In many organizations, leadership development is treated as a parallel track, something leaders do in training programs or offsite retreats, but all too rarely embedded into day-to-day practices. What if leadership development wasn’t a separate investment, but a built-in advantage, delivered through mentoring?
Why this matters: the hard business case
- According to McKinsey’s Leadership at Scale research (based on over 375,000 data points), organizations that are able to develop leaders broadly across the organization outperform peers.
- In a 2024 article, McKinsey also reported that organizations in the top quartile of leadership effectiveness deliver nearly double the EBITDA compared to peers with weaker leadership.
- Yet despite these stakes, only about 10–11% of executives strongly agree their leadership‐development programs “achieve and sustain desired business impact.”
- That gap is telling: many leadership programs fail to translate into real outcomes. The ones that do are often ones built into the flow of work—anchored in relationships, accountability, feedback, and practice.
Mentoring is the power multiplier
Embedding mentoring into leadership development bridges that gap. Here’s what the evidence shows:
- Research led by Christopher Stanton, the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration in HBS’s Entrepreneurial Management Unit in a “broad-mentoring” test, mentored employees generated 18% more revenue in their early months than non-mentored peers, and more than 90% of the gains were sustained over six months.
- In sales organizations, mentored reps were 14% more likely to stay beyond one month, a meaningful difference in notoriously high-turnover roles according to a recent Harvard Business Review article.
- According to Mentorloop’s 2025 stats, mentees in formal mentoring programs have a 72% retention rate, versus 49% for non-mentees.
- A survey by HBR Analytics (sponsored by Torch) found that 40% of organizations see better employee retention among those receiving coaching or mentoring. That is 16 percentage points higher than organizations without it.
These data points underscore a truth: mentoring doesn’t just “feel good”, it drives measurable leadership capacity, loyalty, performance, and culture.
Building leadership cultures, not just programs
For mentoring to deliver, it must be part of a system. McKinsey’s research into leadership development emphasizes four critical elements:
- Contextualization: tie leadership development to strategic priorities
- Scale & reach: don’t limit to a few; get critical mass
- Behavioral transfer: design for real change, not just content delivery
- System reinforcement: embed into feedback cycles, HR systems, and performance metrics
In practice, that means mentoring must be supported by strong program structure, thoughtful matching, consistent touchpoints, leadership accountability, and technology to manage scale.
What Engage Mentoring brings to the table
At Engage Mentoring, we believe the true power of mentoring is unlocked when it becomes a leadership multiplier, not a standalone “nice-to-have.” Here’s how we do it differently:
- Executive Club + Mentoring Program: a blended model combining peer leadership cohorts with one-on-one mentoring.
- Data-driven design: we use evidence-based matching criteria, feedback loops, and technology to track progress and outcomes.
- Scalable + human approach: we shoulder program management so Executives can focus on high leverage work, not logistics.
- Accountability built in: mentors and mentees are anchored in the business’s leadership goals, tied to performance metrics, and held accountable through periodic check-ins.
Our clients don’t just report “softer” gains, they see increased retention, deeper bench strength, more cross-functional collaboration, and stronger culture alignment.
Ready to see if this model could be the missing lever in your leadership development strategy?
Talk with one of our Program Directors to explore how the Executive Club from Engage Mentoring can help you grow leaders who develop others, and build a culture that lasts.
Schedule a call to learn more.