Mentorship Isn’t Magic

A Systems Approach to Growing Leaders

We consider mentorship a soft skill, a human art left to intuition. We invoke the Justice Potter and lean on hindsight— things like "I know good when I see it.” This diminishes the potential of social science in mentorship by equating it with magic—unmeasurable, unmanageable, and unteachable.

But I’ve come to believe something very different: mentorship is a part of a system. And like any system, it can be understood and improved. 

More precise and rigorous mentorship conversations require models. And there are many. As the oft-quoted and shortened Professor George Box quote reminds us, all models are wrong but are useful. However, given our goal strives for a productive analytical metaphor, which is an adjective for model, Professor Box’s full quote deserves the following space: 

"Since all models are wrong the scientist cannot obtain a ‘correct’ one by excessive elaboration. On the contrary following William of Occam he should seek an economical description of natural phenomena. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity."

In Box’s spirit, I propose a mathematical model at mentorship’s core:

Impact = Ability × Access

Mentorship is manifold. Of those many folds, it is only with hindsight that I recognize how vital my mentor’s social capital was in matching my potential with opportunity. While my Ego wants to claim my success as my own, my humility recognizes I am a product of my access. 

Access as a Composite Variable

Access houses a lot. The fancy term for jampacked is composite, so here’s my draft access composite variable:

Access Variable	Definition	Import
Relational Reach	The breadth and quality of people who will take your call	Your reach is a function of your mentor’s rolodex
Strategic Exposure	Seeing the strategic settings and decisions your peers read or hear about in real time	Your continued presence in such settings increases competence and normalizes your attendance
Sponsorship Signature	Someone with institutional power actively advancing your opportunities, even behind closed doors	Potential often stalls without someone making your case when you're not in the room
Credibility Shield	The mentor’s reputation protects and legitimizes your risk-taking or early errors	High-potential individuals are allowed to fail forward when they’re sponsored by someone trusted (mentorship insurance)
Early Access	Early placement in high-stakes settings before full readiness is a growth strategy	Development compounds when individuals are stress-tested early
Signal Clarity	Your mentor teaches you the industry’s language.	Organizations reward what they understand, and you appear in the know
Story Craft	The story you tell and others tell about you	Your trajectory is shaped not just by performance, but by how that performance is framed and interpreted

These are offered as starting points; they’re also not exhaustive. What lands for you? What doesn’t? And what’s missing?

The Challenge of Observability

We define success by who succeeds. But who succeeds depends on who competes. And who competes depends on who gets access to the arena in the first place.

We’re dealing with a classic observability bias. We shape our models of success from the people we see, but visibility is at least partly a privilege, and mentorship is often the key to unlocking it.

Think of it like this:

Perceived Success = Ability × Observed Access 

When we believe that what we see is all there is we suffer from what Daniel Kahneman explains calls WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is). This cognitive trap confuses visibility with value, exposure with excellence.

But mentorship challenges that. It corrects the aperture. It asks: Who isn’t in the room, and why?

Effective mentorship helps those often left out, but who are competitive, show up and get a chance.

A Military Lesson: Eisenhower and the Geometry of Opportunity

In 1940, Dwight Eisenhower was a competent lieutenant colonel buried deep in the defense bureaucracy. His ability was evident to those who knew him—but few did. Early in his career, he had the good fortune to cross paths with General Fox Conner, a thoughtful mentor who nudged Eisenhower’s development in meaningful ways, with effects that compounded over time. Conner offered guidance, a curated reading list, and an approach to strategy that shaped Eisenhower’s thinking. 

Conner helped make Eisenhower’s leadership legible, which later enabled General George Marshall to sponsor Eisenhower. Yes, if you zoom into Eisenhower’s life, the reality belies this tidy storytelling. And when we zoom out, the shift in Eisenhower’s slope owes its ascent to the sequential mentorship that made his story possible. 

Essentially, Eisenhower’s ascent was not a straight line of merit. Its slope was shaped and spurred by mentorship. 

A Challenge to Leaders

If you’re in a position of leadership—military or otherwise—here’s what I’d ask you to consider:

• Who are you mentoring that doesn’t remind you of yourself?

• Who have you made legible to others that would productively challenge your system? 

• What’s outside of the aperture that we could benefit from seeing? 

It’s easy to think you’re selecting for talent when you’re just picking from those already visible. If we only draw our leaders from those who had early access, we are not selecting the best—we are selecting the best-prepared from a narrow field.

That’s not meritocracy—that’s path dependency dressed up as performance.

Final Thought

Mathematics helps us visualize the invisible. That’s what equations do: they make abstract systems concrete. And when it comes to mentorship, that’s exactly what we need.

So the next time someone calls mentorship a soft skill, remind them: soft doesn’t mean vague. And if you want to build high-performing teams, don’t just evaluate ability. Multiply it.

Impact = Ability × Access

This isn’t abstract. It’s systemic. As organizational theorist Pierre Bourdieu argued, capital isn’t just financial—it’s social. And those with access to influential mentors and networks accumulate it invisibly. The field, as he puts it, is tilted.

References:

• Pierre Bourdieu, The Forms of Capital (1986)

• Ronald Burt, Structural Holes (1992)

• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

• Scott Page, The Diversity Bonus (2017)

• Herminia Ibarra, Working Identity (2004)

• General Fox Conner & George C. Marshall biographies (various military sources)

Ted Delicath is the product of a Midwest single-parent household, who strives to earn his arbitrary good fortune of being born an American and to a rightfully hometown-famous mother through service. He currently serves as a Principal with the McChrystal Group, a Captain in the US Army Reserves, and the Strategy Director of the Andrew Weishar Foundation. Next December, he will graduate from Kellogg with his EMBA and looks to continue leveraging his network to connect good people seeking to do great work.