Case Study: Mentorship Experience In The World Of Academia

Introduction

This case revolves around the mentorship in the academia world and personal experience of Vinnie Naidoo. Vinnie Naidoo is an Indian woman who was born and raised in South Africa. Today, Vinnie Naidoo is a professional woman in the world of academia who contributes to building and educating new generation of young South African’s in the workplace. The journey of Vinnie Naidoo was not so easy. She faced some difficulties when she started her teaching profession but she overcome it with the help of her mentors through formal and informal mentorship.

Case Summary

Vinnie Naidoo had the opportunity of being mentored by three men. Her first mentor was appointed by her university (Free State (UFS)-QWAQWA campus) who helped her understand the Sotho and African culture. Her university was actively involved in stimulating upward mobility within the workplace so later they assigned her a trained clinical phycologist to develop her to a better academia. Her last mentor was from University of Gavle when she joined University of Gavle as an exchange teacher to get international experience. The mentor helped her with developing her PhD proposal by having a workshop with the staff of Gavle and Gothenburg University.

According to Vinnie Naidoo, in a mentorship program people may encounter problems in terms of communication, gender, culture, language and attitude. Vinnie Naidoo suggests that mentors are like role model and serve as a vehicle for developing skills and capacity. Vinnie Naidoo is not only being mentored, she also mentored many students who are now valuable leaders in the industry. She added, mentorship is not only teaching but also learning from your students.

Through this case we learn about Dr Vannie Naidoo experience in the world of mentorship. She shared her experience of being mentored by three person and what problem she faced during that period. At the beginning of her career she faced the problem of racism, as a (Indian person) she was not allowed to work/live in certain part of South African. It was the era of apartheid which was introduced by National Party of South Africa in 1948. Under apartheid, white and non-white South Africans was forced to live in separate areas and use separate public service. Later, SA government introduced affirmative actions to readdress the issue.

Time was another issue that Vannie faced in the beginning of her career. This is because she was studying masters and working at the same time, but she found a balance between them both with the help of her mentors.

Upward mobility for women in the workplace was one of the major issues.To overcome this issue her university was actively involved developing women like her and stimulate upward mobility within the work environment. As a result, they appointed her a trained Clinical Phycologist mentor to help her with the research proposal and questionnaire. The relationship between her and the mentor was more like formal mentorship.

During her international exposure, she was appointed to University of Gavle as an exchange teacher.

According to Vinnie Naiddo, in a mentoring relationship people may face problem in terms of communication, gender, culture, language and attitude. Both mentor and protégé should come forward to overcome these obstacles. Communication: Effective communication is the heart of successful mentorship program as it helps prevent mentorship malpractice (Chopra, 2016). Here young protégé still learning how to communicate successfully so mentor should have the ability to listen actively and pay attention to non-verbal communication like eye-contact etc.

Mentorship

Vinnie was lucky to have positive results when it comes to the mentoring, in fact she was lucky to have mentorship. There is still a lot of organisations that have a lack of mentorship program. One of these organisation is the one we are managing. Our healthcare organisation still doesn’t follow any mentorship program and because of that the organisation is suffering from a big issue, which is the gender vertically and horizontally segregation. MLAY which is the organisation we leads have visible segregation between the genders. As it is more males than females in the vertical or top positions, and in the horizontal bottom, there are more females than males. At the top in our organisation we do have males professors and doctors but lower in the hierarchal we have more females as nurses.

After making some researchers and interviews with the females in the bottom of the hierarchal. Some nurses said that compared to the males, the females had worse and limited opportunity to develop and move for mobility. As they had to start from some positions that didn’t have any chance for mobility. This is similar to what Kanter (1993) says that this was because women already start at the dead end or in jobs where chances to move upward in the hierarchy is extremely low.

Another issue was that some females had the opportunity to move forward, but they refused that because of the thought of being alone in that sector. As there was few females in there vertical positions. So the females prefer to stay at their positions rather than change and be lonley.

Some females blamed the organisation and said that the management gives more developed positions to the males, positions that allows the males to acquire their skills, while the females duties and tasks are more basics and miss the ability to develop their skills. As they even said that they feel disappointed and left alone by the organisation.

In order to decrease the dissatisfaction among the females employees and to change the numbers we believe that its important to setup a new mentorship program so we can be more in touch with the employees through our mentors, this is as well to help the females achieving and reaching their goals in their career.

Lonnie D. Inzer, (2005) says that mentoring is a one-to-one relationship between mentor and protégé where an expert or senior person voluntarily gives time to teach, support and encourage another. Since it's the first time we will arrange this type of program we will go for formal mentorship. According to Cotton and Ragins (1999) they says that the informal mentorship program are more beneficial than the formal one. In our opinion the informal mentorship is really beneficial when it comes to the longterm while formal is more for the short-term. The organisation already suffers from dissatisfied employees, and the organisation need something that gives positively result in the near future. As it is huge number of employees interested in mentorship program, therefore a formal mentorship would suits the organisation for the moment. The organisation hopes are to change into a informal mentorship later on in the future as it will increase the communication and relationship between the employees and mentors which in that case can gives the organisation a better data to work on regarding the employees behaviour, thoughts and expectations.

In our opinions is in order to achieve the most of the mentorship program, there are some elements thats needed to put under consideration. There are four main elements that plays a huge role in the mentorship program. Those are the mentor, protege, organisation and the relationship.

