The exponential power of talented teachers and mentors extends across decades

It’s been a sad time for me – recently, two of my career mentors passed away. They died within a month of each other; both were in their early eighties.

In early July we lost Dr Joe Powell, emeritus professor of geography at Monash University. I first met Joe in the early 1980s, when he supervised my Masters thesis. For three years we would regularly meet in his book-lined office where he would take me through his edits to my draft chapters. He would circle a single word in a sentence, replace it elsewhere in the same sentence, and say, “Do you not see, Bernard, that this is a more elegant way of expressing that thought?” And of course it was. Joe taught me how to use a semi colon, the purpose of an ellipsis, the difference between an em-dash and an en-dash. His teaching did not involve a throwaway comment like, “Go away and learn how to use punctuation”; rather, he walked me through and patiently explained every point. It was a revelatory experience. He opened my mind to the beauty, to the mechanics, to the poetry of language.

Joe was brilliantly bold in his thinking and in his writing. When speaking of maps, data and trends he would borrow terms from physics – yes, physics – to describe what was happening. He would use words such as propel and velocity and altitude. He once likened the movement of people to the outer suburbs as being a kind of centrifugal force. Who thinks of words like that? Joe did, and it was utterly compelling.

One of his books described the scientific works of the director of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, who would go on field trips in the 1860s and 1870s to collect botanic specimens. Joe wrote that von Mueller did this “…into his late 40s, on horseback, no less”. Finishing this sentence with “no less” is perfect; it is elegant; it is whimsical; it is poetic; it has stuck in my mind for 40 years. Oh, what command of the English language enables “no less” to pop into your mind at precisely the right time.

Phil Ruthven

And then, at the end of July, we lost Phil Ruthven, founder of market research firm IBISWorld and a prolific corporate speaker in the 1990s and early 2000s. I first met Phil at a speaking event in 2003 when I was just starting out; he was the doyen of the circuit at that time. I was a bit nervous meeting him, but he warmly greeted me and kindly said how much he liked my commentary. I thanked him for his support. I then made an oblique reference to my growing band of critics. He said, don’t worry about critics, just keep doing what you’re doing. I bumped into Phil a decade later when he had more or less retired, and told him how much his words had helped me years earlier; he couldn’t recall them but that’s because, well, Phil was generous to everyone all the time.

It was this experience of seeing how Phil Ruthven as a senior, successful commentator interacted with a “wannabe” starting out that confirmed in my mind how I would act if ever I was fortunate enough to get to such a position. I determined that I would be generous and supportive to those coming through; I would pay it forward – and that is precisely what I’ve endeavoured to do with my young colleagues. And in the process, I have learnt something that Phil didn’t teach me, and that is how rewarding it is to pass on learning and insight to the next generation.

Even more rewarding is the experience of creating opportunities for others to show what they’re made of. This is the exponential power of talented teachers and mentors: their influence extends for decades into the future.