked to start training and mentoring the new hires. My first role in leadership and I was terrible. No one I ever worked with ever made it longer than 1 year and my confidence as a leader was dwindling. I was also in my mid-20’s, working 12-hour days and weekends, growing more and more unhappy as I had no time to take care of myself. I was also dating someone who I knew would be my husband and we were talking about having a family. I had no idea how it could be possible to continue to grow in my career and have a family.
This is when I realized what was lacking was a female mentor. Because there were no other women in the company to mentor me, I had to look external to the organization. I happened to be the host of a radio show program at ESPN and decided to make one of the segments an executive interview series where I could find out how these leaders became successful and potentially had a family in the process. In 3 years, I interviewed over 150 executives, many being Fortune 1000 executive women, and discovered that all of the women shared 6 common pillars of leadership regardless of their industry or background. What I discovered became the foundation of my first company, Women Evolution.
At Women Evolution, we created scalable group mentoring and leadership development programs within companies such as Intel, CBRE, Barona Casino and more to train these 6 pillars.
Our programs always launched with great enthusiasm and success, but they never got the momentum I expected considering the positive feedback. After completing a deep analysis of our specific clients and other women’s leadership programs out there, I discovered that unless the company had a very inclusive workplace culture, these programs were not successful. You can train women all day long to find their authentic voice and confidence, but if that style of leadership is not recognized, valued or leveraged, then the training is pointless.
I believe it is due to a lack of an inclusive workplace culture that we have seen a 0% change in the number of women in leadership positions within the last 14 years.
I went to the market and discovered there weren’t any scalable and comprehensive solutions designed to create inclusive workplace cultures yet.
The thing is that you can’t just train about unconscious bias and blind spots. We must learn how to change behavior and retrain our brains to override its discomfort with working with people who are different from us.
To accomplish true inclusion two components are required: trust and psychological safety.
You can’t tell people to feel safe, they must feel it and their brain must believe it. This takes time.
We decided that our mission at Women Evolution was not big enough. We have set out to build the first and only scalable leadership development and mentoring technology solution for leading companies of all sizes that want to leverage diversity and inclusion to meet performance and business objectives: Mentoring Method™
Has it been a smooth road?
Ha! From 2014-2017, I banged my head against the wall over and over again trying to figure out why my programs weren’t working. The feedback was amazing, but the results were non-existent. I took that personally and as if my program was not good enough. It wasn’t until I started interviewing other companies trying to do the same thing that I realized this was a systemic cultural issue that no program could solve.
This correlated to having to continuously self-fund the company to keep it afloat as I tried to find a solution. I was also reluctant for quite a while to find an alternative solution as I felt I had given everything I had already. I didn’t want to have to build something else and take even more time and money to make that successful. What I realized ultimately was that it was really a self-limiting belief that I had to overcome that was at the root of my resistance. I didn’t think I was capable of solving such a huge problem. It wasn’t until I told my research findings to one of my potential clients at the time, Walmart. I told them that I had discovered why Women Evolution and other programs alike were not seeing success and that there needed to be a new training program and technology around what it takes to be an inclusive leader. They loved the idea and told me they wanted to launch that new program in 2 months! If Walmart believed that I could solve this problem, I was not going to let them down.
We hit 2 other significant road blocks getting this off the ground. 1) the learning technology platforms we were considering to house and deliver the curriculum was not secure enough for Walmart to approve. 2) the mentor matching technologies we researched to help us scale our program to the masses would match people based on how similar they were as that was typically a sign that the relationships would hit it off. The problem is that we believed fundamentally that the only way diverse talent could navigate to the top of the organization was if people who were UNALIKE mentored one another in small groups of 3-4. We have to learn how to override our brains base instincts to only want to surround ourselves with people who are like us. Similarity bias is a huge reason diverse talent stall out in their career and we can’t have our mentoring matching technologies further proliferating this issue.
Two major roadblocks and the only solution we could come up with was that we would have to build our own technology platform our own way if we want this to be truly successful. Because my integrity was on the line and Walmart believed in me, we did not hesitate to build it ourselves.
With the support of my husband, we mortgaged our home to pull this off.
I wouldn’t call this next thing a road block as it was planned, but I was pregnant with my second child during this whole process, and our technology launched 2 weeks after giving birth. Since I own the business, I was able to move our office to my kitchen table. My team comes here every day and with this village of help that I have crafted, I am able to balance my family and my career.
My advice to young women is to not resistant your destiny. Tell everyone about your goals and ideas and ask for help. If what you are working on keeps you up at night and is deeply connected to your core values, you have to be all in and know that most overnight successes take 7 years. You will have to self-fund to pull it off or get investors or seed money. People will hear the passion in your voice and they will want to help. If you feel stuck, hire an executive coach to illuminate your blind spots. It is the fastest way to overcome whatever self-limiting belief might be holding you back.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Mentoring Method – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Mentoring Method is considered the evolution of learning. Our technology creates a new path that is better aligned with how we learn best by spacing out learning and giving time to apply the new skills while providing a supportive mentoring group to practice what was learned in a safe environment. This is where we discover how to work across our differences and hold each other accountable in the process. Our technology platform can then track the progress and provide metrics to illustrate the effectiveness and the long-term impact of such initiatives.
In addition to being able to use our diversity-focused mentor matching technology and Learning Management System for organization’s custom curriculum, we have two of our own curriculum to choose from:
Inclusion 360°™: Our comprehensive diversity and inclusion solution for talent at all levels that thoroughly teaches, instills, and trains the 6 traits required to become an inclusive leader.
The implementation of Inclusion 360° will lead to the creation of more thoughtful and impactful leaders, greater innovation, increased financial results, reduction in risk and cost, and the ability to entice and retain more qualified talent by providing a powerful inclusive workplace culture.
Women Evolution®: Our emerging female leader solution where participants will discover the 6 pillars of leadership that all successful female executives have in common.
Within 90 days of the launch of our technology, companies can experience a radical change to their corporate culture.
What advice would you give to someone at the start of her career?
Follow through with your word. If you say you are going to email someone, email that person. This may seem ridiculously simple, but it is the biggest mistake I see women and men make. I have made it as far as I have, not because I am the smartest, but because I am relentless at following through with prospects and those who say they can help me. Because so few do this, it sets me apart.
Contact Info:
- Address: 9191 Towne Centre Dr, Ste 310, San Diego, CA 92014
- Website: www.mentoringmethod.com
- Phone: 619-780-2575
- Email: hello@mentoringmethod.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shavonlindley/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shavonlindleyceo
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/shavonlindley
Image Credit:
Micaela Malmi Photography
Getting in touch: SDVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
