Senior Women Managers’ Experience of Mentoring in the Public

The majority of the public sector female managers in the study said that they had formal mentors. They were assigned a mentor on the day they started their service as a government officer through a formal mentoring scheme. They had no choice of who they were assigned to. Their mentors, regardless of gender, were internal to the organisation in which the interviewee was employed at the time mentoring took place. When asked about the benefits of mentoring in the public sector, eight senior women interviewed said that having a mentor was a crucial factor in the success of a women’s career. They believed that women need a mentor not only to guide but also to enable access to resources and other senior colleagues within the organisation. For Cempaka, having to deal with sensitive aspects at work, she would not share with her husband as he might not understand the situation, but her mentor did.

“… Not all office matters you can share with your partner or spouse due to some level of confidentiality … especially when we deal with sensitive agencies” (Cempaka, Senior Assistant Director, Public Sector)

The participants also stressed that the importance of having a mentor, should not only be restricted to women. Four senior women felt that everyone needed a mentor regardless of gender, especially the junior employees. Sakura thought that a formal mentor-mentee programme could complement each other as they were able to share ideas and problems together with people from diverse backgrounds. Shanti, an Indian senior woman, admitted that the right mentors could guide her on how to improve her work performance. Shanti also mentored men and women given her position as a senior manager and would do her best to encourage and develop her mentees in the workplace. In contrast to intersectional theories, Shanti’s mentor was a Malay senior man with whom she could always refer to and talk to. This may be due to the dearth of sufficient non-Malay senior women or men at the top of management in the public sector. Similarly, Azalea, who happened to have non-Malay bosses, confessed she did not want to be mentored by her own Malay ethnic group. She felt comfortable with her non-Malay male mentor as he believed in her and would advise her and help her to meet and communicate with people she could learn from.

“I would prefer male mentors and the non-Malays. I do not like my own Malay ethnic [laugh] … I like his approach of openness. He listened and trusted me to make a decision” (Azalea, Principal Assistant Secretary, Public Sector)

In view of the numerous benefits associated with mentoring relationships in Malaysia (Ganesh, Bozas, Subban, and Munapo, 2015), it is somewhat disconcerting that some senior women managers interviewed did not necessarily value the formality of the mentoring scheme. These women felt that having a formal mentor was not the best way forward in terms of career development. They had no strong rapport with their mentors as they only checked on their mentees’ career updates sporadically. The limited benefit of having a mentor was perhaps felt because they could not choose their mentor in this formal system and would have preferred an informal mentoring relationship. Thus, there can be problems with mismatch between mentor and mentee backgrounds, attitudes, beliefs and values, mentor self-absorption, manipulative behaviours by the mentor, poor interpersonal and competency skills, and mentor neglect of the mentee (see Eby, Butts, Durley, and Ragins, 2010; Eby, McManus, Simon, and Russell, 2000). As pointed out by Tulip,

“We used to have a program called Mentoring and Coaching, but it goes nowhere. For example, me and my boss. She should mentor me, guide me, coach me, but it did not happen … she has no idea how to help or

what she wants…So, I have to work on my own” (Tulip, Assistant Director, Public Sector)

Tulip felt a formal mentorship had been less useful as her mentor did not use her experiences to guide her as a mentee. Orked mentioned that the mentoring system provided in the public sector has also not been systematically organised. Cempaka believed that mentors should offer advice, but not force mentees to follow this. Although mentoring may help the junior managers to break down the barriers, it seems difficult to bridge the gap between senior and junior level managers due to the structural patriarchal system in Malaysia. This could reflect on Durbin's (2016) arguments that some formal mentoring schemes have been poorly designed and perceived as being ineffective by simply allocating their mentors to the wrong protegees. It has failed to attract a suitable number of senior men and women to guide the junior managers.

Women are less likely than men to be mentors given the shortage of women senior managers in the workplace to support one another (Marshall, 1995; Ehrich, 2008). Having said that, Clutterbuck (2004) suggested that informal mentoring is considered as the most successful mentoring. The old boys’ network has turned informal mentoring into the norm in some workplaces given that most senior managers are likely to be men. Yet, it is in stark contrast to that situation when, of fourteen public sector senior women interviewed in this study, only four had informal mentors to help their career advancement. This could mean that the quality of the relationship between mentor and mentee can be variable. As a Senior Assistant Director, Widuri mentioned that some women do not need a mentor because of their own inner drive and ability to climb up the career ladder.

Additionally, the analysis has shown that seven senior women preferred a female rather than a male mentor, though five senior women would choose the latter for their career progression. Participants cautioned against over generalising in this respect, however, stating that the degree of preference depended on the job assignment. Female mentors were likely to provide emotional support whereas male mentors were at times preferred as they have the inclination to guide their protegees from an instrumental or technical perspective. (Feeney and Bozeman, 2008). As Muslim women, Akasia and Sakura would prefer a female mentor because it is easier for them to discuss issues. They would be prevented from doing the same if their mentor was a man due to religious restrictions (see Chapter Two). Anggerik argued that male mentors may not understand women’s feelings and would prefer to share with female mentors. Mawar felt that female mentors are very strict and meticulous, so they are good in areas of planning whereas male mentors were likely to be more relaxed and have less experience of pressure in the workplace. Cempaka claimed that she would choose female mentors because they were good at listening and men were likely to have some ego issues when receiving opinions from females.

Mentoring is a limited career strategy for senior women to employ in the public sector given that they do not like the formal scheme and only a small number of women have informal mentors. Yet, most of them agreed on the importance of having a mentor in the workplace. They admitted a mentor should be seen as a support mechanism for senior women to have better access to resources in organisations and create pathways for them to succeed in their career. A formal mentoring scheme was designed in the civil service to assign a mentor to these senior women on the day they started their ADO roles. Yet, some senior women interviewees disagreed on the implementation of a formal mentoring scheme as it had been poorly designed and less useful to the advancement of women’s careers in Malaysia. Surprisingly, although Clutterbuck (2004) suggested that informal mentoring is considered as the most successful mentoring scheme in the West, only four public sector senior women had an informal mentor. With respect to gender preference, the analysis has also shown how public sector senior women are in favour of having a female mentor rather than a male mentor. More than one-third of public sector senior women believe that a female mentor could provide emotional support to the mentee, whereas a male mentor could help them learn the right approach and give advice on technical aspects. The discussion on women’s mentoring experience in the public sector differs from those in the private, which is discussed in the next section.