The Influence of Being a Mentor on Leadership Development: Recommendations for Curricular and Co-Curricular Experiences

Abstract

While there are well-established personal benefits to being a mentor, such as increased life satisfaction and job performance (Ramaswami & Dreher, 2007), how mentors grow and develop requires exploration. The current paper meets this need by presenting six key themes from two recent research studies related to the experiences that mentors perceived as contributing to their development. The growth of two leadership theories in particular were explored: (a) generativity and (b) Psychological Capital. The themes that emerge offer insights on how curricular and co-curricular experiences might maximize leadership development of students and ground leadership interventions, such as mentoring, in theory and research.