Mentors

The organisation will wisely select the mentors, because the mentors is gonna play a huge role in the protege development. The mentors have to be known for their respectful attitude and their passion to the work as well as their good performance in the organisation. Lawrie (1987) says that “The mentors should like teaching and guiding and training”. The mentors will follow a transformational leadership style during the program with the proteges. According to Godshalk & Sosik (2002) This style gives the mentor the opportunity to see the full potential motives in the protege and helps to reach and develop it. What the organization and the portage should expect from the mentor is that he/she are motivated, patient and supportive. The mentor should in the first step make some career meetings with the protege in order to know each other and to set up the goals they want to achieve together.

Protege

The protege has an important role as well, as in the beginning of the program the protege should know what he/she wants and what he/she is expecting. The protege should respect and appreciate the work the mentor is putting in order to achieve the very best out of him. As for instance in the case, Vannie Naidoo overcome the obstacles because of her abilities to understand people and her communication skills. Ohio Network (2004) says that “The protege should not assume that the mentors have all the answers”.

Organization

Our organisation have also an important role in order to reach out the best of the program, by showing support to both mentors and proteges and by taking their feedbacks seriously and in highest consideration. The organisation will not go between the relationship of the two parts as well, as we think that it's a privacy thats need to be reaccepted.

Relationship

The relationship between the mentors and proteges is like any relationship. The relationship should be built on respect and each one should value the other. Since both parts are in this relationship for a reason, and this reason should be enough for the two parts to respect. Kellam (2003) says that “The mentor should not only be the one speaking, he should listen more and the protege should not depend and put all the responsibilities on his mentor only”. Everything should be clear from the beginning for both parts, like program purpose and what each part are expecting from the other, as well as the organisations expectations. The proteges will also have the possibilities to chose their mentors after their preferences.

Implementation

The mentorship program will be ruled by the mentor himself, and as mentioned before the organisation will not be an obstacle between the mentor and the proteges. The mentor will first have a career meeting with the proteges. The meeting will highlight the proteges previous work in the organisation and an evaluation about the performance will be reported. Where the mentor will together with the proteges go through it and try to find if there is something wrong or good. Together they will set up a plan for mobility, and the mentor will honestly tell the proteges about the opportunity and where to focus on in order to become a manager. The mentors will also explain our view in the gender segregation as we don’t accept it. We believe that everyone should be treated equal no matter what gender or sex they have. In this program and through our mentors we will highlight the positives and importance of being a female in our organisation. We have a vision to develop a new generations of females, where they are not only considered women in the society and culture, but as being role models and idols as well. This meeting is created to make it easier for the proteges to understand his role in the organisation and perform to reach the organisation expectations in order to move up in the hierarchal. The mentor will always give feedback to both proteges and organisation as well.

Possibilities

This mentorship program will be created to help the employees understanding the organisation culture and value, as well as letting the organisation learn more about its employees expectations as well. We hope that this program will decrease the disappoints and dissatisfaction among the employees specially the females ones who is facing segregation. This program will help the employees to move for mobility by making a plan for each individual based on his abilities and expectations. For us, the employees play a major rule in our organisation results, both when it comes to the positively or negatively results. We want to help the employees to reach their very best and to keep them happy, in hopes that this will increase their motivation to perform better.

Limitations

The mentorship program can have some limitations as well, as we are thinking of using a formal mentorship program. The formal one is considered as a short-term program, and the communication between the two parts are more formal. The proteges can experience some difficulties in the beginning as they for the most of the time is gonna have formal orders, where in the informal one they might have friendly discussion with their mentors. If the mentors are chosen wrongly that would affect the relationship between the two parts very badly and in that case the portages may be more negatively affected from the organisation than before taking part in the program. Since the program are formed formal and all the mentors are using the same program, then a huge amount of proteges will be incorrectly informed by the mentors, if the program was wrongly setup. As in the informal one, the mentors have more possibilities to change the format a little while they speak with the portages about their own experiences in the organisations, and what they should do and what to avoid doing as well.

Conclusion

There are many aspects to consider in the organisation, one of them is the employee feelings about their experience in the organisation. The research showed that there is a huge dissatisfaction among the female employees about their segregation experience towards mobility After understanding the issue in our company we believe that developing a new mentorship program to our employees is very important in order to help them. There are two types in mentorship, the informal and formal but our program will be a formal mentorship program, in hopes to change to informal in the near future. After reading the case about Vinnie and understanding our employees issues we can now draw a conclusion on the importance of the mentorship program in order to help the employees to reach their goals.

References

• Crawford, C. B. & Lonnie D. Inzer (2005) A Review of formal and Informal Mentoring: Processes, Problems, and Design Journal of Leadership Education Vol. 4, Issue 1 1-10
• Kimberly, E. Andrew, B. Stacey, R & Tammy, D (2010) A Meta - Analytic Investigation of Gender Differences in Mentoring Journal of Management Vol. 36 No. 2
• Vineet, C. Dana, P. & Sanjay, S (2016) Mentorship Malpractice Vol. 315 No.14
• Alvesson, M. & Due Billing, Y. (2009). Understanding gender and organizations. Sage Publication: London
• Moss Kanter, R. (1977). Men and women of the corporation. Basic Books: New York