Case Study · Whisper · Sports broadcast & production · Developing early-career talent
Whisper set out to make its people brilliant mentors for its early-career talent, then ran the programme a second year, with a cohort of 24, from the Chief Executive to producers in their first roles.
Whisper set out to make its people brilliant mentors for the early-career talent coming up through the business. It worked well enough that Whisper ran the programme a second year, with a cohort that grew to 24 and reached from the Chief Executive to producers in their first roles.Developed as mentors in the second cohort
0
from the Chief Executive to producers in their first roles, all learning to bring on the next generation
Who learned to mentor
- Chief Executive
- Director of Production
- Heads of Post-Production & Finance
- Executive & senior producers
- Production managers
- Producers & editors
- Junior & assistant producers
Twice
Whisper has run the mentoring programme two years running, recommissioning it for a second cohort
4 functions
production, finance, media and operations, all mentoring in one cohort
CEO to early career
the span of seniority learning to mentor in one room
Executive Summary
- Sector
- Sports broadcast & production
- Buyer
- People & Talent lead
The Brief
Whisper runs a fast-growing early-career scheme: graduates and placement-year students rotate through its departments, each paired with a more senior mentor. Equip those mentors with one shared, practical way of mentoring, define what good mentoring looks like at Whisper, and build the capability to bring the next generation of production talent through, in a business that moves at the pace of live television.
The Outcome
Whisper built a cohort of mentors working to one shared approach, drawn from across the business and grounded in how it actually works. It valued the work enough to run it a second year, growing the cohort to 24 people spanning the Chief Executive to producers in their first roles, and opening with an in-person event that brought both cohorts into the same room to learn from each other.
From the leadership
We partnered with 10X Managers with a shared philosophy of community learning. We wanted to create environments where our people could learn and share from each other, challenged by a performance partner.
The first round of the programme was so effective we were oversubscribed to the second before we even launched it.”
Estelle Koss
Group Head of People, Whisper
01 / The next generation
Whisper's people earn their progression by being brilliant at making television. Mentoring the next generation is a different craft, and Whisper chose to build it deliberately.
Whisper grew fast by being exceptional at production, from Formula One and the Paralympics to documentaries for Netflix and the BBC. Its early-career scheme brings graduates and placement-year students through the business, rotating them across departments so they learn the craft from the people doing it, with each paired to a more senior mentor. Whisper wanted those mentors to be as good at mentoring as they are at production, and rather than leave it to instinct, the company set out to develop it as a skill in its own right.
In a production business, the best producers, editors and camera operators become the people others look up to, and almost overnight part of the job becomes bringing on the talent behind them. Whisper saw that clearly. A graduate rotating through post-production, branded content and a live broadcast would only get the most from each stop if the senior person beside them knew how to guide, stretch and develop them.
Mentoring is not managing, and the programme drew that line from the first session. A mentor lends experience and asks the questions that help someone find their own answer; they do not direct the work or assess it. For people used to running productions and leading teams, that was a genuine shift to make on purpose: when to step back, when to stay quiet, and how to be useful without simply taking over.
The early-career rotation
Live broadcast
paired with a mentor
Post-production
paired with a mentor
Branded content
paired with a mentor
Documentary & factual
paired with a mentor
Production management
paired with a mentor
Whisper's early-career scheme moves its graduates and placement-year joiners through the departments of the business, learning the craft at each stop. The programme made sure a capable mentor was beside them at every one.
02 / Built for a production company
Not an off-the-shelf course. A mentoring practice built around Whisper, and the pace it works at.
10X did not arrive with a fixed programme to install. The work was shaped around Whisper itself: in-person sessions at the company's Kew studios, designed for an audience that might be on a live broadcast one week and in an edit the next, and grounded in the real mentoring situations Whisper's people face with the early-career talent coming through.
How it worked
An embedded Performance Partner, and a practical mentoring toolkit built around the business.
Rather than a trainer who turns up, delivers and leaves, Whisper had a 10X Performance Partner embedded across the engagement, reachable between sessions and working on the real mentoring challenges already on people's plates.
