There are people that come into our lives that make a permanent mark. I lost one of these people in my life a month ago.

First and foremost, Heather Lehmann was a dear friend – someone I could count on regardless of what I was going through. She was a rock, whose practice of inquiry and presence made her the greatest partner to work through the tough stuff. She was a gift not only to me, but to anyone that had the honour of being in her orbit. I didn’t realize how often I reached out to her, or how often I referred her to clients and friends that needed her steady prairie presence and guidance.

We first met in 2016 when we were both brought on by the CEOs of BC’s three nursing regulators to help guide an amalgamation process – Heather on the drums (change management), me on the bass (governance). We connected instantly…being Saskatchewan farm kids on the loose in Vancouver. It was such a gift for two consultants to pause our practices and actually think about one single project…for almost 3 years. We learned from each other’s practice, we shared an office, good coffee, lunches, belly aching laughs…and created a professional partnership that was the best I have ever known. After the amalgamation, I continued on with the nursing regulator and Heather engaged again in her private practice. Although we continued to stay connected, I missed that daily partnership very much.

Heather became a contributor to my brother and sister-in-law’s business Roy Group Leadership, she worked with many of my clients from a coaching and change perspective, she was even being interviewed for a couple of board appointments that she would have rocked. A year ago my wife, Taryn Chisholm, worked with Heather and her husband Barry to redesign their Victoria home. Barry and Heather had an intentional plan for their retirement, living in that beautiful space, travelling the world…I am heartbroken that it was cut short.

I could write a book of all the things I learned from Heather. But the one learning that fills me with gratitude is her love for and belief in humanity. Regardless of what she was doing, she created spaces of care and openness that brought out the very best in people (in me). I believe Heather’s legacy is the communities of people that walked away from interactions with her feeling empowered and cared for. What a beautiful legacy to leave.

I am grateful for my decade knowing and learning from Heather. My life is forever changed because of her. I am a better husband, father, brother, son, friend, consultant, and leader because of her.

 

Rest in peace my dear friend – you are and will be missed.

 

Bradley Chisholm

 

 

–

I thought writing Quiet Champions would be about telling my own stories. But the real gold wasn’t in my experiences—it was in everyone else’s.

 

“The truth is in our stories.”

—David Snowden

 

***

 

I’m not a prolific reader—something people in my field rarely admit. My eyes wander, and I envy those who devour books. Which made writing Quiet Champions…tricky.

Luckily, before starting, I spoke with Daniel Coyle (author of The Talent Code and The Culture Code). He gave me two invaluable pieces of advice:

“You’re going to feel like you’re floundering.”
When the fog of confusion, insecurity, and procrastination rolled in, I kept going—thanks to that timely warning.

“Let me guess—you’re opening each chapter with a personal mentorship story.”
I denied it—strongly—while secretly looking down at my list of personal stories, chapter by chapter. Dan’s advice? Drop them. Use your experience for perspective but gather other people’s stories too. That stuck.

That’s when we turned to SenseMaker®, a survey tool from the Cynefin Co. that captures narrative fragments, multi-faceted perspectives, and makes them measurable. With Complexability Australia, we built a custom SenseMaker collector. Hundreds shared their mentorship stories, offered nuanced perspectives and disclosed personal insights.

Together, these voices revealed patterns no single story could uncover—insights we’d otherwise be guessing at. As David Snowden puts it, SenseMaker lets us “read the wind on the water”—a current strong enough to take us all somewhere better.

The truth really is in our stories. Especially when we listen together.

Discover More:

Want a deeper dive into the insights?

👉 Read the full mentorship research paper, Making Sense of Mentorship

What we learned about mentorship

We collected hundreds of stories—from mentors at their best, and sometimes, at their most human. These stories stretched across industries, cultures, and generations. A thread ran through them all: mentorship isn’t a title or a program. It’s a relationship built on trust, presence, and action.

Three takeaways stood out:

1. Mentorship is earned, not claimed.
2. The most impactful mentors didn’t set out to be mentors. They showed up, listened, and created space for others to step into their own leadership.
3. The relationship matters more than the structure.

Formal programs have their place, but the most powerful moments came from simple, human connections—a conversation over coffee, quiet encouragement, someone asking the right question at the right time.

