In Hermina Ibarra’s Harvard Business Review podcast titled Women are over-mentored (But under-sponsored), she discussed a recent study where she found that many mentoring programs were not producing a true substantial result for women: promotions up the corporate hierarchy.
In essence, the women were “being mentored to death rather than promoted.”
Mentoring is a tricky and fuzzy concept that gets thrown around a lot. Mentoring has a lot of connotation. Talking to people about mentoring provides you with an assortment of definitions and descriptions. What we do know is that mentoring is a relationship between two people that will change over time. Sometimes it is formalized by organizations or associations. Sometimes it is an organic relationship that emerges out of a talk over coffee or bonding at a retreat.
Read the entire article at PRSA Diversity.