Mentoring

Mentoring Functions and Stages

Mentors fill two major functions for their protégés. Career-related functions focus on success and advancement within the organization and include sponsorship, coaching, exposure and visibility, protection, and challenging assignments. Psychosocial functions focus on enhancing sense of identity, competence, and effectiveness in the professional role and include role modeling, acceptance and confirmation, counseling, and friendship.

Mentoring relationships are described as occurring in four stages. Those stages are initiation of the relationship, cultivation of the relationship during which most lessons are learned and benefits attained, separation of the relationship when the protégé begins to assert independence, and redefinition of the relationship as one of peers or colleagues.

Mentoring Benefits

Mentoring relationships are reputed to provide substantial benefits to protégés, mentors, and organizations. Research shows that mentored individuals advance more rapidly in the organization, earn higher salaries, are less likely to leave the organization, and express more favorable work attitudes. This research includes studies that have been conducted within the health care industry. The benefits for mentors include the personal satisfaction that comes from passing knowledge and skills on to others, exhilaration from the fresh energy provided by protégés, improved job performance by receiving a new perspective on the organization from protégés, loyalty and support from protégés, and organizational recognition. In an effort to capitalize on the benefits of mentoring, a substantial number of organizations are implementing formal mentoring programs. Mentoring programs can help organizations in their efforts to develop and advance the careers of women and minorities who may not have access to informal social networks, can be used as a recruitment and retention tool, can be used to help groom employees for positions of greater responsibility and expose high potential junior employees to senior leadership, and can be used to foster cultural change within organizations.

Ways to Encourage Mentoring Relationships

Organizations can foster mentoring relationships among employees by encouraging an organizational learning and development climate. This can be done by recognizing and rewarding the efforts of those who mentor others, providing opportunities for junior and senior employees to interact, and helping employees develop the tools needed for coaching and counseling others.