By Candace Tangorra Matelic
This article was published in Museum News, November/December 2001.
Seldom formalized or structured, often spontaneous, but almost always deeply appreciated, mentoring is a valuable tradition in the museum field. That rare combination ofpractical advice, encouragement, and wise counsel can have a profound influence on an institution as well as a museum professional's career.
As museum professionals progress through their careers and take onpositions of higher responsibility and authority, they often recall colleagues who helped them learn the ropes or opened the doors to new opportunities. These mentors may have served as sounding boards for ideas and aspirations, sheltered protégés from organizational politics, and helped them balance the potentially conflicting demands of their personal and professional lives. Most likely, the protégé/mentor relationships were informal ones, rather than formal arrangements set up by employers or a professional organization.
Many in the museum field owe their success to great mentors as much as to anything else, says management consultant Harold Skramstad, former president of the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Mich. Inside and outside the field, the people who encourage us to participate in profession-wide activities or community projects or serve on boards and committees often then become our mentors. They help us expand our network of colleagues and provide access to resources that would have been much more difficult to obtain on our own. They are the people who remind us about the value and importance of our service.
As we count our personal successes, we are aware that mentors are often part of the formula. But we may not realize the significant role that mentoring has played in the professionalization of the field. Mentoring contributes directly to career and human resource development. In individual museums and in the broader profession, it helps new professionals understand the organizational culture, the norms of behavior, and social roles. Protégés (also known as mentees) quickly learn about communication networks, both formal and informal. Perhaps most important, they learn about the assumptions, beliefs, and values underlying professional standards and practices in museums.
“Mentoring should be a part of every museum professional’s responsibility,” says John Fleming, vice president of museums for the Cincinnati Museum Center: “When I was hired by the Ohio Historical Society to develop the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, I set aside 3 percent of my budget for staff development. In this manner, we developed a highly trained group of professionals, many of whom went on to become museum directors with other institutions.”
Margaret Tramontine, director of interpretation at Hale Farm & Village in Bath, Ohio, asserts that “as professionals within a large and diverse field, I do firmly believe that part of our mentoring responsibility is to coach and encourage our protégés, including helping them to move on to greater opportunities, even if this is not within the same organization.”
And Barbara Franco, director of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., recalls several occasions when “I thanked revered mentors for the enormous impact they had on my life and work, only to learn that they were unaware of how much influence they had. I am now experiencing this myself as former interns and colleagues thank me for some advice I gave them, now forgotten by me.”
What about those of us who serve as mentors? What do we gain? How does mentoring affect the museums in which these relationships take place? Mentoring is a much more complex process than simply a teacher-student relationship with protégés as the major benefactors. The research clearly shows that mentoring can benefit mentors as much as protégés, and organizations as much as individuals. Although not every mentoring relationship is completely successful, there are strategies that can facilitate a positive outcome.
Why the Interest in Mentoring?
Before the mid-1970s, much of the research on mentoring focused on individuals rather than organizations. It emphasized the benefits to protégés and concentrated on men. But as more women entered the workplace and advanced to management positions, and as managers took more interest in their employees’ career development as a way of reducing turnover and facilitating management succession, the research on mentoring increased and broadened in focus.
This interest was spurred by a provocative article, “Much Ado about Mentors,” that appeared in the January/February 1979 issue of the Harvard Business Review. Gerald Roche, a management consultant, surveyed top executives mentioned in the “Who’s News” section of the Wall Street Journal in 1977 and found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents had a mentor. He reported that those who had mentors earned more money at an early age and were happier with their career progress, and that the number of mentor relationships was growing. With much enthusiasm, mentoring was touted as the new panacea of business and management practice.
By 1990 researchers had produced an overwhelming array of data and opinion on the subject. Topics included informal versus formal programs; mentoring for women; cross-gender relationships; benefits to mentors; benefits to organizations; the stages and complexities of mentoring; problems in selection, process, and outcomes; and alternatives to mentoring. Some studies suggest that mentoring is a successful method for training leaders. Researchers also have begun to consider the process and components of group mentoring and suggest that mentoring is an effective tool for supporting diversity in organizations. Today, mentoring is seen as a powerful human resource development tool rather than a quick fix or the latest management fad.
