- providing friendship (psychosocial mentoring)
- providing a positive example (role modelling)
The researchers looked at formal mentoring programmes in four large organisations in varied industries. The participants were a mix of men and women and of different ethnic backgrounds. The mentors and the mentees were asked about their experience of the mentoring programme and the quality of the relationship with their mentor/mentee.
The main findings are:
Choice to take part
Surprisingly it was found to make little difference whether the mentee volunteered for mentoring or was required to take part.
Input to the matching process
It was important that both mentors and mentees had an input to the matching process. This may be because such pairs have a better fit (e.g. like each other) and feel they have a greater investment in the process and a greater motivation to make it a success.
Training
Whether or not mentors received training was surprisingly not related to the participants opinion of the quality of mentoring. In fact the more hours spent on training the less valuable the mentors found the mentoring relationship. The researchers wonder whether this is related to resentment by the mentors of time spent on training or unduly raised expectations of the mentoring relationship. However if the training was perceived to be of high quality then this was associated with mentees finding the relationship more beneficial.
Geographic proximity
Although mentors and mentees often believe that geographic proximity (e.g. both based in London) is important for a successful relationship the current research does not bear this out. It may be that long distance participants work harder at their relationship to compensate for the distance.
Departmental proximity
Formal mentoring is often targeted at mentors and mentees from different departments, however this research suggests that both career-related mentoring and psychosocial mentoring were enhanced by being from the same department. The authors note that the effect appears to be related to increased opportunity for contact.
Role modelling
Mentor and mentee perceptions of role modelling differed in an interesting way: mentees perceived mentors closer to their own level as more valuable role models than mentors who were much more senior whereas mentors believed they had greater value as a role model when they were at a much higher level. It may be that mentees are more likely to role model mentors who are in the position to which they most immediately aspire whereas mentors may believe that greater experience and authority gives them more to offer.
The authors caution that much more research is needed to explore and confirm these findings but they provide much interesting food for thought.
How can Human Assets help?
This research challenges some assumptions about what is important when implementing a formal mentoring programme. For example, we might have assumed that mentees would not benefit if they had not volunteered for mentoring. It also raises some potentially tricky challenges. For example, it appears that mentor training quality is important to the mentee's experience of the mentoring relationship but that training should also be kept short to avoid possible resentment by the mentors.
Some of these findings may be counterintuitive so it is important to keep up to date with research such as this. Human Assets consultants work to ensure that our client solutions benefit from the latest knowledge and provide the best value for money.
If you would like to find out more about mentoring or other ways to develop your staff please contact our consultants on +44(0)20 7434 2122 or at enquiries@humanassets.co.uk.
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