MINUTES

Greycells Master Class on Mentorship
Enhancing Skills, Leadership and Knowledge-Sharing
Monday, July 21st, 2025

1. Opening remarks

In his introductory remarks, David compared mentoring to a journey, which started as a solitary practice then evolved into a shared craft. Mentoring in its different forms has become integral to most professions, with the goal to ensure that no one learns alone, and that wisdom is not hoarded, but handed forward.

In the same spirit, Greycells has been moving beyond goodwill and improvisation toward a more intentional, structured and supported approach to mentoring, guided by a new mentoring policy, informed by Greycells’ earlier mentoring experience and by mentoring best practices.

David paid tribute to Giovanni, the architect and drafter of the policy, and to Cécile who accompanies him in shaping future mentor support initiatives.

This master class is aimed at addressing questions from and among mentors—existential questions about listening, supporting, empathy, and perspective. Mentoring is a relational voyage, which requires calm, steadiness, patience, and resilience. It will be punctuated by periodic rendezvous for reflection, growth and collective learning, enriched by our interaction with remarkable young people—future leaders, thoughtful changemakers, and open-minded learners.

2. Presentation of objectives and expectations

Giovanni who was the only person who knew everybody present at the meeting said that the objective of the master class was for each mentor to introduce themselves and get to know each other. He added that beyond the experience gained from mentoring young changemakers from the Kofi Annan Foundation on leadership skills over a nine-month period, current significant shifts in the labour market required increased and diversified mentoring focused on labour and employment skills, support to institutional memory and facilitation of exchanges. Being based in Geneva which was affected by major shifts in multilateralism, he was convinced that mentoring could trigger positive change and innovations.

Cecile hoped that the mentors would share their vision of mentoring, what they considered to be achievements as well as challenges encountered. Greycells had developed a coherent, structured mentoring policy and the objective was to build a corps of mentors who would use it as a tool and refine it collectively as they went along.

3. Open discussion

Edmundo said that his long experience with mentoring at the UN had taught him the importance of trust and confidentiality. It had been a learning experience, and he looked forward to being a member of a team of mentors.

Lilia said that her experience had been mainly with the International Trade Center in Geneva and with the Economic Commission for Africa in the field. She had worked in private and public institutions in Tunisia. She had taken part in the mentoring programme at the UN and knew how sensitive the role of mentor was; it required listening and alignment with the perspective of the mentees.

Marco came from a different background in the private sector. He saw similarities in his role as mentor and as manager; in both cases it was about helping people or organizations to achieve long-term goals, and it was important to clarify goals at the outset. He felt energized about becoming a member of the team.

Gesche’s professional experience was with UNHCR, followed by her participation in the ILO’s training programme where she had developed training material. After retirement, she had engaged in a different type of knowledge sharing with Eduki, where she had given presentations to high school students. For her, the key to successful mentoring was to be personable and to show empathy, which helped establish a connection. Mentoring should be mentee-driven and entailed a learning curve on both sides.
She saw two types of mentoring: one focused on personality support where the mentor’s experience helped trigger the mentee’s vision and leadership skills; and the other centered on preparation and guidance for transitioning to a different professional field, which required a different set of skills on the part of the mentor.

Jennifer had been an informal mentee of Giovanni’s when he headed the ILO’s regional Office in the Caribbean. Her professional and academic interest was in authentic leadership, and she had interviewed numerous leaders in the Caribbean region, which gave her a different perspective from that of USA-centered leadership and mentoring. A common feature in authentic leadership was the focus on giving back and on long-term engagement, which had the potential to change lives.

Esther was impressed with the range of experience displayed by the mentors. She had been a mentor with the KAF for four years, where she had learnt a lot, and she had mentored unofficially several younger professionals, essentially women, because she felt an obligation to help them progress; this had led to long-lasting relationships. The discussion today raised several questions: what do we bring to the table as mentors? What type of mentoring – technical expertise, behavioural change? The common feature was helping people to bring out the best in them.

