To Mentor Is a Verb

My once-in-a-lifetime mentor at Estée Lauder

Ida Stewart worked side-by-side with Mrs. Estée Lauder on most everything. As to what job description actually belonged to Ida, we never really knew, but her devotion to Mrs. Lauder was legendary. The strong chemistry, and subsequent loyalty, seemingly began on the day Mrs. Lauder hired Ida.

Ida was a creative mind; math was not her pleasure. That concerned her only a little, unless the equations pertained to her salary. She wanted to be paid fairly and she knew she had to prepare thoroughly if she was to engage in a numbers dialogue with Mrs. Estée Lauder. Earlier in life, she’d been fired from a simple cashier’s job because she too frequently had a till that didn’t balance at the end of her shift.

So, Ida prepared for her interview with Mrs. Lauder by establishing her minimum acceptable salary. During the interview, she thoughtfully answered all the questions, while still chattering away silently to herself about how and when to take her strong money stand. As the interview drew to a close, she grew increasingly anxious to express her financial expectations. She planned to exit quickly if her fiscal prospects appeared dim. Suddenly, with no warning, she shot up out of her chair and loudly announced that she would not take the job for one penny less than her set fee.

Surprised by Ida’s outburst, and probably a little amused, Mrs. Lauder coolly replied that she was actually planning to pay more than Ida’s stated requirement.

And there you have it: The birth story of an ironclad relationship between two remarkable women, one that endured for several decades.

When Ida interviewed me for an entry-level position, I was two years out of the University of Missouri, and most recently a middle school teacher.

Although I had little relevant experience, I was hired that day. It was probably for a perceived ability to learn, an acceptable well-groomed look, and a palpable, old-fashioned grit and ambition that had been bred in the middle of the heartland.

Ida traveled a lot and spoke to customer groups across the country. I got to know her better when she traveled to the St. Louis market I supervised. She was an ideal delegate for the company. Her skyscraper cheekbones, Barbie doll long legs, and lithe, slim torso messaged the model looks that every woman aspired to have. Her soft Southern vowels rolled easily off her tongue to form just the right sweet mix of smart and feminine. She kept every audience member relaxed and happy by belting out one clever witticism after another. She would twist up her full lips and warn the crowd to not let their mouth become an old worn-out buttonhole. She would then pull a bright red lipstick from her pocket and delight the crowd by applying it with no mirror.

Customers raced to buy every product she mentioned. Estée Lauder salespeople (beauty advisors) doubled and tripled their sales after one of her market visits.

For the most part Ida didn’t take part in disagreements. She spoke mostly in parables so that she never had to be direct. People close to her became a little more powerful simply because they could interpret the meaning of her comments for other attendees. Our ability to decipher her inscrutable metaphors probably gave us entrée to meetings we would otherwise never have been invited to attend.

Her ideas frequently surpassed the plausible or practical, so the brass tack minds assembled were not always sure what to do with the moon shots she tossed their way.

“I want every Estée Lauder beauty advisor to be educated, not trained. Dogs and monkeys are trained. People are educated,” she declared. “I think we need a change.”

“What kind of change?” they probed.

“Change the name of the department. Let’s call it the education department,” she flatly declared, as though she were repeating herself.

And they changed it. And that small change transformed the way people taught. Specialists were sent to the counters to follow up the classroom learning. Beauty advisors were taught how to learn on their own. Their slow customer traffic times were turned into practice sessions.

Her handwriting was one step above a loose scrawl. We were called on often to decode the last two words someone “just couldn’t get.”

Is it bash or bath? We’d query. 

“Bath! Bath!” We’d yell in victory when the context made sense. “She wants to do a bath product!”      

On one occasion she passed a handwritten document, pieced together with Scotch tape to a high-level executive with a proclamation that she thought the company should implement the plan she had devised the prior evening in her office.

The smooth high-level marketing executive handed it back to her, with a patronizing smile and a weak promise to look into it.

“Wait, wait, I want you to hear more about it!”

Ida asked me to elaborate on the document.

“I’m not quite sure what you want to accomplish with that sheet, Ida. What is it?” I asked.

She took the sheet, turned it upside down, sideways and backwards before she announced that it had looked better the night before, when she was working late in her office. With the morning light, she was no longer sure what she had meant.

As it turns out, it was probably the first rendition of what would become the skincare chart tool that would be used by the company’s beauty advisors.

Source: Pinterest

On one occasion, she asked me what I thought about a particular project. The initiative was a political hot potato. I started my answer by saying that I knew what another important executive thought.

She abruptly interrupted me.

“I didn’t ask you what someone else thought. I asked you what you thought. You’re paid to think and you’re paid to say what you think.

Always, always say what you mean.”

Since that day, I always have.

Three years after I was hired, Ida brought me to work in the New York office, to direct the education department in a manner that satisfied both her and Mrs. Lauder. As I worked in that environment my ambition grew. I decided that I could be a general manager or a brand president. I asked the company for positions that would give me the financial experience needed to ultimately attain one of those two positions. But they felt I served the company better by continuing in the education role and “understanding Ida.” They did not offer me another opportunity.

I had no successors for my valued, but dead-end position. I was essentially indispensable.

I was itching to do more. However, I don’t remember telling Ida about the itch. Perhaps I thought it disloyal to want to leave her sphere of influence, and I knew the decision was not hers.  

Out of the blue, I was scouted for a marketing position at a competing company. I knew the experience would provide an opportunity to learn exactly the elements I considered important to my development, while providing a fresh insider’s view of a competitor.

