Storytelling in Mentoring: An Exploratory, Qualitative Study of Facilitating Learning in Developmental Interactions

How is it that mentors teachthat protege's learnthat wisdom is shared between a mentor and protege? This exploratory, qualitative study responds to a call in the literature to better understand what occurs in mentoring interactions by examining storytelling as a mentoring tool. The focus is on how stories can convey meaning, inspire listeners, and transmit wisdom to help proteges grow, learn, and develop in their jobs and careers. Interview data from 39 professionals working in a wide variety of industries resulted in a rich data set of 48 work-related mentoring stories. Hermeneutical analysis enabled us to identify key mentoring functions that are fulfilled in the narrative text of stories. We conclude that storytelling is indeed a powerful tool in mentoringallowing mentors to calm their proteges, encourage them, help them solve problems, build their confidence, teach them, give them direction, and provide numerous other functions.