HGSE News: The "Magic" of Mentoring--An Expansion to the Definition of Success

"Mentoring is something of a mantra in the corporate world," says Stacy Blake-Beard, an assistant professor at HGSE and an organizational psychologist, with a wry smile. "It's a magic term."


HGSE Assistant Professor Stacy Blake-Beard (right) with HGSE doctoral student (photo: Susie Fitzhugh ©2001)

As an employee at Proctor and Gamble more than a decade ago, Blake-Beard wondered how such a large and international company could better attract people of color and keep them once they got in the door. Only about 20 of 400 people with whom she attended a conference on her first day on the job were people of color, she says. During a later tenure at Xerox, Blake-Beard discovered "the missing link of mentoring"—thanks to the support she received from her supervisor and a senior colleague. "My supervisor, who happened to be a white male, showed me the ropes of the company from the very beginning," says Blake-Beard. "Being mentored by a senior colleague who, like me, was a black female, was inspirational. Her ascent within the company was testimony to how a woman of color had broken through the glass ceiling."

The Changing Definition of Success, through Mentoring
Today Blake-Beard's research focuses not only on formal mentoring in Fortune 500 companies, but also in schools, community centers, and other organizations. Most significant is her emphasis on mentoring across race, class, age, and gender. "Until recently, mentoring as a concept was thought of largely in terms of older white men helping young white men climb the corporate ladder," she says. "The door is closing on that narrow definition of success."

Blake-Beard and the HGSE doctoral student whom she mentors, Eileen McGowan-Demers, recently studied the Financial Women's Association (FWA) High School Mentoring Program, which links low-income minority youth in an urban New York high school with professional businesspeople. "We took an established mentoring program involving mostly older white women and young girls of color and examined it on a number of levels," says Blake-Beard.

FWA's primary goal of preparing its protégés for college was a success, Blake-Beard and McGowan found, because of the program's structured activities that ranged from SAT preparation workshops to tours of Wall Street and local colleges. The mentor-protégé relationships that worked best, says Blake-Beard, were those where the mentor had a keen appreciation of and sensitivity to family and cultural background of the protégé.

One of Many Answers
While one-on-one mentoring can make a significant difference in a protégé's life, so can a variety of other support systems, such as networking, coaching opportunities, and shared experiences with peers, emphasizes Blake-Beard. She encourages a multifaceted approach and, above all, calls for well-conceived mentoring programs. "An unguided, unstructured program can be disappointing for the mentor and downright dangerous for the protégé," she says. "Magic or chemistry cannot be forced, but a solid mentoring program has the potential to benefit everyone involved."

For More Information
Information on Stacy Blake-Beard and her research can be found in the Faculty Profiles.

Stacy Blake-Beard is available for comment. Please contact Christine Sanni at 617-496-5873 for scheduling information.

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