It’s reciprocal.

Every story of a great mentor was also a story of a mentor who was learning, too. The best mentors are shaped by the relationship.

From these stories, five practices emerged:

1. build trust and respect,
2. listen more than you speak,
3. challenge with support,
4. align on values and purpose, and
5. use simple, reliable tools.

This research confirms what we’ve long believed at Roy Group: mentorship is a practice, and it’s through the that practice that we earn the word “mentor.”

As we prepare to launch Quiet Champions in the weeks ahead, I’m grateful for these stories—and for the reminder that the next generation of leaders must be accompanied by mentors.

 

Share this newsletter, join us on Substack, and help us spread the word:

 

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Find and Follow Quiet Champions here:

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Let’s shape the future of mentorship together,

 

 

 

Ian Chisholm
Partner and Co-Founder

 

Find and follow Roy Group:

Twenty-five years ago, Anne-Marie and I were in the final few weeks leading up to the opening of the Columba 1400 Leadership Centre on the Isle of Skye. The contractor was keen to finish the Centre and have us sign off that it was complete. With zero understanding of the construction industry (particularly the Scottish construction industry), I was in a risky place. 

How could I approve a standard I had no understanding of?

Which is why we hired a Clerk of Works. 

A Clerk of Works is often a retired construction superintendent, who knows the industry, the game, and every shortcut, hoodwink and loophole there is. Walking beside me on his site visits, our Clerk of Works pointed out everything I needed to be aware of and subsequently make part of the conditions for completion.

That 25-year-old memory surfaced again this week during my conversation with Alex Van Tol.

***

Five years ago, I knew that I wanted to write a book. I had an appetite for a creative project. I also wanted to push myself. I wanted to extract from my head the large body of work I had been storing for 30 years and commit it to paper. 

I thought I was all in and ready to go. I thought all I had to do was write it. 

The truth is – I didn’t have a clue what this decision would mean.

But, I’m happy to say that I knew enough to know that I didn’t know enough. And that I would need to reach out, once again, and engage someone who did know the world of writing, books, editing and the publishing business. 

What I wasn’t expecting is one of the best coaching experiences I’ve ever had.

 

Alex Van Tol is an author, editor, and book coach with 30 years of experience in writing and publishing. Trained by the world’s foremost book coach, Jennie Nash, Alex helps writers plan and draft books that have more than just a shot at commercial success. She coaches writers of fiction, nonfiction, and memoir, with an emphasis on improving a writer’s craft and developing their market strategy. Alex has published 15 books with several different publishing houses and has assisted numerous writers in securing deals.

Alex offers high-touch, customized guidance with best-in-class advice on how to write and sell a complex, multilayered, personal work of art into a competitive marketplace. Her expertise is combined with some great coaching, which enabled me to process and sort out what was coming up for me as a writer. Alex reminded me often that “a book forms a permanent cornerstone of one’s reputation.” The book was going to be about the work – but it was also going to be about me. She helped me approach the engagement accordingly.

Every two weeks, Alex provided me with her deep feedback and guidance via notes on the page, audio recordings and/or editorial letters. Each round of feedback included a coaching call to talk through questions and dig into tricky fixes.

Five years later, I can report that the publishing industry is still confusing and changeable, full of arcane rules, gatekeepers, and contradictory advice. Conditions change on a dime and there is no straight line to success. The marketplace can be discouraging to navigate, especially for someone who doesn’t know how publishing works.

Writing is a trade, and as such there’s a degree of mastery involved. Putting a book together by myself would have been like building a house using YouTube DIY videos plus tips from the guys at the hardware store: not impossible, but slow, experimental, and possibly bad. Instead, working with a book coach was like hiring a Clerk of Works to stand right beside me (again), guiding my creative project as I drew the plans and measured the wood. I know my book is written well because I worked with a pro – one who helped to steward me and my book towards my best publishing option.

If you are thinking about writing a book, I strongly suggest having a conversation with Alex. Alex will help you find the right path for you.

 

 

 

Ian Chisholm
Partner and Co-Founder

Photo by Iain Duncan

 

I have a special assignment coming up on Tuesday.

