Mentoring

Themes surrounding benefits of mentoring for the individual and for the organisation emerged from findings. These findings supported those of Kram (1983). Participants in this study appeared to benefit from mentoring in various ways. These included receiving support in advancing through promotions, training, personal support, and being nurtured through difficult tasks. Protégés were offered opportunities and challenges, and generally had better access to information and a wider network through the mentor. The experience of

participants was aligned to those depicted by the women in Still’s (1993) study. She reported that career women’s needs in mentoring comprised two functions: a career function (sponsoring, coaching, providing visibility and advice); and a psychosocial function (being a role model, friend, counsellor, emotional support, source of acceptance).

Benefits of mentoring were evident for the organisation and the individuals involved. The organisation benefited from the mentor relationship due to a

more meaningful way. Managers in the study confirmed the view that the mentor benefited through personal satisfaction by witnessing the development of a protégé, and in return receiving the loyalty of the protégé. However, this

sometimes amounted to having someone to do their ‘dirty work’. The metaphor ‘dirty work’ eluded to tasks bestowed on the protégé that were perceived as distasteful but an inevitable consequence of the power differential inherent in the mentoring relationship.

While almost all participants endorsed the importance of mentoring for their career advancement and general job satisfaction, mentoring in all three

organisations was achieved only in an ad hoc way. Some participants confused training and induction with mentoring activities. Many managers indicated that the practice of mentoring had not been incorporated into their role. However, they were more likely to be aware of, and be involved in mentoring if they themselves had been mentored.

For female managers, being mentored was indubitably an aid to advancing in the organisation. Benefits of mentoring included making a valid contribution to another person’s development and creating change for others. It was also a way of ‘paying back’ the organisation for the mentoring that they themselves had

received. Selection of protégés was based on being attracted to, and recognising, the potential in the targeted individual. Protégés often displayed initiative, competence, and rapport with others.

For managers in the study a suitable candidate for selection as protégé required awareness of the candidate’s potential, together with an aspiration to support the candidate’s development. Some participants acknowledged that being intelligent, willing to learn, motivated, accepting of challenges, and being noticed, were intrinsic to being selected. Others attributed being a suitable candidate to possessing personality characteristics that were similar to the mentor:

I think in the management model you always see yourself in other people. I suppose there's a bit of altruism in all of us. We’d say oh gee that reminds me of me when I was in my early 20’s, or whatever, I could help this person.

A lack of role models was a problem for female managers. Some women were committed to being role models to others in that contributing to attitudinal change was important for future generations of women. However, some of the women interviewed, especially older women, did not feel responsible for cultural change within their organisations, nor for other women in their organisations. They felt that they had reached an age where ‘it didn’t matter any more’, and where the concept of career was not seen as important any more.

Some women described problems they had encountered when mentors left the organisation. In some cases the protégé was left without the support they had relied upon previously. While for others, mentor relationships had not continued due to sexual connotations, either real or imagined. Some women described discrimination they had encountered by male senior managers who were more likely to select male staff to mentor. These findings support those of Kram (1983) and Baker (1994) who also alluded to the shortage of potential female mentors, and suggested that cross sex relationships may be more difficult to initiate than same sex relationships. They suggested that this was due to the ‘similarity principle’, where people tend to prefer and associate with others who are appraised as similar to themselves. Similarity may be based on characteristics such as social class, ethnicity, religion, age, as well as gender and sex, and

therefore senior executives may ‘select’ on the basis of sex. Researchers have also suggested that the dynamic created by sexuality in the workplace may also hinder opportunities for cross sex mentor relationships (Ragins & Cotton, 1991; Sinclair, 1998).

An apprehension about becoming a protégé was that it required the

acceptance of the intrinsic hierarchical nature of the mentor-protégé relationship. Some managers who had not been involved in mentoring relationships viewed mentoring as a burden due to the hierarchical nature of the relationship, and the aspect of being groomed or ‘cloned’ by the mentor. These managers were aware that they did not have the ‘right’ profile or personality required to be a protégé, nor did they acknowledge the ‘intrinsic wisdom’ that a mentor would be prepared to bestow. They felt that the mentor relationship involved bolstering the ego of the

mentor, and that this was something that many female managers abhorred. One of the managers noted that only ‘blokes’ get mentored.

The narratives presented in this section confirm the predominance of hegemonic masculinity in the gendered cultures of, particularly, MetalOrg and ComputerOrg. The power bases are indeed ‘loaded’, with stereotypical power holders, power dynamics, roles, contingencies and opportunities for power consistently perceived and communicated within the organisational cultures in masculine terms. Findings suggested that while both men and women

acknowledged the detrimental effects for women of power differentials between the sexes, men were more confident in the processes in place within the

organisation to ameliorate discrimination or inequality. Women on the other hand appeared to be more sceptical, being more cognisant of the gender polarisation inherent within the construction of these processes.