As one might expect, fewer studies have examined mentoring in nonprofit organizations than have looked at the business and government sectors and little research has focused on museums. However, it is worth noting that mentoring was the focus of a leadership initiative in the mid-1990s by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and a number of professional associations, such as AAM and the American Association for State and Local History, include mentoring programs in their annual meeting offerings.
Who Are Mentors, and How Can They Help?
Most mentors are higher-ranking, influential, senior organizational members with advanced experience and knowledge, who are committed to providing upward mobility and support to a protégé’s professional career.1 In defining mentoring, most researchers organize functions along a continuum, with career functions at one end and psychosocial functions at the other.2
Career functions help an individual “learn the ropes” and prepare for professional advancement. These functions are possible because of the mentor’s experience, organizational rank, and influence. When mentoring is seen as part of a growing “development ethic” for managers, the mentor gains support and respect for nurturing and encouraging talent within the organization. Psychosocial functions enhance the protégé’s sense of competence, clarity of identity, and effectiveness in a professional role. Psychosocial functions are possible because of the interpersonal relationship that develops between mentor and protégé, fostering mutual trust and respect. While the mentoring relationship supports a protégé’s views of self in a new work role, it also supports the mentor’s sense of self as someone with valuable wisdom and experience to share.
“I always wanted the folks I was working with to be able to do my job,” says Lynne Poirier-Wilson, former senior vice president for resources and operations at the Strong Museum, Rochester, N.Y., and now a museum management and collections consultant. “I wanted someone who could slip into my chair if I wasn’t going to be there. This gave me less angst about leaving some day.”
The range and effectiveness of career and psychosocial functions vary. For instance, the interpersonal skills of both parties—such as communication, effective listening, or conflict and disagreement management—can either support or impair the relationship. Organizational context—positions in the organizational hierarchy, opportunities for interaction, or the extent of administrative support for mentoring activities—will influence many of these functions. The individual needs of the parties; concerns about self, career, and family; and the supportive relationships already in place also affect the range of functions necessary in a mentoring relationship.
Mentor relationships are not just for beginning professionals. They occur at all career stages with beneficial results. In fact, some of the most successful documented relationships have been at the management level, where a senior leader or manager takes a newer colleague under her wing to develop the protégé’s management skills. An executive mentor serves as a sounding board, listener, counselor, career advisor, networker, and coach. She also can take on the function of a “critical friend” or someone who is willing to say openly things that colleagues are reluctant to expose, either from embarrassment, fear, politeness, or (occasionally) malice.3
Mary Alexander, director of the Maryland Historical Trust’s Museum Assistance Program, Crownsville, says that mentoring has meant “job opportunities, career guidance, and problem solving. More senior colleagues have recommended me for job opportunities. Mentors have reviewed my career path and suggested alternative routes.” During her early professional career, Alexander recalls, “I had two mentors who would meet with me over lunch to solve problems. The source for the problem could be any one of us. These sessions involved the best of mentoring—teaching and learning together, based on trust.”
In addition to being mentored by supervisors, Franco learned from maintenance staff, exhibit preparators, collectors, and donors. “Mentoring even goes beyond the museum staff,” she says, “when you work with community mentors who serve as sounding boards, counselors, and door openers of a different kind. Most of all, I learned a lot by mentoring others, helping [them] to see things from a different perspective, and even taking some of my own advice occasionally.”
According to Poirier-Wilson, mentoring has often been compared to networking, but there is a major difference: “Networking is done to move around, and preferably up, in your chosen field. Mentoring, although it may do those things, also brings you new information and develops lasting friendships. My mentors have all been people who were willing to give their time to help me learn more, and in that process we became special friends.”
Why Be a Mentor?
As museums put more energy into human resource management and development, supervisors and managers are being evaluated on the basis of how well they develop their staffs as well as their own progress and individual accomplishments. Mentoring is a key tool that more museums should recognize and encourage. Benefits for mentors include the opportunity to:
• guide and influence other people
• develop a base of technical support, a valuable resource for completing routine projects and encouraging innovation and creative problem solving
• gain a sense of satisfaction, confirmation, and rejuvenation, which can be essential to one’s well being and continued professional and personal growth.
