Mentorship

Numerous researchers have examined the nature and process of mentoring. Kram has researched mentoring since the early 1980s. She identified four stages of a mentoring relationship that appear to be sequential and developmental. It should be noted that the stage model presented here is one of many in the literature, and there is a lack of agreement among researchers as to what defines a stage, what the duration of a stage is, and what constitutes movement within and between stages. The four stages are initiation, cultivation, separation, and individuality. The stages occur more frequently in informal mentoring relationships.

In the initiation stage, the mentor is idealized by the protégé and viewed as all-knowing. In the second stage, cultivation, the mentor provides vocational guidance and personal support. During the separation stage, the protégé has become more competent and independent and is able to offer more to the mentor. It is also in this third stage that the mentor is more likely to experience mutuality and reciprocity with the protégé. The final stage, individuality, is defined by a sense of dichotomy. That is, the mentor and protégé either develop a mutually supportive friendship or they separate feeling used and bitter.

Researchers have suggested that mentors engage protégés from a variety of roles and provide a number of functions. The terms roles and functions are often used interchangeably, yet scholars in the area of mentoring distinguished them as follows. Roles are a series of expected attitudes, dispositions, behaviors, and obligations organized around a specific vocation. Functions are specific behaviors or actions that emanate from specific roles.

A skilled mentor moves in and out of his or her roles effortlessly. The role adopted by a mentor is determined by the stage of the mentoring relationship and often is a blend of several roles. The adoption of a role or roles is subtle and nuanced. The mentor role is related to the perceived, identified, or expressed need(s) of the protégé. Mentor roles include: teacher, sponsor, advocate, role model, advisor, evaluator, coach, and supervisor. Knowledge, responsibility, accountability, maturity, and ethical behavior are inherent in the roles of a mentor.

In the early to mid-1980s, Kram and other researchers identified two categories of mentor functions, psychosocial and career. Psychosocial functions are personal in nature and focused on the relationship. The mentor provides acceptance, support, encouragement, advice, guidance, and challenge to the protégé. Psychosocial functions provide the foundation for the personal and sometimes intense nature of the mentoring relationship. The career or vocational functions provided by mentors provide the protégé opportunities, “plum assignments,” coaching, protection, role modeling, social status, reflected credit, sponsorship, advocacy, visibility and exposure. These functions are provided with the protégé’s career goals in mind and are related to the institution or profession in which both are currently engaged. Thus a mentor may introduce a protégé to selected influential colleagues at a conference (sponsorship and reflected credit) and encourage them to attend the protégé’s presentation (visibility and exposure). This interaction provides the protégé a role model of one engaging with professional peers and may, in the long term, enhance the social status of the protégé. Mentor functions, like mentor role models, are complex and dynamic interactions that occur as a result of the quality and strength of the relationship.

Mentoring relationships are widely recognized as vital personal and career resources in many disciplines. Mentoring has been an essential element in the training of business professionals, nurses, psychologists, counselors, and educators. There are numerous and detailed accounts of the benefits to the institution, the mentor, and the protégé. For the institution, particularly in higher education, researchers report the benefits to be stable, enthusiastic, and productive employees; less employee attrition, lower training cost, and greater scholarly productivity. The benefits to the mentor include the development of a dependable peer-in-training; generativity or giving back to one’s profession; rejuvenation and enrichment of one’s energies, career, and research interests; and working with a person that has the potential to carry on the mentor’s legacy. Protégés benefit from greater socialization into their vocation, improved career and personal performance, higher salaries, and more frequent promotions. In settings such as higher education, protégés have reported that they experienced greater satisfaction with their graduate education, improved postgraduate scholarly productivity, and more ease achieving tenure and promotion once employed in the academy.

Despite the many benefits of mentoring, there are also some barriers or costs related to this process. Researchers have reported that institutions tend to expect professionals to accept preselected protégés without the professional’s input or to provide mentoring to junior colleagues or students without any additional release time, compensation, or resources. The lack of personal involvement and support can lead to professionals feeling confused and burdened, while protégés may be left feeling disregarded. Protégés have reported that mentoring relationships can be confusing or detrimental when the mentor engages in unethical behavior by violating either academic or personal standards of appropriateness.