Can mentoring programmes develop leadership?

Mentoring programmes are popular within organizations as well as educational institutions. Research has shown that mentoring can be an effective tool for employee career development broadly; however, there has been a relatively small amount of research on the effectiveness of mentoring as a tool for leadership development specifically. This paper reviews the research on mentoring relationships, leadership development programmes, and the overlap of the two. Additionally, it provides a qualitative review of the three extant longitudinal intervention studies that have explicitly evaluated the impact of mentoring programmes for leadership development. The review shows that mentoring programmes are promising arenas for developing leadership capabilities for both mentees and mentors, but more evidence is needed to reach a definitive conclusion. The article concludes with recommendations for human resource development practitioners who would like to use mentoring for leadership development purposes.