Feedback can be especially important for colleagues in the middle and advanced stages of their careers. Some senior professionals believe the value of mentoring lies in the opportunity to “do” museum work again, which they find much more fulfilling than attending meetings and writing organizational plans and guidelines. Being a mentor allows managers to get back to the reason they took up museum work in the first place.
Mentoring also is an effective way of building a power base within an organization or a professional field. Mentors gain status and esteem in the eyes of their peers and superiors. Not only does this contribute to their own success, but it also helps them spread, through current and past protégés, their influence and values throughout the organization and field.
Both men and women can benefit from serving as mentors to the opposite sex. Research on cross-gender mentoring has focused on managing the perceptions of coworkers and balancing career and psychosocial functions. For mentors, successfully managing a cross-gender relationship can provide a model of professional behavior that can win respect from peers, superiors, and subordinates. Men and women can learn about each other’s strengths, such as different approaches to problem solving. Cross-gender relationships also can serve as models of good behavior for those who have been slow to accept men and women in nontraditional roles.
Alexander once sought help from one of her former protégés, Paul Reber, now the director of Decatur House in Washington, D.C. “I needed his advice on fund raising, a subject about which he knows much more than I,” she says. “And I had what I consider a ‘tutorial’ in designing a capital campaign from Paul over lunch. Of course, I could have attended a course on the subject, spent a lot of money, and probably gotten some[thing out] of the lessons. But by sitting with Paul, I could ask stupid questions without embarrassment or revealing my ignorance. And he designed his answers for me, because we had long years of talking over museum challenges.”
It is clear that mentoring goes beyond the interactions that are expected in prescribed roles, such as teacher-student or supervisor-employee. Instead, mentoring creates a very personal relationship. Poirier-Wilson believes that “there is a chemistry that is needed in a good mentoring relationship, just as there is in any healthy, strong relationship. Add mutual respect, an interest in similar issues, and an ability to be open, and you have a winning combination.” Tramontine suggests that when you mentor someone, “you take on the responsibility of caring for that individual—guiding, coaching, supporting, encouraging, sometimes admonishing, but always caring. To be a true mentor . . . you must be as interested in their personal lives as you are in their professional careers—in essence, you must be interested in them.”
Why Commit Museum Resources to Mentoring?
entoring helps produce active professional members who are self-confident and knowledgeable enough to become successful scholars and leaders. This enrichment is ongoing. Research has shown that those who were mentored successfully become mentors themselves. Professional organizations can support the increasing diversity of the field by implementing mentoring programs or helping member institutions sponsor their own programs. Fleming is convinced that a commitment to mentoring is the most effective way for many mainstream museums to increase the number of minority professionals in the field.
The most obvious benefit of mentoring is the development of human resources, with documented improvements in job performance and motivation of both mentors and protégés, as well as retention of good staff. But mentoring also can enhance organizational learning and help transmit organizational culture— the museum’s values, norms, behaviors, and performance expectations. During a leadership succession or implementation of a new direction, mentors can help staff understand why the organizational culture exists or needs to change and where they fit in the process. This often leads to increased staff loyalty and can ease the sometimes difficult and painful transitions of organizational change.4
Mentors help identify talent in an organization, particularly staff who might otherwise be overlooked. The mentoring process can prepare managers to operate at the leadership level, giving them the opportunity to provide advice about the big picture, balance the need of often-competing departments, and make decisions that are effective for the whole organization. Since mentors have credibility with protégés, they often have more exposure to the staff’s ideas and concerns than top management does. They can identify early warning signals of dissatisfaction long before they affect performance. In addition, mentoring can rejuvenate and increase the productivity of experienced staff. It can help redirect the energies of an individual when career advancement is no longer a concern, enhancing that person’s self-worth and her contribution to the organization.
Mentoring is also a human resources development tool that can help others assume more responsibility, solve problems, develop new competencies, and gain a new perspective on the organization. Fleming, for one, sees mentoring as a useful way to strengthen skills and improve weaknesses by giving staff the opportunity to learn on the job. “The wonderful thing about a successful mentoring relationship is that the mentee knows that he or she is in a safe relationship and that it is all right to make mistakes,” he says. “Making a mistake . . . is all part of the learning experience. However, in order for the relationship to work, the mentee has to be willing to trust his or her mentor and see that the mentor’s advice is given with their best interests in mind.”
