Jon McNeill has been in the C-suite for a long time.
He worked as the president of global sales and marketing for Tesla under CEO Elon Musk before becoming the chief operating officer for Lyft. He now runs the company he co-founded, DVx Ventures, which helps entrepreneurs launch new businesses, and sits on different boards including General Motors and Lululemon.
But when it comes to career advice, he says the single most important factor in his rise to the top was finding people who championed him early on—even if he didn’t know it back then.
“The biggest impact on my experience in my career in leadership has been to have mentors. It is an unfair advantage. I didn't realize this when it was happening at the time,” McNeill recently told Fortune.
He first sought out a mentorship right out of college, in his job as a consultant for Bain & Company, a business management firm. He kept the cycle going, and continued to look for advisors as he progressed in his career.
“All of those mentors made me better. Then I learned to grab mentors, both vertically and horizontally. Vertically, people that have seen the movie before. They're ahead of you on the journey, maybe by 5, 10, 15 years,” McNeill says, emphasizing the importance of balancing insights from industry heavyweights with professionals at your same career level.
“You can bounce things off of each other that you may not be able to bounce off of your colleagues, your peers, your boss,” he says. “For me, the biggest leadership hack is having mentors.”
When it comes to other advice for business leaders, McNeill advises having a solid plan B just in case plan A falls through, and building a strong foundation among employees, like making sure that everyone understands what the business forecast and goals are.
And for McNeill, working at Tesla meant walking away with some business lessons from Musk himself.
“Elon is famous for his super ambitious goals for people, and then really holding folks accountable to those on a weekly basis, but also giving them the tools to be successful,” he says. “It wasn't just throwing people to the wolves. It was really supporting them.”
