Mentoring and Entrepreneurship (James Wilbanks Commentary)

James Wilbanks

Successful individuals in all areas of human endeavor routinely attribute much of their accomplishments to the help and guidance of more experienced individuals who took an interest in their career. We refer to these benefactors as mentors, a word that makes its first recorded appearance in Homer’s epic poem “The Odyssey” circa 800 B.C. The positive characteristics associated with mentoring in the modern era make their first known appearance in the French novel “Les Aventures de Telemaque” by Fenelon in 1699. In this novel, Mentor is a primary character and does in fact groom Telemachus to become a wise and powerful king.

For close to 40 years now, mentoring in the workplace has been examined extensively in hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. The results of these studies demonstrate many benefits to the career success of the protege, the career of the mentor and the organizations that encourage informal mentoring or have developed formal mentoring programs. From the standpoint of small-business development and entrepreneurial assistance programs, it is a long-standing tradition to provide mentoring to aspiring entrepreneurs.

For example, Score, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, is a nonprofit association and resource partner with the Small Business Administration that has been providing mentoring to small-business owners since 1964. The group currently has more than 13,000 volunteers who offer mentoring services to small-business owners at no charge. Many other organizations charged with the development of entrepreneurial activity have also implemented systems for linking novice entrepreneurs with experienced entrepreneur mentors. There are multiple entrepreneurship and innovation centers in Arkansas that provide mentors for new entrepreneurs as well.

Successful mentoring relationships involve reciprocity, developmental benefits and regular and consistent interaction over some period. Reciprocity refers to a reciprocal relationship, which involves mutual social exchange as opposed to a one-way relationship. In other words, the mentor does not tell the protege what to do, but instead shares his or her experience and provides guidance in order to help the protege make better decisions and serves as a sounding board for the protege’s ideas and plans.

The protege should also provide his or her opinions to the mentor, who may be surprised to hear what someone with a fresh outside perspective has to offer. Mutual social exchange leads to a higher quality mentoring relationship, which in turn leads to greater developmental benefits. Developmental benefits of a mentoring relationship refer primarily to the benefits to the protege’s work and career but also include benefits to the mentor as well. One of the most visible developmental benefits a mentor can provide to a protege is that of sponsorship. Good mentors share their social network with their proteges and make appropriate introductions to vendors, technical experts, potential clients and others who will add value to the proteges’ social capital.

Additionally, mentors share their experience with proteges in order to develop their knowledge, skills and abilities, as well as to alert the proteges to potential pitfalls in the environment. In addition to these functional benefits, good mentors also allow proteges to express their frustrations and concerns, which can be an important coping mechanism for the stress and pressure associated with developing a new venture.

This works both ways as mentors also have the opportunity to vent to the proteges about stresses and pressures in their ongoing ventures. Finally, the protege also helps the mentor stay current with new trends in the field as well as life in general. Mentors benefit not only from the satisfaction of helping their proteges be successful, but also share in the prestige of the proteges’ success and learn new techniques from proteges as they continue to grow and develop. These developmental benefits accrue most abundantly with regular consistent interaction over time.

Mentoring is a powerful tool that, when used correctly, can have a significant impact upon the success of entrepreneurs and their new ventures. This in turn can lead to job creation, increased innovation and economic development. I encourage aspiring entrepreneurs in Arkansas to seek out experienced mentors and to take advantage of the many opportunities available here with our myriad of entrepreneurial accelerators, incubators and development centers. n

James Wilbanks is an assistant professor of management at the College of Business at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He can be reached at JEWilbanks@UALR.edu.