The Psychology of Workplace Mentoring Relationships

Workplace mentoring relationships have been advanced as critical to employee development. However, mentoring research has tended to find small to moderate effects of mentoring on protégé and mentor outcomes and considerable heterogeneity in effect sizes. These findings underscore the need to better understand the psychology of mentoring relationships in order to maximize the benefits of mentoring for mentors, protégés, and organizations. In this article, after briefly reviewing established research on workplace mentoring relationships, we introduce five relationship science theories from outside organizational psychology and organizational behavior that provide new insight into the psychology of workplace mentoring: attachment theory, interdependence theory, self-expansion theory, Rhodes’ model of formal youth mentoring, and the working alliance. We then discuss several unique features of workplace mentoring that should be considered when applying these relationship science theories and introduce provocative ideas for future research. We conclude by discussing practical implications for mentors, protégés, and organizations.