Mentoring in Business and Professional Communication: Case Study of a Multiyear Dynamic

Abstract

Mentoring of graduate students is essential to the professional development of business and professional communication (BPC) scholars; it also helps advance the field of BPC and its disciplinary identity. In this article, a professor and graduate student use a case-study approach incorporating historical/archival data collection and grounded in critical reflection to describe and characterize their own long-term, cross-institutional mentoring relationship. They analyze artifacts from their mentoring experience; discuss benefits and challenges to mentoring in BPC; offer implications for mentees, mentors, and academic programs in creating formal mentoring plans; and suggest topics for further research.

Factors affecting mentoring services - cross-national perspective

“…The idea of mentoring traces back to Homer's Odyssey, which includes a character named Mentor (goddess Athena in disguise), who helps Odysseus's son Telemachus find the strength (menos) and connections (napios) necessary to overcome the challenges (Rosselot-Merritt & Bloch, 2020).…”

“…The development of a mentoring relationship depends on the perceptions and activities of both the mentor and mentee. If one or the other does not choose to engage actively, then the relationship will unlikely be as effective (Rosselot-Merritt & Bloch, 2020). Theoretical literature stresses the importance of two-way communication to make mentoring relationships work.…”

“…Performing this dialogue communication, mentors develop and give relevant messages that are referred to as specific communicative behaviour or one party's action aimed at benefitting someone or helping others (Burleson et al, 2002). If mentors encourage mentees to feel comfortable communicating with them, especially at the beginning of the mentoring relationship, this can set a positive tone for future communication (Rosselot-Merritt & Bloch, 2020).…”

Romanian Professional Conduct of Mentors from Special Education Field Is Shaped by Their Communication Style?

“…In an educational context, mentoring is a temporary collaborative relationship of two teachers based on the relationship between a more experienced teacher and a novice, or a beginner teacher. It is an essential relation where mentors use all the strategies that the communication style provides; it has his own dynamic and involves a constant learning process of mentor and mentee, constant adjusting and more of that it is not assimilated with career counselling process (Rosselot-Merrit & Bloch, 2019); it involves a special leaning environment. The studies done in 2015 by Vinales revealed that in learning environment and also in special education, the majority of mentors is predominantly female and the role that they played role as facilitator.…”