“I’ve been lucky to also have people informally in my life who’ve guided me through teaching, and given me some points, and helped me out along the way”
(Participant Ten, personal communication, March 9, 2017). Informal mentors are those who are outside a mentee’s place of employment or program, who are impromptu advice
Page 155 coaches based on immediate needs (Hopkins & Grigoriu, 2005; Reyes, 2003). The
timeframe is not always stated, and an agreement on the outcome may not be stated either (Raabe & Beehr, 2003).
Raabe and Beehr (2003) found that supervisors may be effective mentors because they can help advance the goal of the mentee while also promoting loyalty to the
organization. Participant Twelve commented on the fact that her supervisor was a mentor. “My boss is a mentor. I’m learning a lot from her. We work really closely together and I see like directly like how she interacts [with others at work]” (Participant Twelve, personal communication, March 31, 2017). Likewise, Participant Seven sees her supervisor as a mentor.
My boss, who runs and owns this practice, was one of my professors who was like a mentor to me and so I came here. And I definitely still look at her very much that way, as she’s 100 percent a mentor. (Participant Seven, personal communication, February 20, 2017)
A higher quality LMX between supervisors and employees mimic a higher quality mentoring relationship. When supervisors act as mentors, the employees/mentees may exhibit ambitious behaviors and more loyalty to organizations (Holt et al., 2016). Participant Seven’s supervisor, as a former professor, cultivated a higher LMX, which encouraged higher work engagement in Participant Seven. Likewise, Participant Eight understands that her boss is a mentor.
I have people in the agency that I can bounce ideas about programming and the work stuff off of, . . . [like] my current supervisor or executive director [who serves] as a mentor to me. So I could go to her and say, “I got this idea for a
Page 156 program. How can we make it work? What do you think about it?” (Participant Eight, personal communication, February 27, 2017)
Supervisors may mimic mentoring behaviors which increases productivity, healthy workplace culture, and social support (Breevaart et al., 2015).
Another type of mentoring situation is informal mentoring. Informal mentors are good for enabling mentees to learn more about topics that exist outside a career, because the technical skills may not be readily available through an informal mentor (Reyes, 2003; Sanfey et al., 2013).
I don’t think I ever had the urge to have paired with somebody formally, just because it’s so much more comfortable to just . . . go to the people in your life and ask them to guide you on things. (Participant Eight, personal communication, February 27, 2017)
This participant continued to explain how she views and uses informal mentoring. I know some people don’t have [informal mentoring], and they need somebody else to kind of like flesh out some of those work-related ideas. But then I also have people in my life that maybe I used to work with, that I could sit down and talk to them if I am struggling with something at work that [I don’t want to talk to] current coworkers about. (Participant Eight, personal communication, February 27, 2017)
Mentoring for Participant Eight did not seem like a valuable option for her in her current stage of life.
I don’t know that I even would consider applying for a mentoring program right now unless like my boss told me I should do it, just because it seems like a
Page 157 matchmaker kind of relationship, and so you’re taking a chance on like, Is this person really going be helpful to you or not? . . . I just think of the more informal ones, or look for the people in my life that can fill that need rather than through a formal mentorship program. (Participant Eight, personal communication,
February 27, 2017)
Participant Seven saw her friends as mentors—people who helped develop her professional career—by reading over her résumé or giving career advice (personal communication, February 20, 2017). She went on to say,
I have some friends who I definitely lean on for guidance, who are more peers. I mean, they’re my friends, but I’m definitely trying to make decisions about things and where I’m unsure. . . . I absolutely have some friends that we always send to each other our CVs to get feedback on, but I wouldn’t really call it so much “mentorship,” but we do support each other’s careers. A 110 percent support of each other’s careers. (Participant Seven, personal communication, February 20, 2017)
Likewise, Participant Eight recognized the development network she supplies for coworkers. “There were people that work with me that clearly would think that they see me as a mentor. They’ll come in and sit down and all, ask me about career questions or life questions and stuff like that” (Participant Eight, personal communication, February 27, 2017).
Some participants had informal mentors before, during, or after the program. The informal mentors were difficult to define for some participants. Some included friends as
Page 158 informal mentors because those friends gave feedback on situations at work or about managing a career.
All my informal mentors are people either I’ve worked with or I’ve taken classes with or had some sort of previous relationship with, and I just kind of continue that relationship and know that they were a trusted person to go seek advice from. So, yeah, they knew me and they kind of know my style and all of that. . . . This mentoring program was meeting someone who I had never really met before, and . . . we spend a lot of time just getting to know each other, so she definitely had an outsider’s perspective on where I was coming from. (Participant Five, personal communication, February 15, 2017)
She continued to share a story about when an informal mentor was influential in a decision-making moment.
I know an informal mentor a couple years prior when I was doing this job switch. . . . We ran into each other and I was like, “I’m thinking about this move, but I’m not sure if I’m ready.” And she just was like, “You’re ready. Just do it.” . . . Maybe she read me enough that she knew that’s all I needed to hear. . . . If I’d had an outside mentor doing that transition, maybe it would have gone something like, “Let’s make a pro/con list then.” (Participant Five, personal communication, February 15, 2017)
Reyes (2003) states the best mentoring is a combination of informal and formal mentoring within one relationship. The mentor could speak about work-related topics and about concerns outside of the work environment. Participant Ten said her mentor
Page 159 [Informal mentoring] can be work related, but it can also just be some other things that may extend into work but you want to talk about with that informal person. Whereas the actual formal setting provides you with some more concrete knowledge that you know you’re going to need as you face different challenges through your job. (Participant Ten, personal communication, March 9, 2017) Sanfey et al. (2013) propose having more than one mentor at a time or within a lifetime. Participants One, Five, Seven, Eight, Eleven, and Twelve (six of 11 interviews)
mentioned having informal mentors in their lives, either currently or during the mentoring program.
Four of the six participants in the MILE program mentioned being mentored as new teachers. This is classified as institutionalized mentoring, because a staff member is trained through the mentoring (Ehrich, 1995). By comparison, the MILE program is traditional mentoring program in which mentors assist mentees in goal accomplishment (Ehrich, 1995). A traditional program in a nonprofit organization may reduce turnover or career plateauing.