Protégé anxiety attachment and feedback in mentoring relationships

Social Undermining and Three Forms of Organizational Commitment

Abstract. In this study, we set out to challenge the widely held belief that mistreatment will always lower feelings of organizational commitment. We test this widespread belief by examining the relationship between social undermining (SU) and three forms of organizational commitment, affective, normative, and continuance commitment. Using time-lagged data provided by an online panel of 626 working adults, we found that exposure to SU lowered reported levels of affective (emotion-based) and normative (obligation-based) commitment but increased the level of continuance (economic-based) commitment. Subsequent moderated regression analyses revealed that the negative relations between SU and both affective and normative commitment were nuanced – they were both stronger for individuals whose anxious attachment was low rather than high. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Psychology of Workplace Mentoring Relationships

Workplace mentoring relationships have been advanced as critical to employee development. However, mentoring research has tended to find small to moderate effects of mentoring on protégé and mentor outcomes and considerable heterogeneity in effect sizes. These findings underscore the need to better understand the psychology of mentoring relationships in order to maximize the benefits of mentoring for mentors, protégés, and organizations. In this article, after briefly reviewing established research on workplace mentoring relationships, we introduce five relationship science theories from outside organizational psychology and organizational behavior that provide new insight into the psychology of workplace mentoring: attachment theory, interdependence theory, self-expansion theory, Rhodes’ model of formal youth mentoring, and the working alliance. We then discuss several unique features of workplace mentoring that should be considered when applying these relationship science theories and introduce provocative ideas for future research. We conclude by discussing practical implications for mentors, protégés, and organizations.

Leaders' Behaviors Matter: The Role of Delegation in Promoting Employees' Feedback-Seeking Behavior

Feedback helps employees to evaluate and improve their performance, but there have been relatively few empirical investigations into how leaders can encourage employees to seek feedback. To fill this gap we examined the relationship among delegation, psychological empowerment, and feedback-seeking behavior. We hypothesized that delegation promotes feedback-seeking behavior by psychologically empowering subordinates. In addition, power distance moderates the relationship between delegation and feedback-seeking behavior. Analysis of data from a sample of 248 full-time employees of a hotel group in northern China indicated that delegation predicts subordinates' feedback seeking for individuals with moderate and high power distance orientation, but not for those with low power distance orientation. The mediation hypothesis was also supported.

Augmenting the Sense of Attachment Security in Group Contexts: The Effects of a Responsive Leader and a Cohesive Group

According to attachment theory, the availability of caring, supportive relationship partners, beginning in infancy, is important to developing a sense of attachment security, which in turn fosters the development of stable self-esteem, constructive coping strategies, maintenance of mental health, and formation of mutually satisfying relationships throughout life. In this article, we move beyond the well-researched correlates of attachment security and the laboratory priming of security-enhancing mental representations to propose a broader group-related model of psychological change. According to this model, repeated interactions with responsive and supportive leaders and cohesive groups beneficially alter a person's attachment patterns and psychological functioning. We review prospective longitudinal findings showing that being involved in a relationship with a responsive and supportive leader or a cohesive and supportive group creates long-term beneficial changes in attachment-related cognitions and feelings and in broader psychological functioning. The findings provide strong support for Bowlby's ideas about the plasticity of the attachment system across the life span and the growth-enhancing consequences of responsive leaders and cohesive groups.

Defining Attributes and Metrics of Effective Research Mentoring Relationships

Despite evidence of mentoring's importance in training researchers, studies to date have not yet determined which mentoring relationships have the most impact and what specific factors in those mentoring relationships contribute to key outcomes, such as the commitment to and persistence in research career paths for emerging researchers from diverse populations. Efforts to broaden participation and persistence in biomedical research careers require an understanding of why and how mentoring relationships work and their impact, not only to research training but also to promoting career advancement. This paper proposes core attributes of effective mentoring relationships, as supported by the literature and suggested by theoretical models of academic persistence. In addition, both existing and developing metrics for measuring the effectiveness of these attributes within mentoring relationships across diverse groups are presented, as well as preliminary data on these metrics from the authors' work.