The room worked on the craft itself: listening to understand rather than to reply, asking the question instead of giving the answer, resisting the pull to solve everything (the cohort learned to name it the advice monster), contracting the relationship clearly at the start, and giving feedback that separates the behaviour from the person. Each idea was practical and immediately usable, so a head of department and a first-time mentor could take the same tool straight into their next conversation with a mentee.
The rhythm of the programme
Launch
both cohorts in one room
then apply with a mentee
Mentoring essentials
listening, questions, contracting
then apply with a mentee
Cultivating early-career talent
the four mentor roles
then apply with a mentee
Enabling development
guide, don't solve
then apply with a mentee
Performance through review
honest, balanced feedback
An in-person launch, then four skill workshops. Between each one, the mentors took the tools into real conversations with their mentees and came back to work through what happened, so every session opened on what people had actually tried, not on theory.
It's been really useful to give myself tools in how to become a better mentor, learning how to adapt to situations and ask the right questions. The facilitator is friendly, welcoming and always brings people into conversation without putting them on the spot.
Joe Bennett, Creative Director, Digital and Content, Whisper
03 / Two cohorts, one room
A programme worth running again, and a room that ran from the Chief Executive to early-career producers.
The second cohort was bigger and more senior than the first, drawing people from across production, finance, media and operations. It opened with an in-person launch event that deliberately brought the first cohort and the new one into the same room, so the mentors who had already been through the programme could coach those just starting, the community learning Whisper set out to build, made literal.
Cohort one
returning mentors
Cohort two
24 mentors, the larger second year
At the launch, returning mentors moved around the room answering the new cohort's questions: what made your partnership work, how did you build trust quickly, what would you do differently. New mentors left with methods borrowed straight from their peers, not from a slide.
The second cohort
24
people developed as mentors in the second cohort
2
years running, recommissioned for a second cohort
4
functions in one room: production, finance, media and operations
1
shared language for what good mentoring looks like
Who was in the room
The leadership
The Chief Executive, the Director of Production and heads of department, mentoring alongside everyone else
Producers & production managers
Executive, senior and production managers across live, branded and factual work
Post-production & media
Heads and producers from post-production, editing and digital content
Early-career & business services
Junior and assistant producers, and finance and operations leads bringing people through
It became a habit rather than an event. By the second year the mentors were using each other as a sounding board, asking how are you dealing with this, and a producer and a head of department now describe good mentoring in the same words.
04 / What changed
The change landed where it mattered, with the mentees.
The clearest evidence at Whisper is not a number. It is what the mentors did differently between sessions, and what their mentees did in return. Working the same tools month after month, the cohort moved from telling to asking, and the relationships started to shift.
In the work, between sessions
01
One mentor moved their conversations out of the office, to a coffee or a walk. It is amazing what a change of environment does, they reported, watching a mentee who had been guarded start to open up.
02
After the Christmas break, a mentee who had been hard to reach emailed their mentor unprompted with an idea they wanted to talk through. Together they shaped it into something stronger, which the mentee then took to their own line manager.
03
Another mentor described a mentee who, at the first meeting, did not quite see the point of it. A few sessions later that person was more engaged and chasing areas of the business they had never felt able to explore.
04
Across the cohort the same shift took hold, from here is what I would do to what do you think you should do, guiding rather than solving.
In their own words
The session was informative and delivered in a way that allowed us to interact and put what we were learning into practice immediately. I came away feeling completely clear about my objectives and with a structured approach I could use straight away. Active listening was the big one for me, and I'm already more present in conversations because of it.
The mentors rated the work highly throughout: the first cohort scored all four workshops 9.6 out of 10, and across both years they rated their Performance Partner 9.4.
05 / Start here
If you run a creative, media or production business where your best people are now bringing on the next generation, and you want to develop them as mentors with something built around your world rather than a generic course, that is the work we do. The same is true if you are building an early-career or graduate scheme and want the people guiding it to be genuinely good at it.
Every partnership between 10X and a client is entirely bespoke and unique. Book a no-obligation call with one of our Development Experts to scope how we could support you and your situation.