Introduction

As health care executives, relationships are critical to career success; and the leadership literature underscores the reality that the most important relationship for leadership success is mentoring (Eby et al., 2008).  For individuals from multicultural1 backgrounds that include African American, Asian, Latino, Native Alaskan, Native American, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, mentoring must consciously acknowledge and address such multicultural experiences.  Failure to do so only perpetuates the status quo and structural racism where only a small percentage of multicultural health care professionals achieve executive leadership roles.  To change this long-standing reality, mentors and mentees must be critical and deliberate about addressing multiculturalism.

The goal of mentoring is to ensure professional success for the mentee; and the mentor provides support and guidance for the mentee’s personal and professional growth while the mentee initiates learning.  This contrasts with coaching where the goal is improved performance, corrected behavior, or acquisition of new skills so that the mentor directs the learning (Kram, 1988).  To ensure success, however, mentoring must be culturally competent where “culture” includes values, norms, and practices learned, shared, and transmitted across generations by a given group of people (Kreuter et al., 2003).  Consequently, cultural background and experiences impact the mentor and mentee; and culture is also affected by generational differences.  Another paper will address intergenerational differences.  The focus of this paper is on the role of mentor and mentee being culturally aware and developing cultural competence.

For mentors, cultural competence includes attitudes, behaviors, and practices that enable them to interact and work effectively with mentees from different cultural backgrounds (Sanchez et al., 2014).  The importance of cultural competence as a requisite skill for successful mentoring is cited in the mentoring literature as “critical mentoring”, i.e., the inclusion of race, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality in the mentoring relationship; adopting a holistic view of the mentee in terms and strengths and deficits; using metrics that includes the personal story; and mutual accommodation. (Albright, 2017). In essence, critical mentoring is culturally competent mentoring that benefits both the mentor and the mentee in a transformational—as opposed to transactional—relationship. For example, in a transformational relationship a person gives without expecting to receive in return.  When this occurs, the mentor advises the mentee by offering knowledge, resources and insights; or the mentor makes an important introduction to someone in their professional network to help the mentee expand their circle of influence.

In a transactional relationship, however, the mentee only contacts the mentor for a specific request; and the mentor does not engage in open-ended dialogue that simply explores the mentee’s goals, wishes, victories or challenges.  In this situation, the mentor and the mentee are reluctant to engage with one another because each feel obliged or obligated.  Subsequently, the relationship is strained and unbalanced. While all human relationships may involve from time to time some aspect of transactions, solely transactional mentor-mentee relationships focus on the exchange of goods or services.  Such a relationship stagnates and affords little growth for mentors and mentees. 

In contrast, transformational relationships facilitate good will, the exchange of positive energy, and expansion of views. Most importantly, mutual growth and respect guide the mentor-mentee relationship—especially as the mentor shares hard-earned insights and lessons learned from life experiences.  By offering such wisdom, the mentee avoids similar pitfalls and excels as a health care leader. 

References

Albright, J. N., Hurd, N. M., & Hussain, S. B. (2017). Applying a Social Justice Lens to Youth Mentoring: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Practice. American Journal of Community Psychology, 59: 363-381.

Eby, L.T., et al. (2008). Does mentoring matter? A multidisciplinary meta-analysis comparing mentored and non-mentored individuals. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 72(2): 254-267.

Kram, K.E. (1988). Mentoring at work: Developmental relationships in organizational life. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America.

Kreuter, M.W., et al. (2002). Achieving cultural appropriateness in health promotion programs: Targeted and tailored approaches. Health Education & Behavior, 30: 133–146. 

Sanchez, B., et al. (2014). Race, ethnicity, and culture in mentoring relationships. In D. L. DuBois & M. J. Karcher (Eds.), Handbook of youth mentoring (2nd ed., pp. 145–158). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.