The Role of Perceived Feedback Sources’ Learning-Goal Orientation on Feedback Acceptance and Employees’ Creativity

In this study, we endeavor to explain comprehensively how a feedback receiver’s perception of feedback sources (i.e., leaders) encourages employee feedback acceptance and enhances their creativity through a mediating and moderating mechanism. A total of 190 employees and 53 leaders from 8 different organizations in South Korea were included in the final analysis. Using structural equation modeling, this study found that a feedback receiver’s perception of the feedback sources’ learning-goal orientation was positively related to their credibility through the high-quality feedback. Furthermore, the feedback acceptance was found to play a mediating role in the relationship between source credibility and employee creativity. Moreover, the results showed that the relationship between feedback acceptance and employee creativity was stronger when employees perceived their organizations as having a high-level learning organization culture. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are also addressed.

Attachment anxiety in mentoring: the role of commitment

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of commitment in the relationship between protégés’ anxious attachment styles and feedback behaviors of both mentors and protégés.

Design/methodology/approach

– Data were collected from 100 academic protégé-mentor dyads, and reports from both members of the mentoring relationships were used to test hypotheses.

Findings

– The results suggested that protégé perceptions of mentor commitment and self-reported protégé commitment mediated the relationships between protégé anxious attachment style and protégé feedback seeking and feedback acceptance. Additionally, mentor perceptions of protégé commitment played an important role, mediating the relationships between protégé anxious attachment and quality and quantity of mentor feedback.

Research limitations/implications

– Taken together, the results reveal the important role of perceptions of partner commitment in high-quality mentoring behaviors.

Originality/value

– This study was among the first to examine feedback and commitment in academic mentoring relationships, particularly taking into account commitment of each member of the dyad as well as their perceptions of the other person’s commitment.

Seeking feedback but unable to improve work performance? Qualified feedback from trusted supervisors matters

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the boundary conditions in the relationship between feedback-seeking behavior (FSB) and work performance. The authors hypothesized that the positive influence of employees’ FSB on their work performance is influenced by perceived quality of feedback. The authors also expected that employees’ trust in their supervisors moderated the interaction between their FSB and perceived feedback quality.

Design/methodology/approach

– Data were collected from 202 employees in South Korea. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis was performed to test the hypothesis.

Findings

– The results showed that while employees’ FSB was positively related to work performance, the influence was stronger for employees who perceived they were receiving high quality of feedback from supervisors. The authors also found that the moderating effect of feedback quality on the relationship between FSB and work performance was stronger when employees had high levels of trust in their supervisors.

Practical implications

– The findings suggest that if managers wish to encourage employees to achieve work goal and desirable performance levels by actively engaging in FSB, they should pay more attention to providing high quality of feedback and building trust with employees.

Originality/value

– This study contributes to expand the understanding of FSB-work performance relationship by verifying the boundary conditions, which suggests the importance of examining the moderating factors in the FSB mechanism.

What Have We Learned That Is Critical in Understanding Leadership Perceptions and Leader-Performance Relations?

In this article, we provide a brief review of the current and past research on leadership perceptions and performance. We then describe four principles that have emerged from many decades of research, which can provide new directions for future leadership theory and research.

Best practices in academic mentoring: a model for excellence

Mentoring is important for the recruitment and retention of qualified nurse faculty, their ongoing career development, and leadership development. However, what are current best practices of mentoring? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a model for excellence in establishing a formal mentoring program for academic nurse educators. Six themes for establishing a formal mentoring program are presented, highlighting best practices in mentoring as culled from experience and the literature. Themes reflect aims to achieve appropriately matched dyads, establish clear mentorship purpose and goals, solidify the dyad relationship, advocate for and guide the protégé, integrate the protégé into the academic culture, and mobilize institutional resources for mentoring support. Attending to the six themes will help mentors achieve important protégé outcomes, such as orientation to the educator role, integration into the academic community, development of teaching, scholarship, and service skills, as well as leadership development. The model is intended to be generalizable for faculty teaching in a variety of academic nursing institution types and sizes. Mentoring that integrates the six themes assists faculty members to better navigate the academic environment and more easily transition to new roles and responsibilities.