James Johnson: An Advocate for Mentoring
James C. Johnson, vice president, corporate secretary, and assistant general counsel at The Boeing Company, has been a witness to the effects that good mentoring can have on people’s lives as well as the harm that can come when individuals lack good role models. His own career is a living testament to the power of mentoring, which Johnson credits with helping him move from a childhood in Pennsylvania steel country to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his J.D. in 1977 and, soon after, a job with the Securities and Exchange Commission. From government work, Johnson moved to private practice, finally rising to his current position at The Boeing Company. Johnson spoke to Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr. (no relation) about how strong mentoring relationships changed his life, and how he works to be a positive mentor himself.
If it is true that a good, strong mentoring relationship can make a person’s career, then it must also be true that the lack of mentoring can threaten to break it. Just ask James C. Johnson.
In 1983, after spending six successful years at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Los Angeles office, Johnson made the move into the world of private practice—a shift that turned out to be one of the toughest, yet most eye opening, experiences of his post graduate life.
“This was not a popular thing to do at the time,” Johnson admits, speaking from his Chicago office. “In that day and age, black men simply didn’t do well in that arena, and I found myself in an environment where I was totally unprepared. I did not have the tools to operate, or the background to know how to talk to partners, be circumspect, bide my time, or generally play the game.” As a result, he says, his career simply withered on the vine. “I was so different that soon I was not being put out in front of the client, and it became clear that I had to find another path.”
“Had I had a strong network at the firm, and were there people there to act as mentors and show someone from a very different background how things are done, I think I would have done well,” Johnson reflects. “What was wrong with the environment at that sort of firm at the time was that they would put you in an office and throw work at you and wait for your output, but no one would ever discuss with you what you needed to do to be successful.”
Eventually, Johnson signed on with the Northrop Grumman Corporation, first as senior corporate counsel and assistant secretary, and then as corporate vice president, secretary, and assistant general counsel. It was here that he encountered not only his first professional mentor, but learned the first rule of being an African American mentee: Don’t look only to other people of color for guidance.
As an elderly white man and the corporation’s general counsel, Dick Molleur might have seemed like an unlikely candidate to be the man who would help Johnson’s star rise through the corporate firmament at Northrop Grumman. Yet Molleur “cared about me as a person and about my career development,” Johnson recalls, adding that this relationship illustrates an important point for African Americans who are looking to have or be mentors: “The most important thing in finding a mentor is that they resonate with you, and that they care about your development—period. And that was what Dick did.” Critically, adds Johnson, “It is important for African Americans to accept that kind of help from those who are not people of color, but simply people of good will.”
Johnson lives Molleur’s example today, and says that ultimately skin color is irrelevant in his relationships with the people he mentors. “Not only do I have African Americans in the company looking for mentoring, but a fair number of white males as well who are also looking for advice and help,” he reports. “These are people who are not afraid to look beyond the obvious indicia and see that I am an individual who cares about them as a person.”
The other great mentor in Johnson’s life was his steelworker father, who was a great influence on this prospective corporate attorney when he was a teenager in Reading, Penn. “Up until I started spending more time with my dad, when I was about 12 or 13 years old, I was in a situation where there wasn’t much of a role model system where you could go for advice and find out what to do or not do,” says Johnson. Cognizant of the path his life could have taken, he notes that, “Most of our choices, as kids, we made by ourselves, and it was pretty much a matter of serendipity as to whether we did well or went down the wrong path.”
The experience of growing up with the sort of guidance that so many others in his hometown did not have—and turning out all the better for it—leads Johnson to one of his strongest beliefs about mentoring: “It is critical for those of us who are lawyers and professionals of color to mentor and reach as far down the ladder as possible. If you look around the world at communities that work, you realize that it is because the elders have been successful at imparting their traditions, their wisdom, their know how, and their knowledge to the next generations.”
Through it all, though, Johnson’s core belief about mentoring is that, whether a formal or informal process, it is still a people driven exercise, and one with real lives and hopes and dreams at stake. “You can’t divorce mentoring from its humanistic ideals,” Johnson advises. “Once you understand your role and responsibility to help people when you manage them, the concept of mentoring becomes easy. After all, you owe it to them.”
 | James C. Johnson, vice president, corporate secretary, and assistant general counsel at The Boeing Company, shared his thoughts with Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr., the founder of the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, and publisher emeritus of Diversity and the Bar® magazine. This is the second of six articles that will be written this year on the topic of mentoring across differences—spotlighting how lawyers of different race, gender, and cultural backgrounds build successful mentoring relationships. Lloyd M. Johnson, Jr. is currently the vice president of national sales at Areté Legal in San Francisco, Calif. He can be reached by email at ljohnson@aretelegal.com. |
From the March/April 2005 issue of Diversity & The Bar®