Mentoring Goals

Texas McCombs researcher says mentorship is about making the most of human potential.

McCombs Assistant Professor of Management Paul Green Jr. knows firsthand the value of mentors. A longtime mentor “totally and absolutely” shaped his career path, encouraging and guiding him at crucial junctures.

At a summer job after his first year of college, Green worked at a manufacturing plant near Sacramento, California, when a more experienced co-worker, Doug Kirkpatrick, helped Green understand his strengths, interests, and contributions to the organization. With Kirkpatrick’s help, Green ended up working full time at the plant while attending college.

Green advanced, with Kirkpatrick mentoring him along the way.

“My role changed pretty dramatically in four years,” Green says. “That change was in large part to him helping me figure out where I could flourish and have the most impact.”

Flash forward, and Green headed to Drexel University for an MBA, where his program director encouraged him to become a professor. Green again called upon Kirkpatrick, now a San Francisco Bay-area management consultant, who concurred that academia was a good fit.

Green’s experience with mentorship blossomed into research when he informally surveyed people and realized most were not operating at their highest level because nobody was helping them develop that potential.

“The most significant waste of human energy is untapped potential,” he says.

When did mentoring become a topic for research?

About 30 years ago, a group of scholars got into looking at mentorship. It became very common for organizations to put in place mentorship programs — either formally assigning mentors to people or really pushing leaders to get involved in mentorship.

It turns out that the nature of the benefit is huge on things like how fulfilled or happy employees are but has no systematic effects on performance or even, to some degree, on the likelihood of turnover or career progression. There are some studies that show positive effects on career progression and performance, and others will show no effect or negative effects.

How does mentoring help an organization?

It’s about maximizing human potential. I think there is enough evidence to say that mentors can be a critical part of that. The reason why we’re doing the research is because it’s not enough to simply have a mentor. Sometimes it backfires. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and we need to understand when it works well and when it doesn’t.

My research increasingly is finding it’s almost impossible to say what works and what doesn’t. It’s very conditional. It’s very circumstantial. The mentorship approach that works most effectively is calibrated to an individual.

What have you learned by researching mentoring styles and strategies?

We show that the higher the status your mentor is in the organization, the more likely you are to depart, which is a little bit of a paradox. That goes for both high and low performers, although it’s a bit more muted for high performers. One of the tensions that mentors have to contend with is the tension between doing what is good for the organization versus doing what is good for the person.

Mentors vary dramatically in their mental model of what the mentorship relationship is all about. This affects how they engage in that relationship. As it turns out, mentors mostly are the ones who set the terms of the relationship, so thinking about what your goals are when selecting a mentor is really, really important. If there’s a mismatch between what they need and the coach, it just doesn’t work out.

The bottom line is there’s no question mentorship is valuable and important. There is ample evidence it’s beneficial for many. To me, the real path forward if an organization wants to implement a program is they need to develop a program to help mentors develop strategies calibrated to individual need. I think about it as a mentor toolbox.

Based on your research, how does someone determine whether an individual is someone they’d like to mentor?

What seems to be absolutely apparent is that mentorship relationships are characterized as mutually beneficial. In organizations, they take two different forms. Sometimes it’s top down, where leaders are encouraged to find people to mentor. In others, it’s “Find yourself a mentor.” In truth, it’s more akin to a dating app and you try lots of interactions. At some point, something clicks and it becomes very apparent it’s a relationship that works for both.

— Story by Sharon Jayson