Relational Mentoring as a Tool for Identity Development: Collaborative Autoethnography of International Asian Women HRD Scholars

Abstract: Mentoring relationships are critical components in the career development of scholars in higher education (Nganga et al., 2020). Despite its irrefutable advantages, traditional mentoring has been primarily performance-oriented, thereby negligent in understanding cultural differences and experiences of historically marginalized groups, such as women of color (Batiste et al., 2022; Hutchins & Ghosh, 2022). Also, asymmetrical power relationships between mentor and mentee were not interrogated or could not be removed in traditional mentoring due to its hierarchal, unidirectional approach, such as delivering knowledge and skills from “mentor” to “mentee” (Ghosh et al., 2020).
Furthermore, mentoring has been more focused on “knowing” and “doing,” even though “being” is also essential in learning and growth. For example, improving skills and constructing professional networks, rather than understanding how participants develop their professional identities, were the main interests of mentoring (Muir, 2014). Recently, the movement considering mentoring as a developmental identity process is emerging. Studies have found how mentoring could play a role in developing cultural and professional identities (Batiste et al., 2022; Limberg et al., 2013). By focusing on the developmental process of cultural and professional identities, mentoring participants can understand the interplay of values and customs learned in a given society and situate them in an appropriate stage of the professional journey, thereby facilitating their learning and growth.
This paper explores how relational mentoring can develop the cultural and professional identity of international Asian women Human Resource Development (HRD) scholars by critically reflecting on and sharing our lived experiences. Relational mentoring widens the lens of traditional mentoring by offering itself as an “independent and generative developmental relationship that promotes mutual growth, learning and development within the career context” (Raigins, 2007, p. 10). It thrives on reciprocity, mutual learning, growth, and interpersonal attributes, including sensitivity, empathy, compassion, and empowerment (Ragins & Verbos, 2007). In this particular instance, the relational mentoring perspective may help in developing the cultural and professional identities of the mentoring participants as international women of color and HRD scholars, wherein they may experience mutual authenticity, mutual empathy, and finally mutual empowerment (Fletcher & Ragins, 2007). Developing mutuality could be challenging as participants would need to make themselves vulnerable and be transparent about sharing their successes and failures.
In this proposed study, we would utilize collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to highlight how a relational mentoring perspective can be utilized in developing the professional identity of three international Asian women HRD scholars who are at different career stages, namely a doctoral student, a tenure-track faculty member, and a recently tenured faculty member from three different U.S. universities. As mentoring partners, we would share our positionalities and discuss similarities and differences in our identities. We share similar feelings as international Asian women HRD scholars and different experiences stemming from diverse backgrounds (e.g., nationality, positions, and institutions). CAE would enable us to collectively use our lived experiences as data where we critically reflect on how interlocking systems of oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, and other oppressive -isms) shape our unique experiences and impact the development of our professional and cultural identities.
Acknowledging both intra-group heterogeneity and similarities in our positionalities, we decided to utilize the mentoring partner program in the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) lasting for nine months as our platform to collect data. Partner mentorship seeks relational mentoring that all mentoring participants can be both mentors and mentees depending on their developmental needs (AHRD, 2022). As a first step, we are engaged in capturing our lived experiences as international Asian women HRD scholars through daily journaling for three months, reflecting on the two prompts: (a) tell us a time when you felt empowered because of your identity; (b) tell us a time you felt your identity was perceived as a barrier to your professional and/or personal development, and then bring those experiences to our bi-weekly virtual mentoring meetings. We decided to videotape our virtual meetings for further reflections and analysis. We will analyze our journals and mentoring transcriptions based on the theoretical framework that integrates intersectionality (Atewologun et al., 2016; Anthias, 2009; Crenshaw, 1991), social exchange theory (Blau, 1964; Homans, 1958, 1961), and mentoring theories (Batiste et al., 2022; Brown & Montoya, 2020; Limberg et al., 2013; Ghosh et al., 2020) to collectively find emerging meta-themes that can describe and synthesize our experiences. We believe this paper will offer a new viewpoint to mentoring as an ongoing process of professional and cultural identity development and provide relational mentoring as a practical intervention method to empower marginalized scholars in the US from an intersectional lens.