Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1326 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.
Preamble
This post is based on an INSEAD article. Link at the end.
The New Role of Mentoring: Helping Leaders Manage Anxiety and Uncertainty
In a world of rapid change, leaders do not always need someone to tell them what to do. They need someone who helps them think clearly when the answers are not obvious.
A promotion is usually seen as a reward for professional achievement. A new leadership position offers greater authority, wider influence and opportunities to make a difference. Yet behind the excitement often lies an uncomfortable reality: the higher the responsibility, the greater the uncertainty.
A newly appointed executive may have to transform an underperforming business, manage sceptical stakeholders, make decisions without reliable information or lead people who were previously peers. An experienced manager may suddenly find that the skills responsible for earlier success are insufficient for the demands of a new role.
This is the central insight of an October 2026 article published by INSEAD Knowledge, Containing Anxiety: The New Role of Mentoring. Its authors, Roger Lehman, Brett MacFarlane and Geert Vercaeren, argue that effective mentoring, particularly for senior executives navigating change, should go beyond advice and experience-sharing. It should create a trusted space where leaders can examine uncertainty, understand their emotions and think through difficult decisions before acting.
The idea challenges conventional assumptions about mentoring and offers important lessons for organizations, senior executives and professionals working in demanding industries such as pharmaceuticals.
Leadership Is Often a Journey Through Uncertainty
Consider two executives described in the INSEAD article.
One is a country CEO rebuilding a brand’s presence in a market it left more than a decade earlier. There is no established local team or existing infrastructure. He must build the business while persuading sceptical stakeholders within the organization to support the initiative. The other is a newly promoted head of corporate marketing at a private-equity-backed company preparing for acquisition. She has only months to develop a transformation agenda for the future owner while establishing herself in a more strategic role. Both are experienced professionals. Neither lacks intelligence, expertise or ambition. Their difficulty lies in navigating complex situations in which the problem itself is not yet fully understood and the right course of action is uncertain.
This is an important distinction. Leaders are frequently expected to demonstrate confidence even when they are still working out what is happening. They may fear that admitting uncertainty will damage their credibility. Consequently, they may rush into action, seek premature reassurance or rely too heavily on solutions that worked in the past.
Effective leadership requires the capacity to remain engaged with ambiguity long enough to understand it. The challenge is not to eliminate uncertainty immediately, but to prevent anxiety about uncertainty from driving poor decisions.
Why Traditional Mentoring Can Fall Short
Conventional mentoring often focuses on transferring knowledge. A senior professional shares experience, explains what worked in similar situations, offers advice and helps a junior colleague avoid familiar mistakes.
This approach has considerable value, particularly when the mentee needs technical knowledge, career guidance or an introduction to the unwritten rules of an organization. However, it has limitations when the mentee is facing a complex, rapidly changing problem. A mentor may recommend a solution based on previous experience without fully appreciating the circumstances confronting the mentee. The advice may be sensible in principle but unsuitable for the current context.
There is another difficulty. When mentors rush to provide answers, they can unintentionally discourage mentees from examining their own assumptions. The mentee may become dependent on the mentor’s judgement rather than developing the ability to think independently.
The Meaning of Containing Anxiety
The article introduces the concept of containment: holding and transforming raw anxiety into something that can be examined and managed. When facing a difficult decision, a leader may experience several emotions simultaneously, fear of failure, frustration with colleagues, concern about reputation, impatience for results and uncertainty about the consequences of acting or waiting. These feelings can distort judgement if they remain unexamined.
A leader who fears appearing indecisive may act too quickly. Someone anxious about losing authority may become controlling. Another may avoid a difficult conversation because the possible reaction feels threatening. A manager worried about disappointing senior leadership may promise results that cannot realistically be delivered. Containment creates the conditions to pause and examine these reactions without being overwhelmed by them.
Why Senior Leaders Need Mentoring Too
Many organizations provide mentoring for graduates, new employees and high-potential managers. Yet support often diminishes as professionals advance. This creates a paradox. The more senior the position, the more consequential the decisions, and the fewer opportunities a leader may have to discuss doubts openly. Board members, shareholders, employees and colleagues may all have interests that make them less suitable as impartial sounding boards. A senior executive can therefore become isolated even while surrounded by people.
Mentoring can fill this gap by offering an independent relationship in which difficult questions can be explored confidentially, without the immediate pressures of organizational politics.
The Mentor Must Resist the Urge to Fix Everything
The quality of mentoring depends heavily on the mentor’s behaviour. Experienced professionals often develop strong problem-solving instincts. When they hear about a difficult situation, they immediately recall a similar experience and want to recommend a solution. They may also feel that their value as mentors depends on demonstrating expertise. But the INSEAD article argues that premature reassurance and advice can undermine the reflective process.
Organizations Must Design Mentoring for Reflection
A successful mentoring programme requires more than matching a senior executive with an experienced professional and scheduling occasional meetings.
Organizations can apply several practical principles. First, make mentoring accessible at every career stage. Senior leaders should not be excluded simply because they are already experienced. Second, select and prepare mentors carefully. Professional achievement does not automatically translate into mentoring ability. Listening, questioning, confidentiality and emotional awareness require attention and practice. Third, establish trust and boundaries. Mentees need clarity about confidentiality, expectations and the purpose of the relationship. Fourth, provide continuing support. Mentors need opportunities to reflect on their own work and seek help when relationships become difficult. Fifth, evaluate the quality of reflection, not merely participation. Attendance figures and satisfaction surveys cannot fully reveal whether mentoring is helping executives understand problems, improve judgement and make more considered decisions.
Conclusion: The Best Mentors Help Leaders Find Their Own Clarity
Leadership is often portrayed as the ability to make decisions confidently and provide answers to others. Yet some of the most important leadership moments begin with uncertainty.
A new role, a business crisis or a major transformation can challenge even the most experienced executive. The instinct to act quickly, reassure others or demonstrate control is understandable, but it does not always lead to the best decisions.
The lesson from INSEAD is that effective mentoring should create space for leaders to think before they act. It should help them acknowledge uncertainty without becoming paralysed by it, examine emotions without being controlled by them, and consider alternatives without rushing towards premature conclusions.
Concluded.
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Reference:
https://knowledge.insead.edu/career-development/containing-anxiety-new-role-mentoring