As part of the Rising Economy Conference hosted by the South Island Prosperity Partnership, we have invited Zita Cobb to headline the gathering. You have probably heard about Zita over the last decade as the creator of the legendary Fogo Island Inn and founder of the Shorefast Foundation.  Zita is a no-nonsense force in the world when it comes to economic development, social enterprise and community.  She does not suffer fools and the way she says things sticks with you for a very long time.  If you ever have the chance to meet Zita – you will never forget it.

It also puts a big smile on my face to tell you that she is a friend and mentor of mine – and I will have the experience of interviewing Zita in a house full of my own neighbours.

***

In 2023, I spent a month on Fogo Island as part of my writing sabbatical. I had been to Fogo Island twice with Power To Give field trips and knew that it was a place that I wanted to spend some extended time.  In exchange for some embedded work with Shorefast teams over the month that I was there, I was put up in Sadie’s cottage, a stone’s throw from the Inn. I would write every morning and walk down the road to work with groups every afternoon.

As luck would have it, Zita was on Fogo that April – and we had the chance to spend some time together. This time was filled with the kind of conversations that draw your complete attention away from the sunset happening behind you.  These were the kinds of conversations that helped me tap into things I had never thought about before – and reconnect to important themes that I had lost in the shuffle. It was the kind of conversation that changed the tenor of the book I was writing – and the course of the life I have been living since.

Zita believes in the power of place.  That every community needs to have a place that it can invite the world to experience what it means to be from that place.  She redefines what a ‘resource’ is, and what an ‘asset’ is – and the relationship between the two.  She believes in the unifying power of endeavor and she believes in the dignity that comes with meaningful livelihood. And she believes that money will do anything that we tell it to – to create the kind of communities that an increasingly turbulent world will need.

I left Fogo Island seeing my work through the realm of community.  The promises of mentorship and indeed leadership, in their truest form, come from this realm of community. It’s where they’ve always lived. Which makes the fact that community is a disappearing way all the more problematic. Mentorship requires the collisions and connections of community. True leadership moves at the speed of community.

For generations, communities have had ways of sustaining themselves…but these ways are deteriorating at a rate greater than they’re being strengthened. Our sense of place is being lost faster than the technological promise to actually connect us is being realized. The dawn of so-called social media made all kinds of promises. People who share a passion will be able to find each other and make things happen! That ended up being a bit of a blessing and a curse. What it actually provided was a way for each of us to find the 50% of the people across the planet who agree with us—not the people who we’re actually in community with. The ones we have to figure out a way forward with.

What social media can’t do is be a place. It can’t drop off a tray of lasagne on the step of a neighbour who’s just lost a relative. It can’t rebuild a barn after the tornado. It can’t swing by and take your kids to soccer practice to save you a trip. A commitment to being in community provides the chance for us to gather and notice each other in situ. To notice if someone has begun to struggle, or recover. To notice if someone is thriving. To notice if someone else is starting to lead, or might be available to us as a resource, maybe even as a mentor or a friend. It allows us to experience and share in the food we eat here, the songs we sing here, and the way we say things here. It’s a place where we take accountability for what we say because we’re going to see each other in the grocery store.

It is in community gathering that we understand the place where we are from. The place we are of. The place where we will be buried or have our ashes scattered.

Some communities still have a way that we can emulate. The sabbatical gave me the chance to spend time in a collection of communities with their backs against the wall. Small prairie towns and island villages up against a threat and hanging by a thread, fighting to protect their livelihoods, values and distinct ways of life. Remote indigenous communities indefatigably working through centuries of adversity and trauma – relying on their language, songs, dances and each other to keep on a healing path.

In these communities, the thought that we don’t need each other is incomprehensible.

It is most notably when a community is vulnerable to being lost that it suddenly realizes its own value. This “value” is difficult to monetize, which is why I sense we ignore it until it is almost gone before realizing with a start that it’s worth fighting for. Most of us fail to see community as an equal pillar to education, government and enterprise.

Because it isn’t equal.

It’s worth more.

For all of you who will be able to join us next week at Rising Economy – I can’t wait to see you and introduce you to my friend, Zita.  For everyone else, we will do our best to get some footage of the event. Until then, just keep finding ways to make your community just a little bit stronger today than it was yesterday.

