Mentoring programs continue to be an important HRD tool as they provide faculty, regardless of career stage, an opportunity for professional learning and development. However, the traditional hierarchical mentor–mentee model may limit the quality and utility of these relationships. A solution provided by emerging literature is the relational mentoring perspective that calls for a mutual approach to mentoring. Nonetheless, mutual learning and growth in diverse mentoring might be difficult for underrepresented faculty mentees and their mentors. Our study offers a unique contribution to the mentoring literature by identifying how mentoring schemas may guide experiences of the factors that challenge and cultivate mutuality within diverse formal mentoring relationships. Findings indicated that difference in career stage and culture/power‐distance challenged the mentoring partners' ability to experience mutuality, especially if they had a traditional mentoring schema. Interestingly, they managed to overcome these challenges and experience mutuality in their mentoring partnerships if they were paired with a senior mentoring partner with a relational mentoring schema who was skilled to nurture mutual learning and growth. Also, similarity between mentoring partners in deep‐level diversity characteristics such as research interest, work styles, and approach to career building facilitated experiences of mutuality. Guided by the findings, we recommend that program designers solicit information on how cultural identities might have shaped mentoring schemas as part of the matching process and engage mentoring participants in a discussion about how these differences may influence the way mutuality is conceptualized and practiced early in the mentoring process.
Minoritized women remain underrepresented in leadership positions, especially within higher education (HE). A key barrier to advancement for women of color is their susceptibility to impostor phenomenon (IP). A developmental network where the minoritized woman receives developmental support from multiple individuals is a potentially powerful intervention that can help them advance their careers, but there is a general lack of research on IP in the context of minoritized women’s leadership development and the role of developmental support, especially with regards to multiple diversified developmental relationships. Therefore, this paper integrates various literature streams (leader development for minoritized women in higher education, IP, mentoring) and offers a conceptual framework that utilizes a developmental network perspective. The propositions offered explain how multiple developers can help minoritized women address IP and develop positive leader identities, as well as how both parties can better anticipate and handle challenges related to diversified developmental relationships in HE.
Problem There is chronic underrepresentation of minoritized women in higher education leadership positions. A primary reason is that mentoring support is either lacking or rarely considers how the intersection of their race and gender creates a double bind. Further, there is a dearth of studies examining the lived experiences of mentoring support received by minoritized women leaders. Solution Through semi-structured interviews of fifteen participants, our interpretative phenomenological study adds to the extant literature by exploring how women of color (WOC) leaders navigated the challenges posed by the differences in gender and/or racial identities with their mentors in diversified mentoring relationships (DMRs). Our findings indicate that aspiring minoritized women leaders can thrive under the double bind in DMRs with successful coping strategies. Stakeholders University administration and HRD practitioners can apply the findings to leverage DMRs as a critical tool for developing the leadership identity of women of color in higher education.
PurposeChallenges with acculturation in organizations may make employees an easy target of workplace incivility and awareness of what constitutes uncivil behaviors at work can influence the association between acculturation and incivility. The current study examined the links between acculturation, incivility and tested mentor holding behavior as a moderator.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data including responses to incivility vignettes were collected from 163 full-time first- and second-generation immigrant employees in the southeastern United States. The data were analyzed through moderated hierarchical regression analysis.FindingsThe results indicated that those experiencing separation or marginalization in trying to acculturate into the dominant culture reported experiencing uncivil behaviors from supervisors and coworkers. Also, one's awareness of incivility moderated the positive relationship between experience of separation and experiences of incivility, such that this relationship was stronger for those who had higher awareness of what constitutes uncivil behavior. Additionally, the effect of marginalization on reported incivility was dampened with higher levels of mentor holding behavior.Originality/valueThis study’s findings extend the application of the selective incivility theory beyond the minoritized categories of race and gender to the immigrants struggling with acculturation in organizations. Also, our study lends support to widening the theoretical lens for mentoring to include relational systems theory.
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