Noemi had extensive experience in mentoring in leadership. She worked with groups of young people and adults, in different countries, in formal and informal education settings. Mentoring was about passion, about addressing difficult questions and helping people achieve their dreams.

Claude had lived and worked in Lille all his life. He was an economist by training, with a Ph. D in the economy of sport. His thesis supervisor knew very little about the topic and had become more of a mentor that a thesis supervisor. Similarly, Claude acted as a mentor as well as a supervisor with his Ph. D students. Because his topic was not widely researched, he had traveled extensively to lecture about it and had built connections in many places.

Nil was on a two-year sabbatical from the UN, where she had benefited from mentoring, including from Giovanni. In her previous capacity as national country director for UN Volunteers, she had interacted extensively with universities and NGOs. She was currently involved as SG of a foundation in Türkiye reaching out to teachers and students to promote networking and counter brain drain. For her, key characteristics of mentoring were giving back and authenticity.

David said that mentoring had always been part of his career. At the ILO, he had worked with unions in conflictual settings, and he had to mentor for behavioral change in order to achieve results through collaboration. After retirement, he launched an NGO in India, initially by accident when he was contacted by a university student who needed the endorsement of a full professor to submit a proposal for an EU-funded project. The bid was successful, and David became involved in a project involving cross-cultural exchanges between three universities in Rotterdam, Cologne and India. That project required modesty and the ability to improvise which are essential to mentoring. The relationships he had developed later with his three KAF mentees were still ongoing.

Cecile had taught for a few years before she joined the UN. When she was working as UNDP Resident Representative in the field, heading offices largely peopled with locally recruited staff, she had had many opportunities for mutual exchange and learning, where she listened and learnt from her local colleagues about the challenges and aspirations they were experiencing, and shared with them her understanding of the universal values and norms underpinning the UN presence and action. After retiring from the UN, she had shared her experience with students, young professionals and young changemakers, and found the exchanges deeply stimulating and rewarding.

Giovanni shared two anecdotes to demonstrate the importance of relationships in mentoring – first his relationship with Adolf Ogi, former President of the Swiss Confederation appointed by Kofi Annan as his Special Adviser for Sport, Development and Peace. Ogi inducted him into the peculiarities of the Swiss political system and of Swiss society, and he inducted Ogi into the complexities of the UN Resident Coordinator system. Another example of the importance of relationships from a country (Türkiye) who also impacted like Switzerland his leadership skills and mentoring in many ways. It was the relationship developed between Claude Nobs the founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival with the Ertegun Brothers (Turkish) founders of Atlantic Records. They were among the mentors (together with Quincy Jones) who made Claude Nobs and his Festival so successful for cultural and music patterns. Nobs was a mentee to them, determined and naive, always approaching people with purpose but spontaneously. Good mentors know how to detect such qualities in mentees.

4. Conclusions and next steps

• The nature of mentoring is changing, young people look for mentors who are still professionally active and for competencies which will facilitate their access to the labour market, so the diversity of this group of mentors is welcome.
• Experience of mentors will cover both active and retired officials. However a mentor will never retire from serving others with purpose.
• The development of a mentoring policy and the building of a diverse corps of mentors offers Greycells the opportunity to propose its services upfront, rather than respond to requests from institutions which have already defined their values and identified their mentees.
• Greycells’ ambition is to propose initiatives that respond to the needs of a rapidly shifting context and to identify potential mentees.
• Successful pairing rests on empathy and trust which requires involvement in the mentee identification and selection process.
• Greycells’ institutional partnership with the Kofi Annan Foundation introduced the association to structured mentoring; the learning curve was collective and individual. Collectively, our members agreed that it was necessary to formulate a mentoring policy laying out the principles of quality mentoring and defining the responsibilities of the parties involved as well as a coherent role and recognition for Greycells.
• Current opportunities were being discussed with UNIGE centrally and with its diverse institutes. Promising prospects were offered by the international Geneva labour market, by countries in the Caribbean and by Türkiye.
• Other opportunities may come from the International Geneva ecosystem and from the labour market both international and national.