 

 

 

 

Ian Chisholm
Partner and Co-Founder

 

Three years ago, I declared to the world that I was writing a book.

So, I started writing. But back then I had no idea how multifaceted a book project is. How much time it demands. How much emotion it unearths. How many decisions have to be made.

Then work got in the way. Pandemic recovery got in the way. Life got in the way. The work started to feel like a shovel that’s collected too much snow, and, sweaty and swearing, I threw it down.

 

A year ago, I started over.

I went on sabbatical, with the intention to actually write the thing. I had five months of open time. I was going to finish this book.

It was a great experience. For the first 8 weeks it felt like I was working on the book. Then the book started working on me! Big experiences on Fogo Island, Newfoundland with the Shorefast Foundation and in Alert Bay, BC with the Nawalakw Healing Society stoked the fire and deepened my convictions about mentorship and community. These themes continued in South Africa accompanied by my daughter Rose. A combination of taking part in Trip With a Purpose (a creation of old friends, Mike and Lauren Slattery) and visiting Columba Leadership in Johannesburg made an impression on both of us that will last a lifetime. One last month in Scotland gave me the chance for important conversations with friends and mentors there and the opportunity to reconnect with Columba 1400 on the Isle of Skye.

And through it all, I wrote to make sense of what was happening.

In September, I came back to Roy Group—ready for our 20th year in business.

 

I am still writing.

Writing a book is ridiculously hard. I am so grateful for a conversation with Dan Coyle (author of The Talent Code and The Culture Code) who warned me that I would feel as if I was lost at sea. If he hadn’t thrown me that little lifesaver in advance, I think I would have quit by now.  It’s a massive project, not totally unlike building a start-up, with an equal number of complexities.

Worse, my book is about this ephemeral thing called mentorship. How do I capture such a nuanced role on the page? How do I write a book teaching people how to be a mentor when one of my core convictions is that you can’t call yourself one? 

Why, so often when I sit down to write, am I gripped by doubt?

It’s work worth doing, but man, is it exacting. I’ve had to examine, stress-test and push back on every one of my beliefs around mentorship to see which ones hold fast in my heart. I’ve jettisoned things that felt like convictions, but that I now realize are too narrow to matter in the bigger conversation.

To top it all off, I’m being utterly schooled as I go: rewriting passages that are vague or cryptic or just plain boring; having my brain melt into pieces as I try to decide for the seventh time whether I want to wait in the two-year lineup over at the traditional publishing pavilion, or just get the thing into your hands before the world tilts again and I have to rewrite it for a different landscape.

 

What’s my point?

Despite what feels like slow progress, the book will be coming out sometime in the next year—which is awesome, because this dovetails with Roy Group’s 20^th anniversary in September.

Incidentally, What’s your point? is one of the questions that needed an answer in the blueprint I built to guide the entire book’s writing process. I’ll share a few of the other things I needed to ask myself, so you know where I’m headed with it. Things like:

Who the book is for.
(That’s you.)

Where the book will sit in the bookstore.
Easy: personal development. This goes much deeper than leadership.

What similar books my audience might be reading.
I picked Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and How to be an Adult in Relationships by Dr. David Richo, plus a few others.

My working title. Mentor’s Way.
It’s a nod to The Artist’s Way, because I hope this book is just as effective at creating meaningful change in people’s lives.

The logline.
In Hollywood, a logline is a quick summary you can say in one outbreath. Here goes:
Mentor’s Way is a collection of conscious mindsets, skill sets and motivations a leader needs to take forward (and a few things they need to leave behind) if they would like to be remembered as someone’s mentor.

If I take just one more teensy little breath,
I could also add that it’s a manifesto for the mentors of our next generation of leaders.

What’s the structural prototype of the book?
Conceptual. Think The War of Art by Steve Pressfield.

I could tell you about each of the other 14 parts of the blueprint for this book.
They’ve been enormously helpful in guiding me as I develop the content. But they’re not the core of the thing.

 

The beating, hopeful heart of what mentorship really means.

What it really looks like, what it does to you deep down inside, and how it’s a powerful enough lever to shift the whole world.

That’s what the book is for.

So glad you’re in the loop with me on this one.

 

Want to read an excerpt?