Toward Improving the Effectiveness of Formal Mentoring Programs
Organizations establish formal mentoring programs to advance personal and professional development, but not all relationships between mentors and proteges deliver these results. Based on the similarity attraction paradigm, it is proposed that proteges receive more career and psychosocial support if mentors and proteges have similar personalities. A test of the model with data from a sample of 68 mentor protege dyads of a formal mentoring program showed, first, that career support is linked to mentor and protege similarity in the personality trait openness to experience and, second, that psychosocial support for proteges is linked to mentor and protege similarity in openness to experience and conscientiousness. It is concluded that matching mentors with proteges on two specific personality traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, enhances the outcomes of mentoring relationships for proteges.