When you are an owner or becoming a manager, finding value in diverse perspectives cannot be overstated, especially when navigating challenges unique to your role. Having a mentor from outside your business can offer a wealth of wisdom and fresh insights that can transform your decision-making process.
For Tim Floros of Levante Brewing getting insights from brewery owners in Pennsylvania who came before him, like Troegs or Victory, is always important.
“I don’t know where we would have been without learning from them through osmosis or just looking at what they did and taking what they did best and leaving the bad stuff — if there was any,” he said.
Yet, it was going away from the craft beer industry that really helped him develop some extra leadership skills. Encouraged by his father to talk to a family friend, Floros reached out to William Olson for guidance. Olson was a COO for Guinness North America in the early 90s and has been a listening post for Floros to build his company and develop a business and leadership structure for Levante, which is the focus of the Nov./Dec. 2024 Cover Story for Brewer (read here).
“Organizations are only going to grow as fast as their people grow,” Floros said. “I think a lot of times we forget that, as founders, as a Board of Directors, we are all people that need to be growing too.
“It’s not just the front-line employees that need to grow and be trained. We all need to be trained.”
Mentors can bring an unbiased viewpoint, free from the constraints of your daily norms, which allows them to challenge assumptions and spark innovative thinking.
“He’s helped me navigate the landmines, selecting the right partners for distribution and how to do that,” Floros said. “We’ve grown this really great relationship where we meet regularly, and have him help me focus.
“It’s an objective voice that is not in the industry anymore.”
Floros highly recommends that anyone who can find a mentorship relationship do so.
“It just helps you focus,” he said. “As a leader of an organization, you’ve got a million things that you need to do. And if you can consistently every week, every month, start trimming it down to your Top 3 highest leverage things, you start to find that you’re just knocking these things out because they’re important.”
READ MORE: Leadership Development Leads to Longevity
Having Olson as an extra ear and motivator is key.
“They know what they’re talking about, and they’re keeping you accountable, saying things like, ‘Hey, where are you on this?’ I might say I couldn’t take care of this because of another issue. He’ll say, let’s dig into that and figure out where our priorities are there,” Floros said. “It’s been huge.
“Over the past year, I think some of our biggest leaps as an organization that I’ve contributed to have been because of stepping outside of my comfort zone and finding a mentor who has done it all beyond what I could do way beyond.”
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