Mentoring Female Administrators Toward Leadership Success

The Value of Mentorship

Article Review: Mentoring Female Administrators Toward Leadership Success

Mentorship is a major key component for women who desire to become an administrator in higher education.  There are different types of mentoring, but the most common is when a more experienced individual assists another person.  The role of the most experienced person is to provide support, guidance, and build a relationship with a younger professional (Dunbar & Kinnersley, 2011).  Both the mentee and mentor benefit from this relationship by either learning skills in how to succeed or by sharing their knowledge and experience with others.  “Those women who aspire to administrative positions would do well to have a mentor to help them succeed; in fact, female administrators have indicated that having a mentor was important to their success” (Dunbar & Kinnersley, 2011).

When seeking a mentor or mentee, there is a variety of factors to consider.  Mentoring relationships are most likely to succeed when is develop informally, instead where they are matched through a mentoring program.  In addition, mentoring inclines when the relationship share many similarities, such as experiences, gender, ethnicity, culture and values.  Majority of the participants mentioned that having a female mentor was beneficial due their work experiences as females.  However, some of the functions discussed by the mentors to the mentee, there is no difference of gender.

According to Kram (1988), there is two basic areas that a mentee experiences: psychological development and career development. For instance, if the mentee has a mentor who holds a high administrative position, the mentor tend to provide a more career direction instead to a low rank.  The study illustrated that 90% of the mentors were in higher positions than their mentees (Dunbar & Kinnersley, 2011).

The women in the study who were administrators shared that their mentor(s) made an impact in preparing them for a leadership role in which they highly recommend for women to seek for a mentor.

According to the research, creating a mentoring relationship is vital for women who have the desire to hold higher positions within an university or college.  It is important to encourage new administrators share their expertise and their journey to the future generation.  There is different ways in increasing the number of mentoring in higher education such as creating mentoring programs, and providing opportunities for graduate students to find a mentor.

Dunbar, D. P., & Kinnersley, R. T. (2011). Mentoring Female Administrators Toward Leadership Success. Models of Leadership , 17-24.