Readiness for Mentoring
Not all managers, however, can be good mentors. Research has shown that successful mentors often have some characteristics in common. They are generally high-placed, powerful, knowledgeable individuals who are willing to share their expertise and are not threatened by a protégé’s potential for equaling or surpassing them. Their management style is self-confident and participatory. They serve as coaches and show concern for the needs and development of their subordinates.
Tramontine says that for an organization to support mentoring and reap its rewards, “it must be committed to fostering personal and professional growth in its staff and volunteers and be open to new ideas, challenges, and innovation.” She notes that the organization’s commitment to human resources and innovation starts at the top; if the leaders do not truly believe in the value of the staff, then mentoring will not work.
Some organizations just aren’t ready to sponsor mentoring, whether formal or informal. An organization that is receptive to mentoring is one with “enhanced opportunity, with enthusiasm for innovation versus conservative resistance, and with structural supports for more equal treatment of women and minorities.”5 Clearly, not all museums meet these criteria—at least, not yet. However, museums may be ready to implement “mentoring circles or groups” in which several senior managers share responsibility for guiding several junior staff members. According to researchers, mentoring circles can ease the potential tensions in cross-gender mentoring relationships.6
Researchers also warn us to be careful about the match of mentors and protégés. Problems include:
• managers choosing protégés with goals and attributes
similar to their own
• discrimination, which can adversely affect the careers
of minorities and women
• incompatible personalities
• the protégé is used as a “gofer” or given all of the
mentor’s disagreeable work
• a mentor who does not have enough time for the protégé
• sexual harassment in cross-gender relationships
• the mentor is a poor role model
• a protégé’s career depends on the mentor’s success or failure
• a mentor’s possessiveness potentially halts the
protégé’s advancement
• the departure of a protégé during the relationship,
which could be interpreted as the mentor’s failure to
develop the protégé’s loyalty
• a protégé who does not perform up to expectations,
reflecting negatively on the mentor
• the protégé becomes the boss and does not accord the
former mentor the appropriate respect and recognition
Researchers note that organizations should pay attention to the contextual factors that can support or inhibit successful mentoring relationships. Top management must support the mentoring program; evaluate how the existing organizational structure and interaction processes will affect the relationship; and reward collaborative and departmental efforts. Tasks that are interactive, span departmental or hierarchical levels, or involve teams are more conducive to mentoring than highly individualized tasks.
What Does This Mean for Museums?
entoring is clearly more than a teacher-student relationship in which most of the focus and benefits goes to the protégé. It is not just for entry-level employees, and it is not a quick fix. Once we understand that a mentoring experience can provide as many benefits to the mentors and sponsoring organizations as it does to the protégés, we may be more willing to devote the time and energy required to ensure productive relationships. We also should keep in mind that mentoring is not always a positive experience and take some precautions to improve the relationship as it develops by choosing the right people to serve as mentors, making sure that communication lines remain open, and supporting the process through our organizational structure and reward systems.
Mentoring can help staff work in teams, tackle new assignments, take on new responsibilities, and learn management skills. It is a wonderful way to recognize a senior staff member seeking renewal or encouragement to perform beyond the status quo. It can help support diversity and equity in a staff by providing developmental opportunities to more individuals. And the research has shown that mentoring can improve job performance, motivation, and staff retention.
Whether we create formal programs within our museums, foster informal relationships, collaborate with other institutions, or seek outside support to facilitate the process, mentoring is definitely worth some exploration. In the long run, mentoring will only strengthen the museum field by producing more knowledgeable, confident, and active professionals. As Harold Skramstad notes, “The most effective leadership and management tools are those that are basic and personal, such as mentoring. [And] the key to the success of mentoring is time, the most precious thing that senior people in the field can give.”
Notes
1. Belle Rose Ragins, “Barriers to Mentoring: The Female Manager’s Dilemma,” Human Relations 42, no.1 (1989): 1-22.
2. Kathy E. Kram, Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988).
3. Clutterbuck, David, and David Megginson, Mentoring Executives and Directors (Woburn, Mass.: Butterworth-Heinemann Publications, 1999).
