What is it about?
This study examines the experiences of mentors and mentees in a large government many-to-many group mentoring program. Despite extreme organizational churn, the program delivered effective and engaging learning for a large number of people, which argues for the program’s ability to stay relevant despite changing priorities, directions and staff movement. A well planned and supported group mentoring program can offer responsive, relevant, and personal learning to mentees and mentors.
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Why is it important?
This article describes the design of the program, including selection of topics, mentors and mentees, and the use of delivery technologies, which provides insight into the intent of program developers. The findings describe mentors’ and mentees’ experiences, which demonstrate how intentions played out in the organizational context. This contextually grounded case study will be useful to those considering implementation of a group mentoring program.
Perspectives
It was important to me to capture what happens to plans and intentions as they play out in a real organizational context with real people. For example, despite careful planning and selection of mentors and mentees, regular attendance and engagement was problematic and sometimes negatively impacted the experience of others. This study showed how "best practices" as set out in the literature don't account for deeper underlying contextual issues, and so may fail to provide solutions.
Dr Brigitte B Harris
Royal Roads University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Benefits and Barriers, Journal of Workplace Learning, April 2015, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/jwl-07-2014-0053.
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