Mentoring has been studied extensively as it is linked to protégé career development and growth. Recent mentoring research is beginning to acknowledge however that mentors also can accrue substantial benefits from mentoring. A meta-analysis was conducted where the provision of career, psychosocial and role modeling mentoring support were associated with five types of subjective career outcomes for mentors: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intent, job performance, and career success. The findings indicated that mentors versus non-mentors were more satisfied with their jobs and committed to the organization. Providing career mentoring was most associated with career success, psychosocial mentoring with organizational commitment, and role modeling mentoring with job performance. Turnover intent was not linked significantly with any of the subjective career outcome variables. The findings support mentoring theory in that mentoring is reciprocal and collaborative and not simply beneficial for protégés. Longitudinal research is needed however to determine the degree to which providing mentoring impacts a mentor’s career over time. By alerting prospective mentors to the possible personal benefits of providing career, psychosocial, and role modeling mentoring support for protégés, HRD professionals can improve recruitment efforts for mentoring program
Mentoring has long been acclaimed to be a career management and development tool in organizations (Baugh and Sullivan, 2005 and O_Reilly, 2001). The list of career benefits accrued from mentoring includes job performance, early career socialization, career advancement, retention of high potential talent, and leader development to name a few (Chao et al., 1992, Ragins and Cotton, 1999 and Scandura and Williams, 2004). However, most of extant research on mentoring benefits has focused on the protégés with the mentors' benefits receiving comparatively much less attention. Only recently, some studies have started exploring the benefits of being a mentor (Bozionelos, 2004, Eby et al., 2006, Ghosh et al., 2012, *Lentz and Allen, 2009 and *Wanberg et al., 2006). Although this recent shift in focus towards the mentor's perspective is commendable, the literature on mentor's benefits is currently scattered and needs to be systematically synthesized to derive a coherent understanding of how mentors are likely to gain from volunteering their time in supporting their junior colleagues.
This is even more important due to the widespread proliferation of formal mentoring programs in organizations and the difficulty that human resource development (HRD) professionals experience in recruiting motivated and committed mentors (Hegstad and Wentling, 2005 and *Weinberg and Lankau, 2011). While research to date has not determined the number of organizations using formal mentoring programs, the literature in recent years shows a pervasive and growing interest in mentoring programs in a wide array of organizations including educational institutions, several areas of the United States government, not-for-profit and professional associations, and numerous Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Honeywell, AT&T, Sodexo, and Walmart to name a few (Hegstad & Wentling, 2004). Thus, it seems obvious that a quantitative summary of what we know to date about the benefits associated with being a mentor can be valuable. HRD professionals can use this information to better communicate the value of mentoring as a career development tool for not just protégés, but mentors as well and attract organizational leaders to benefit from imparting their knowledge and expertise to others as mentors.
Moreover, a quantitative review of mentor benefits can advance future theory-building and research on mentoring (Allen, 2007). As a mentoring relationship is inherently dyadic, the success of mentoring is contingent on the needs and perspectives of both mentors and protégés. Thus, overlooking the positive outcomes that mentors might experience leaves a critical gap in theoretical development of the mentoring field, specifically concerning the construct of motivation to mentor or willingness to mentor. While mentoring scholars have perceived mentoring to be an altruistic action and hence, mentors to be pro-social individuals (Aryee, Chay, & Chew, 1996), and age and stage based models of career development have shed some light on motivation to mentor (Dalton et al., 1977, Greenhaus et al., 2000 and Levinson et al., 1978), the literature is still lacking an adequate explanation of willingness to mentor others (Allen, 2003). A meta-analysis of the potential career benefits that mentors experience can inform this continuing dialogue on what might motivate individuals to engage in mentoring relationships as mentors. We address this gap by conducting a systematic and critical meta-analytic review of the studies exploring the benefits of mentoring for mentors.
In sum, the results of our meta-analysis provide substantial evidence for mentor benefits associated with mentoring. Further, we found interesting differences in associations between the different kinds of mentoring functions and mentor outcomes. Still, given the smaller number of correlations for many of the outcome variables studied, much research needs to be conducted to extend our findings for enhancing both theoretical and practical understanding of the mentor's perspective and needs in mentoring. The research and practice implications outlined from our findings above are important steps forward in that direction.
