Mentorship in human service organizations

Profiles of mentorship were developed from a survey of 430 professionals employed in over 300 human service organizations. All of the subjects had served as field instructors for a particular graduate school of social work. The profiles explored the age, gender, and race/ethnicity of non-mentees, mentees, and their mentors as well as of non-mentors, mentors, and their mentees. Most of the subjects had been a mentee or a mentor. Overall, tendencies toward same-gender, same-race, and older mentor-younger mentee relationship configurations were found.;The impact of mentorship on three different career outcomes--career satisfaction, career success, and income--was also investigated. There were significant main effects for being a mentee and for being a mentor on career satisfaction and career success. Income-level was significantly related to having been a mentor, but not to having been a mentee. The number of mentor relationships was found not to be significantly related to career outcomes. Thus, it was concluded that it is not how many relationships one becomes involved in as a mentee or mentor, but whether one has had any mentor relationships that has the greatest implications for one's career outcomes.;In addition, the structural, emotional, and functional aspects of mentorship and their impact on career outcomes was explored. Structural characteristics included the respondent's gender, race, and age when the relationship began, and duration of the relationship. Emotional characteristics included affirmative, affiliative, divisive, and competitive feelings experienced within the context of the relationship. Functions included the mentor serving in an instrumental aid, ego-centered aid, professional model, values model, or personal model/aid capacity.;Multiple regression procedures were used to identify which mentorship characteristics had the most impact on each type of career outcome. A number of characteristics were significant for each career outcome. For mentees: age and affirmative feelings were important for career satisfaction; relationship duration, affirmative feelings, instrumental aid, professional modeling, and values modeling were important for career success; and gender and race were significant for income-level. For mentors: affirmative feelings, ego-centered aid, and professional modeling were important for career satisfaction; gender, relationship duration, and professional modeling were important for career success; and gender, race, relationship duration, and values modeling were significant for income-level. Therefore, it was concluded that some mentorship characteristics are better predictors of particular career outcomes than others.