A taxonomy of negative mentoring experiences was developed using descriptive accounts of negative mentoring experiences from the protege's perspective. Content analysis revealed 15 types of negative mentoring experiences, nested within five broad metathemes: Match Within the Dyad, Distancing Behavior, Manipulative Behavior, Lack of Mentor Expertise, and General Dysfunctionality. Quantitative analyses indicated that proteges were more likely to report that their mentor had dissimilar attitudes, values, and beliefs when describing their most negative mentoring relationship compared to their most positive mentoring relationship. Implications for theory-building, future research, and applied practice are discussed.
Obtaining a mentor is an important career development experience for individuals.
Research indicates that mentored individuals perform better on the job,
advance more rapidly within the organization (i.e., get promoted more quickly
and earn higher salaries), report more job and career satisfaction, and express lower turnover intentions than their nonmentored counterparts (Chao, 1997;
Dreher & Ash, 1990; Fagenson, 1989; Scandura, 1992; Whitely, Dougherty, &
Dreher, 1992). Given these findings, it has been recommended that organizations
encourage managers to become mentors, set up formal (assigned) mentoring
programs, and link mentoring to other human resource management systems such
as compensation and performance appraisal to increase mentoring in organizational
settings (Burke & McKeen, 1989; Kram, 1985).
Notwithstanding these benefits it is important to recognize that mentoring is an
intense interpersonal relationship (Kram, 1985). As such, while a mentor refers
to someone who “. . . advises, counsels, or helps (younger) individuals . . . ”
(Feldman, 1988, p. 129), this does not preclude the possibility that mentoring
may have negative aspects (Scandura, 1998). While initially counterintuitive,
social–psychological research on interpersonal relationships notes that unpleasant
incidents are a common and often neglected aspect of all relationships,
ranging from minor episodes, such as arguing, to serious incidents, such as
physical or psychological abuse (Duck, 1982, 1994; Levinger, 1983; Marshall,
1994; Wood & Duck, 1995). Duck (1994) makes a strong case that it is naive to
adopt “. . . a totally black–white way of thinking about ‘positive’ and ‘negative’
relationships . . .” (p. 7) and that researchers should examine both aspects to
adequately capture the totality of a relational experience.Given this large body of social–psychological research, it is interesting that
very little research has focused on the negative aspects of mentoring. One
exception is Scandura’s (1998) recent theoretical article which maps the negative
aspects of mentoring relationships on to Duck’s (1994) social–psychological
typology of the “dark side” of close interpersonal relationships. While Scandura’s
(1998) work provides an organizing framework for the study of the
negative aspects of mentoring, empirical research is needed. A first step toward
understanding what Scandura terms “dysfunctional mentoring relationships” (p.
449) is to uncover the different types of negative mentoring experiences that
exist, as well as the situations in which these experiences may be most likely to
occur. Since no empirical research to date has examined the negative aspects of
mentoring, in-depth qualitative accounts of proteges’ perceptions of negative
mentoring experiences were obtained and an inductively derived taxonomy of
negative mentoring experiences was developed based on descriptive accounts of
these relationships. Further, quantitative data were used to test some initial
hypotheses about situations in which negative mentoring experiences may be
most likely to occur.While the focus of the present study is on negative mentoring experiences it is
important to note that we are not suggesting that mentoring relationships can be
easily classified as “positive” or “negative” or that the presence of negative
events means that the relationship is doomed to fail. Even in healthy relationships
negative events occur, and it is important to recognize that negative experiences
can range in severity from somewhat minor (e.g., a fleeting disagreement) to
quite serious (e.g., revenge, violence) (Duck, 1994; Marshall, 1994; Wood &Duck, 1995). We expect that some mentoring relationships may be generally
beneficial to proteges’ career development, while at times marked by experiences
that proteges perceive as negative. It was these negative experiences that we were
interested in cataloging in an effort to understand this typically neglected aspect
of mentor–protege interactions. However, by focusing on proteges’ perceptions,
some of the experiences that emerge from this study may represent attempts on
the part of the mentor to actually help the protege (e.g., increase his or her
independence, gain confidence), rather than malicious or intentional actions
toward a protege. Thus, it is important to bear in mind that proteges’ perceptions
of negative experiences are of interest in the current study, not mentors’ perceptions
of similar events or the overall quality of the mentoring relationship.
In keeping with this objective, negative mentoring experiences were operationalized
as specific incidents that occur between mentors and proteges, mentors’
characteristic manner of interacting with proteges, or mentors’ characteristics
that limit their ability to effectively provide guidance to proteges. This
tripartite definition of negative mentoring experiences was generated from scattered
accounts of the negative aspects of mentoring in the empirical and practitioner
literature. For example, there is sketchy evidence that actions on the part
of mentors (e.g., Levinson et al., 1978), characteristic patterns of interacting with
proteges (e.g., Hurley & Fagenson-Eland, 1996), and personal characteristics of
mentors (e.g., Myers & Humphreys, 1985) represent three distinct catalysts of
negative mentoring experiences The choice to focus on negative mentoring experiences in the present study
rather than dysfunctional mentoring relationships was based on several factors.