I accepted the position and resigned from Estée Lauder. Many executives tried to persuade me to stay. At last, they offered the very jobs I had long requested.

I was diplomatic with my refusal to stay. I did not point out that their offers fit into the proverbial “day late and dollar short” category. I simply restated my intention to resign and emphasized that I had formally committed to accept the new position. I had given my word to the new company, which to a Missouri native, was irretrievable.  

I dreaded my meeting with Ida to say goodbye. Loyalty was high on Ida’s hierarchy of values. I expected a cold farewell to a company traitor.

“They don’t understand you here,” she began.

I was startled. I sat up straighter. She continued.

“You’re still the Midwestern kid we hired. We gave you a chance and you did well. But you may always be known as the account executive that succeeded. It may be hard for the company to stop seeing you that way.”

“Might be a good time to change your clothes.”

For a foolish, fleeting millisecond, I thought she was referencing my wardrobe. But, of course, she was telling me to change my image, to find a way to match my credentials to some of the outside hirings the company had made. I reflected on the chic marketing executive who nimbly handled Ida’s skincare chart. She’d brought Neiman Marcus know-how with her. Another new hire had been snatched from Revlon. The company boasted heartily when they found a treasure and persuaded them to join. In meetings they would ask the new employees how their former companies might have handled certain situations.

Ida was suggesting that my homegrown status within the company might not serve my aspirations well.

“Sometimes a bird has to fly,” she told me.

With wardrobe and birds, Ida was suggesting that I leave the company, but she was also predicting that I would return at a later time.

I always had this odd sensation that Ida knew my future. Or maybe she simply knew how to guide me to find my own.

I did leave Estée Lauder on that occasion, but I came back. I ended my career at Estée Lauder thirty-three years after that meeting, as a global president of multiple brands.

Ida was with me through all of it. She retired during my return, but we still saw each other. Even though our meetings were infrequent, they always felt familiar. She always met me where I was and took me and my spirit to a higher place. I am not sure how or why, but she did.

She called me one day and asked if I could swing by her Sutton Place apartment. She wanted me to have the specially designed Tiffany plates she had been given by the company. I stacked about sixteen plates in my car and stored them in my Manhattan apartment. On another occasion she asked if I liked gold or silver better. When I saw her next, she brought a silver metal bracelet, with Mrs. Estée Lauder’s signature engraved on the inside. I have always worn it, but I wear it more since Ida died. The last time I saw her was at her 100^th birthday party. She died three months later, in March of 2023.

---

Over the years, I have been asked for advice on how young professionals can find mentors.

I usually tell them to stop looking so hard. It sounds like strange advice from someone who had several sponsors and one very special one. Instead, I advise them to focus on their work, do a great job in their current engagement, read voraciously, learn, and spend their adolescent professional lives determining what they most enjoy doing. What they enjoy the most will likely be where they will flourish.

As they start to find their own truth, I tell them that the right mentors may appear and recognize them. Or, with their new self-awareness and experience, they will have an opportunity to make a more elegant and relevant request of the professionals in their circle.

“Easy for you to say now,” some might counter. “Your whole career could have been cut short before it even began if you had not had your mentor.”

Ida chose me. She never announced that she chose me or that she was my mentor. She never discussed mentoring. Without fanfare, she simply exercised the verb side of mentor. She was intuitive enough to see my raw talent and observant enough to sense my intense work ethic. She had the bandwidth and the maturity to take a leap of faith on the rest.

I have, on a few occasions, fancied myself as a mentor. Because I had not reflected long on the implications of that role, I made some mistakes. I tried to put a few people on the general manager pathway. If I had wanted it, I thought they should want it as well. They didn’t.

Ida believed everyone had some sort of magic switch and that it was her job to help people find it and activate it. In plain speak she thought people did their best work when they could be their authentic selves.

She encouraged women to succeed by telling them to celebrate their innards. Ida rolled her eyes when people referenced the ’80s guide books suggesting man-like blue suits, white shirts and sensible shoes for women who wanted to be taken seriously.

“Let women wear what they want,” she’d lament, as she straightened her perennial fashion hat.

She offered generous applause when she saw women lead with their strong feminine sides.

“Women have their own leadership strengths. They should be themselves. Why do they keep trying to copy the men?”

Decades later the perennial message, no matter the gender, is still the same. She would offer a hearty cry to “be yourself.” Call it Barefaced Living, the name of this column.

Good leaders often have sky-high emotional intelligence and a generous collaborative spirit. Some people have more than others. If you have it, flaunt it.

Ida loved the word encouragement.  If I close my eyes, I can still hear her soft drawl lingering on the vowels,

“I’m always encouragin’ people to do better.”

Ida’s largest paycheck came in the form of observed human improvement. Mrs. Lauder took care of her base pay, the rest of us took care of her bonus.  

Ida encouraged me to wiggle down deep and find my truth. More importantly, she inspired me to live it. She never once tried to mold me into her likeness. She could have encouraged me to stay at the company all those years ago. Instead, she endorsed a flight, a flight that, in an unorthodox way added to my worth and, and years later, to the value of the corporation.

Did she know I would return to the company? Did she have a sense that I would return stronger?

As I said, it always felt that she knew my destiny.

Perhaps she did, but instead of explicitly telling me how to reach it, she talked about birds flying. She educated me with parables that required reflection. She told me I was paid to think and she taught me how to do it better.

I miss her.

---

Did your mentor find you or did you find your mentor? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

I’ll be back next month with a column on Love, God-Winks and Angel Whispers.