4. There is a separate and growing body of literature on organizational learning that is well worth perusing, but my recommended starting point on this subject is Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday Books, 1990).
5. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
6. Murrell, Audrey J., Faye J. Crosby, and Robin J. Ely, Mentoring Dilemmas: Developing Relationships Within Multicultural Organizations (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1999).
Selected Bibliography
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———, and C. A. McKeen. “Do Managerial Women Prefer Women Mentors?” Psychological Reports 76, no. 2 (April 1995): 688-90.
Carden, Ann D. “Mentoring and Adult Career Development: The Evolution of a Theory.” The Counseling Psychologist 18, no. 2 (April 1990): 275-99.
Clutterbuck, David, and David Megginson. Mentoring Executives and Directors. Woburn, Mass.: Butterworth-Heinemann Publications, 1999.
Dansky, Kathryn H. “The Effect of Group Mentoring on Career Outcomes.“ Group and Organization Management 2, no. 1 (March 1996): 5-21.
Hunt, David Marshall, and Carol Michael. “Mentorship: A Career Training and Development Tool.” Academy of Management Review 8, no. 3 (1983): 475-85.
Kalbfleisch, Pamela J., and Joann Keyton. “Power and Equality in Mentoring Relationships.” In Gender, Power, and Communication in Human Relationships, ed. Pamela J. Kalbfleisch and Michael J. Dody, pp.189-212. Hillsdale, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Men and Women of the Corporation. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Kram, Kathy E. Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988.
———, and Madeline C. Brager. “Development through Mentoring: A Strategic Approach.” In Career Development: Theory and Practice, ed. David H. Montross and Christopher J. Shinkman, pp. 221-54. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1992.
Kram, Kathy E., and Lynn A. Isabella. “Mentoring Alternatives: The Role of Peer Relationships in Career Development.” Academy of Management Journal 28, no.1 (1985): 110-32.
Murray, Margo. Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring: How to Facilitate an Effective Mentoring Program. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.
Murrell, Audrey J., Faye J. Crosby, and Robin J. Ely. Mentoring Dilemmas: Developing Relationships Within Multicultural Organizations. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1999.
Newby, Timothy J., and Ashlyn Heide. “The Value of Mentoring.” Performance Improvement Quarterly 5, no.1 (1992): 2-16.
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Ragins, Belle Rose. “Barriers to Mentoring: The Female Manager’s Dilemma.” Human Relations 42, no.1 (1989): 1-22.
———. “Diversity, Power, and Mentorship in Organizations: A Cultural, Structural, and Behavioral Perspective.” In Diversity in Organizations: New Perspectives for a Changing Workplace, eds. Martin M. Chemers, Stuart Oskamp, and Mark A. Costanzo, pp. 91-132. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1995.
Ragins, Belle Rose, and Terri A. Scandura. “Gender Differences in Expected Outcomes of Mentoring Relationships.” Academy of Management Journal 37, no. 4 (August 1994): 957-71.
———, and Cotton, J. L. “Genderand Willingness to Mentor in Organizations.” Journal of Management 19, no.1 (Spring 1993): 97-111.
Roche, Gerald R. “Much Ado about Mentors.” Harvard Business Review, January-February 1979, pp. 14-28.
Scandura, Terri A. “Mentorship andCareer Mobility: An Empirical Investigation.” Journal of Organizational Behavior 13, no. 2 (March 1992): 169-74.
Struthers, Nancy J. “Differences in Mentoring:A Function of Gender or Organizational Rank?” Journal of Social Behavior and Personality 10, no. 6 (1995): 265-72.
Wilson, James A., and Nancy S. Elman. “Organizational Benefits of Mentoring.” Academy of Management Executive 4, no. 4 (1990): 88-94.
Candace Tangorra Matelic is completing a dissertation on organizational change in history museums (SUNY—Albany). She consults and teaches in the areas of organizational development, leadership, planning, professional training, and interpretive programming. This article was adapted from a 1997 report for the Institute of Museum and Library Services and updated with additional research and interviews in 2000 and 2001.
