Protégé--Mentor Agreement about the Provision of Psychosocial Support: The Mentoring Relationship, Personality, and Workload

Protégé-mentor agreement (PMA) about the provision of psychosocial support was examined in relation to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and work self-esteem. One-hundred and sixty-six junior administrative and information technology (IT) staff at an Australian university and their matched mentors completed a questionnaire that assessed three antecedents to PMA: 1) structural and experience aspects of the mentorship (type and length of relationship, frequency of meetings, previous experience with mentoring, and gender-mix), 2) protégé and mentor personality (agreeableness, openness, extroversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness), and 3) protégé and mentor workload. Structural Equation Modeling using Partial Least Squares revealed that PMA was predicted by structural and experience aspects of the mentorship (type of mentorship, frequency of meetings, experience of the mentor), protégé personality (agreeableness, openness, extroversion and conscientiousness), mentor personality (agreeableness, openness, and extroversion) and mentor workload. Protégé-mentor agreement was related positively to job satisfaction and organizational commitment for protégés and mentors.