In order to study dysfunctional mentoring relationships we first need an understanding
of the types of negative experiences that proteges encounter. Second,
like all interpersonal relationships mentoring is complex and dynamic (Kram,
1985). Thus, it seems premature to embark on a full-scale study of dysfunctional
mentoring relationships without an initial understanding of the negative experiences
that can occur in mentoring relationships. Finally, both members of a
relationship dyad (in this case the mentor and protege) impact the behavioral
patterns that unfold, and each member has a somewhat unique perspective on that
relationship (Duck, 1994). Thus, it was important to specify which member of the
dyad was of the focus of our investigation. Our interest in this study was the
protege’s negative experiences with his or her mentor since mentoring relationships
are unbalanced with respect to power (Ragins & Sundstrom, 1989), and the
potential for relationship abuse often rests with the individual with greater power
(e.g., the mentor) (Ashforth, 1994; Frost, 1987)
The current study was designed to understand proteges’ perceptions of negative
mentoring experiences. While Scandura (1998) suggested that this phenomenon
is likely to have a low base rate, over half of the proteges in this sample of
managers and professionals reported being in at least one negative mentoring
relationship during their careers. Further, proteges in this sample had a variety of negative mentoring experiences—from mentor self-absorption to neglect, to
incompatibility, to sabotage and deception. These findings coincide with what
social psychologists have been lamenting for some time. More specifically, that
the almost exclusive focus on the positive aspects of relationships paints a
distorted and unrealistic picture of relational patterns and fosters the perception
that any negative experience is pathological and aberrant rather than a normal
aspect of relationships (Duck, 1994; Levinger, 1983; Wood & Duck, 1995). The present study extends this line of thinking to the mentoring domain by suggesting
that current conceptualizations of mentoring may be too narrowly focused on the
positive aspects of the relationship rather than considering the full scope of
experiences, both positive and negative, that are likely to occur.
We also found that negative mentoring experiences among proteges in this
sample were particularly likely to occur when the protege perceived the mentor
as having dissimilar attitudes, values, and beliefs. In contrast, neither background
dissimilarity nor having a mentor who was also one’s supervisor was related to
the incidence of negative mentoring experiences. This suggests that the nature of
the perceived dissimilarity between the mentor and protege may be important to
consider in understanding negative mentoring experiences. Alternatively, since
perceived similarity in attitudes, values, and beliefs is more subjective than
background characteristics, perhaps proteges were justifying why a particular
mentoring relationship may have been less than ideal rather than accurately
reporting differences between themselves and their mentor. Since we are not able
to determine which of these two explanations most accurately represents our
findings, future research may want to obtain information on both mentors’ and
proteges’ attitude, value, and belief similarity rather than relying on one person’s perception. Likewise, it may be useful to examine perceived similarity at different
points in time to see if experiences in the relationship, whether positive or
negative, impact similarity perceptions.
The inductively derived taxonomy in Table 1 provides confirmation of some
negative mentor behaviors that practitioners have warned against and mentoring
researchers have alluded to, as well as some interesting departures. Researchers
studying both mentoring (Kram, 1985; Levinson et al., 1978; Scandura, 1998)
and workplace deviance (Neuman & Baron, 1998; Robinson & Bennett, 1995)
have discussed exploitative, authoritarian behavior, along with actions aimed at
undercutting someone else’s career as types of antisocial workplace conduct. Our
research supports these concerns, with 21% of the experiences described by
proteges including inappropriate delegation, tyranny, credit-taking, or sabotage.
It is also interesting that this metatheme of Manipulative Behaviors was the most
well differentiated (i.e., greatest level of specificity) and contained the most
stereotypical examples of the potential problems associated with mentoring
(Myers & Humphreys, 1985).Poor interpersonal skills on the part of the mentor have also been described in
both the practitioner (Myers & Humphreys, 1985) and academic (Scandura,
1998) literature. Support was found for this type of negative mentoring experience;
17% of the negative experiences reported by proteges were related to
mentor competency issues (see Table 1, Lack of Mentor Expertise). Further,
concerns raised regarding mentor–protege fit (Kram, 1985; Myers & Humphreys,
1985; Scandura, 1998) were supported in the current study in that mismatches in
values, personality, or work-styles accounted for 28% of the negative experiences
reported. Taken with the finding that proteges’ most negative mentoring
experiences were more likely to be characterized by dissimilarity between themselves and their mentor in terms of attitudes, beliefs, and values, the
importance of interpersonal compatibility in mentor–protege dyads is clear. In
contrast, very little support was found for several negative aspects of mentoring
relationships that have been referred to in the literature, such as overprotection,
paternalism, sexual harassment, or sexual encounters (Kram, 1986; Noe, 1988;
Ragins, 1989; Ragins & Cotton, 1991; Scandura, 1998). This very low base rate
of sexual encounters and lack of evidence for sexual harassment may be due to
several factors, including the small number of cross-gender relationships reported
by those with negative experiences (n 5 19, 23%) and perhaps respondents’
unwillingness to disclose such information.Finally, the proteges in this sample reported that Distancing Behavior, a
virtually unexamined type of mentor behavior, occurred quite frequently. In fact,
mentor neglect was the single most frequently reported negative experience
among these proteges, capturing 16% of all negative experiences reported and
being noted as a problem by 26 of the 86 proteges (30%). On one hand this is an
encouraging finding since mentor neglect is relatively minor compared to the
other experiences reported by proteges. However, mentor neglect may have
substantial long-term consequences given research indicating that the lack of
mentoring is associated with slower promotion rates and salary increases (Scandura,
1992; Whitely et al., 1992). This finding is also interesting given that this
sample of proteges was reporting on what they believed to be a mentoring
relationship, yet they indicated that their mentors had neglected them. Does this
suggest that while some mentoring was received, it did not meet proteges’
expectations? Or do proteges report neglect if the mentor is not accessible at a
critical time, or does this reflect a pattern of neglect within the relationship?
Clearly, additional research is warranted and could be informed by research on
mentors’ differing motives for engaging in mentoring (Allen et al., 1997) and the
perceived costs and benefits of mentoring (Ragins & Scandura, 1993).
