Mentoring accelerates individual judgement; networks increase the organisation’s ability to move information, trust and cooperation across boundaries.
Leadership development is often organised as a vertical relationship: a more experienced leader helps a less experienced person understand the organisation, avoid mistakes and navigate a career.
That relationship can be valuable.
But it addresses only part of the capability problem.
David Day’s review places mentoring alongside networking and argues that leadership development should build not only individual human capital but also social capital. That distinction changes the purpose of relationship-based development.
Mentoring helps one person develop. Networks can improve how the enterprise itself works.
The Strategic Context
Complex organisations depend on informal relationship systems.
Formal structures define authority, but many critical outcomes require information and cooperation that move sideways across the organisation. Leaders need peers who understand different functions, specialists they can consult, external contacts who provide new perspectives and trusted relationships that allow difficult issues to be raised early.
These networks are not merely social conveniences.
They influence sensing, problem-solving, resource access and the speed with which leaders can mobilise support.
The supplied Karpin review similarly distinguishes operational networking from strategic networking. Operational networks help leaders deliver today’s work. Strategic networks expose leaders to broader horizons and longer-term opportunities.
What Leaders Commonly Misread
The first mistake is treating networking as self-promotion.
A useful strategic network is not measured by the number of contacts a leader collects. It is measured by whether those relationships improve access to relevant information, challenge assumptions and enable coordinated action.
The second mistake is assuming a mentor can provide everything a developing leader needs. A single mentor may offer deep context, but their perspective is still limited.
The third mistake is building networks only inside existing organisational silos. If every relationship repeats the same information and assumptions, the network adds little strategic range.
The fourth mistake is over-formalising developmental relationships. The source material notes that formal programmes can struggle if they attempt to manufacture relationships that would otherwise develop through trust, fit and mutual value.
Reframing the Issue
Mentoring and networking solve different problems.
Mentoring asks:
Whose experience can help this person develop judgement?
Networking asks:
Which relationships must exist so that this leader and this organisation can access information, resources and cooperation?
A complete leadership-development system needs both.
Mentoring Accelerates Interpretation
Experience is valuable, but leaders can misread experience.
A mentor provides context.
They can help a developing leader understand why an issue unfolded the way it did, which stakeholder dynamics mattered, what political or commercial factors were hidden and how similar situations might be approached differently.
This is especially useful during transitions into larger roles.
However, mentoring should not become dependency. The purpose is to increase judgement, not replace it.
Networks Increase Organisational Optionality
A network creates options.
When a leader faces an unfamiliar problem, a broader network increases the chance that relevant knowledge or help can be reached quickly.
When the external environment changes, contacts beyond the immediate function can provide early signals.
When a transformation crosses boundaries, trusted relationships can reduce the friction of negotiation and escalation.
This is why non-redundant relationships matter. A network containing twenty people who all see the organisation in the same way may provide less strategic value than a smaller set spanning different functions, industries or perspectives.
Social Capital Is an Enterprise Asset
Relationships create social capital when they support trust, exchange and coordinated action.
This capital is embedded in the system rather than owned entirely by one individual.
That makes it strategically important to understand where the organisation is fragile.
If one executive personally owns all important external relationships, the business has concentration risk. If a major program works only because two individuals have a long-standing personal relationship, governance should recognise that dependency.
The objective is not to bureaucratise relationships.
It is to avoid confusing invisible relational infrastructure with permanent institutional capability.
Decision Framework
Assess relationship-based development through four lenses.
Judgement: Does the leader have access to people who can challenge and interpret difficult experience?
Diversity: Does the network contain genuinely different perspectives or mainly redundant ties?
Strategic relevance: Do relationships connect to future priorities as well as current operational needs?
Institutionalisation: Is critical relational knowledge shared enough to survive role changes?
Use the framework for both individual development and enterprise risk.
From Strategy to Execution
Immediate action: map the relationships required by current strategic priorities. Identify where critical cooperation depends on weak or single-person connections.
Medium-term capability building: create mentoring opportunities around meaningful transitions, cross-functional assignments and major programs. Encourage leaders to build networks deliberately across functions and organisational boundaries. Use communities of practice, action learning and peer forums where appropriate.
Long-term strategic positioning: develop network capability as part of succession. Future leaders should inherit not only formal roles but enough relational understanding to operate effectively. Build multiple pathways into strategically important customers, suppliers, regulators, functions and knowledge communities.
Related article: Developing Leaders Is Not the Same as Developing Leadership
Related article: Leadership Is Learned in the Work: Designing Experience That Builds Capability
Signals to Monitor
Warning signs include leaders whose networks exist almost entirely inside their own function, recurring problems that require senior escalation because peers cannot cooperate directly, successors with little exposure outside their current unit and major relationships owned by one individual.
Another signal is organisational surprise: important external changes repeatedly arrive late because leaders are connected mainly to internal information.
Positive signals include peer relationships that solve problems before escalation, leaders who can access diverse expertise quickly, cross-functional trust that survives personnel changes and succession candidates with broad organisational understanding.
Questions for the Leadership Team
- Which relationships are essential to execution of our strategy?
- Where does relationship concentration create succession or operational risk?
- Are our leaders building strategic networks or only operational ones?
- Which perspectives are missing from our current leadership networks?
- Does mentoring create independent judgement or long-term dependence?
- How can we create more cross-boundary relationships without turning networking into bureaucracy?
Closing Perspective
Leadership does not scale only by making individuals more capable.
It scales when the relationships between capable people become stronger, broader and more useful.
Mentoring can accelerate the development of a leader. Strategic networks can increase the capacity of an organisation to sense, coordinate and act.
The enterprise needs both.
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