Mentoring: Creating Mutually Empowering Relationships
While mentoring is often viewed as one person giving and the other person receiving, Stacy Blake-Beard, Professor of Management at Simmons College, defines mentoring as a mutually empowering relationship where both parties learn and benefit. Blake-Beard offers insight into the importance of developing mentoring relationships that are based in both similarity and difference – where individuals can build common ground and learn from their differences. She explores the challenges that come with navigating difference and addresses how to overcome roadblocks that can hinder individuals from giving and receiving critical feedback. She also discusses the role differential access can play in influential mentoring relationships and offers strategies for how to start effective mentoring relationships.
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View Mentoring: Creating Mutually Empowering Relationships Resources
Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World: A Harvard Business Review article addresses how professional service firms can reinvent the traditional mentoring model.
9 Characteristics of a Good Mentoring Relationship: This Huffington Post article outlines the characteristics of a strong mentor/mentee relationship ranging from meaningful conversations to having clarity about goals to providing the right connections and tools for mentees.
Don’t Go It Alone: A Diversity Woman article focuses on how the rules of mentoring have changed and the importance of acting in a strategic manner. If someone aligns you with them due to any factor (background, interest, color, gender, religion), makes you feel comfortable, and provides a platform for you to open up in order to absorb and exchange information, jump on the opportunity for a mentor.
Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors? Interim Results from a Randomized Trial: This Harvard Kennedy School paper presents results of the investigation for the effectiveness of mentoring in advancing women’s academic careers in economics.
Earning It - Mentoring Meets Networking in Formal Programs: A New York Time Article discusses the numerous benefits of formal mentoring programs-permitting mentees to gain access to the ideas and experiences of various departments, helping to facilitate the process of adjusting to a company's culture, creating a set-up for self-assessment and feedback and ensuring that minority groups obtain mentors they may otherwise struggle to find.
Center for Mentoring Excellence: This website focuses on individual and organizational mentoring excellence through the offering of tools, resources and expert advice.
How Mentoring Will Help You Perform: An article from the Huffington Post recognizes the multi-faceted advantages of having a mentor, and provides tips for finding a mentor and for working with a mentor.
Optimizing Mentoring Programs for Women of Color: A Catalyst toolkit includes research on the unique issues facing women of color and ways in which effective change can occur in mentoring program development.
View Mentoring: Creating Mutually Empowering Relationships Biographies
PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT, SIMMONS COLLEGE
Stacy Blake-Beard is a Professor of Management at the Simmons School of Management where she teaches Organizational Behavior. She is also Senior Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons and Faculty for the Vedica Scholars Programme for Women offered by the Vedica Foundation and Sri Aurobindo Centre for Arts and Communication in New Delhi, India. Prior to joining Simmons, Dr. Blake-Beard was faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She has also worked in Sales and Marketing at Procter & Gamble and in Corporate Human Resources at Xerox.
Dr. Blake-Beard's research focuses on the challenges and opportunities offered by mentoring relationships, with a focus on how these relationships may be changing as a result of increasing workforce diversity. She is particularly interested in the issues women face as they develop mentoring relationships. She studies the dynamics of formal mentoring programs in both corporate and educational settings.
Dr. Blake-Beard has published research on gender, diversity, and mentoring in several publications including the Journal of Career Development, the Academy of Management Executive, the Academy of Management Learning & Education, the Psychology of Women Quarterly, the Journal of Management Development, the Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management Journal, the Journal of Management Education, the Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering, and The Diversity Factor.
View Mentoring: Creating Mutually Empowering Relationships References
Matching by Race and Gender in Mentoring Relationships: Keeping our Eyes on the Prize
Blake-Beard, Stacy, Melissa L. Bayne, Faye J. Crosby, and Carol B. Muller. 2011. “Matching by Race and Gender in Mentoring Relationships: Keeping our Eyes on the Prize.” Journal of Social Issues 67(3):622-643.
Mentoring as a Connecting Competency Builder: Examining POS (Positive Organizational Scholarship) as a Catalyst for Mentoring Across Dimensions of Diversity
Blake-Beard, Stacy, Audrey Murrell, Vineetha Krothapalli, Jessica Halem, and Michelle Kweder. 2016. “Mentoring as a Connecting Competency Builder: Examining POS (Positive Organizational Scholarship) as a Catalyst for Mentoring Across Dimensions of Diversity.” Pp. 110-116 in Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity Building and Inclusion, edited by L. Morgan Roberts, L. Perry Wooten, and M. N. Davidson. New York, NY: Routledge.
Strategic Relationships at Work: Creating Your Circle of Mentors, Sponsors, and Peers for Success in Business and Life
Murphy, Wendy and Kathy E. Kram. 2014. Strategic Relationships at Work: Creating Your Circle of Mentors, Sponsors, and Peers for Success in Business and Life. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Interorganizational Formal Mentoring: Breaking the Concrete Ceiling Sometimes Requires Support From Outside
Murrell, Audrey J., Stacy Blake-Beard, David M. Porter, and Addie Perkins-Williamson. 2008. “Interorganizational Formal Mentoring: Breaking the Concrete Ceiling Sometimes Requires Support From Outside.” Human Resource Management 47(2):275-294.
Intelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge and Relationships
Murrell, Audrey J., Sheila Forte-Trammell, and Diana A. Bing. 2009. Intelligent Mentoring: How IBM Creates Value through People, Knowledge and Relationships. Upper Saddle River, NJ: IBM Press.
The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research and Practice
Ragins, Belle Rose and Kram, Kathy E., eds. 2007. The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
The Truth About Mentoring Minorities; Race Matters
Thomas, David A. 2001. “The Truth About Mentoring Minorities; Race Matters.”Harvard Business Review 79(4):98-107.