When Cal Shintani and I discussed recording a podcast episode, it was clear to me we'd talk about mentoring. Cal has a long mentoring background and described some ideas about the same page mentors and proteges get on that I wanted to record. Cool.

Then he mentioned his merger and acquisition experience. M&A's are common in the Federal contracting community. What's not common is for a consultant to be involved in several. And what's even less common is for a consultant to connect mergers with mentoring. But Cal had. He'd added mentoring to mergers and learned some valuable lessons about getting two organizational cultures on the same page while connecting individuals to the newly emerging culture. To the merged culture. Very cool!

In this episode, Cal discusses his experience getting people on the same mentoring and merger pages, and what he did when people couldn't get there. Here are a few of my favorite ahh-ha! moments:

3:57 - Building trust and relationships through the mentoring program of a government-industry IT professional association - ACT-IAC

6:58 - A mind-bending exercise - you be me and I'll be you

8:40 - The same page mentors and proteges should get on

11:50 - Resisting the temptation to advise as a mentor, and how it can change the conversation

16:32 - How a same page emerges from a trusted relationship

25:44 - What you see, what you make of what you see, what you would do, to what end

29:44 - What if you can't get on the same page?

37:00 - Mergers and cultural fit. We both say we're entrepreneurial, but are we saying the same thing?

46:11 - Mentoring and mergers