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letter writing activity to be completed by the participants). The letters to the mentors or role models revealed that there had been a confluence of influences on women HoDs. Many people influenced the development of their management capabilities and their roles as middle managers. However, many social actors along the women HoDs‟
lives‟ journeys influenced their management capabilities in certain ways, enabling them to become the women managers they are today. I present the accounts of how their management capabilities were developed. I have categorised the mentoring and role modelling of the participants as formal or informal mentoring and role modelling.
Some participants were mentored by their former HoDs when they were new teachers.
Their letters reveal that the guidance the women received daily during those early years of teaching impacted on them and later affected their own management
capabilities. Although they were mentored in their role as teachers when they initially began their teaching careers as novice teachers, none of the participants claim to have been formally mentored for their roles as middle managers, and were only mentored in their departments when new in the profession.
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model and a mentor was discussed with the participants prior to them writing their letters.
The basic definition of a mentor and role model which I gave to the participants was that a mentor is an experienced person who advises and helps a less experienced person, whereas a role model is someone whose behaviour, attitudes and various attributes are emulated because people admire them. Based on this distinction between a mentor and a role model, the participants were invited to a write letter to either their mentor or role model or both. Some participants wrote to a mentor whom they also saw as a role model that Burke & McKleen (1997) saw as a feasible option, while others wrote specifically to a mentor or a role model. To some participants their mentors were also their role models although both their roles are different. Valerie described her mother as both her mentor and her role model. In this regard Valerie‟s mother was the experienced older person who advised her and groomed her for life, and at the same time Valerie admired her and wanted to emulate her because of her strong character.
TABLE 6.1 Locations of Mentors and Role Models within the Women Middle Managers’
Professional and Private Domains and their Respective Sub-binaries Mentors/ Role Models
in the Professional Domain
Mentors/ Role Models in the Personal Domain Names of female
HoDs
Formal Mentors
Informal Mentors Mentors/
Role Models from afar
Mentors/
Role models who were in close proximity
Arthi No role model
or mentor
Gene Grandmother
Hema Present male school
principal and former female colleague
Sociologist Ashwin Desai
Women political activists
Parents
Extended family members Friends
Irene Father; friend
and college lecturer
Mandisa Mother;
unnamed male role model
Neelam Former female HoD
Rita Former male HoD
Thembi Former female HoD
Valerie Mother
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Table 6.1 shows that one participant had mentors/role models in the professional and personal domains, three participants had mentors/role models in the professional domain, four participants‟ mentors/role models were in the personal domain and one participant claimed that she did not have a mentor or role model.
The mentors and role models were either associated with their professional or their personal lives and their relationship with the women participant represented either formal or informal mentoring. I categorised the letters further in the binary
classification of whether the mentor or role model influenced the women middle management respondent from afar or was in close proximity to her. Table 6.1 presents the role models and mentors identified by the women HoDs and locates them within the binary of the personal or professional domains, and their respective sub-binaries.
A typical mentoring relationship develops when an experienced senior member of an organisation provides career and psychosocial support to a less experienced junior member including career and psychosocial support (McDonald & Hite, 2005, p. 569).
Career support requires that mentors sponsor their protégés for advancement,
coaching them, providing challenging assignments, protecting them and making them visible in organisations. This support is therefore viewed as primarily helping the protégé‟s hierarchical advancement professionally (Allen, Eby, Poteet, Lenzt & Lima, 2004; Kram, 1985; Ragins, 1997; Singh, Ragins & Tharenou; 2009). Psychosocial support entails the mentors providing their protégés with friendship and acceptance, counselling them and acting as role models and is therefore viewed as first and
foremost helping protégés‟ emotional well-being and personal growth (self-worth) and only then, their career advancement (Allen et al., 2004; Kram, 1985; Ragins, 1997).
Career support therefore is more related to career advancement than psychosocial support (Tharenou, 2005). This understanding outlines the importance of role models and mentors in women middle managers lives to help them advance in their careers and receive support psychosocially in the social domain. In my study mentors and role models were important because they helped to develop capabilities such as resilience, emotion, social and collective struggles, qualities needed to function as
transformational leaders who should display behavioural attributes such as these when needing to support individual staff members in their departments in their tasks, or when fostering teacher participation in decision-making processes within the department structure.
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From my reading of the letters and subsequent discussion with the participants, I found that none of the women HoDs were formally mentored for their middle management roles or supported or sponsored for any other management position in school. Even the role models or mentors from the personal domain were social figures who could only influence them indirectly. However, family members and friends were the role models and mentors who influenced these women directly. Family members identified as a role model or mentors included mothers or fathers. Some of the mothers were either working women or even if they were not working they were nevertheless dominant figures in the household. The fathers who were identified as role models or mentors were working men and who, not only provided for their families, but also displayed caring and nurturing behaviour in their interactions with other people. Other family members who were identified as role models or mentors were older people like grandmothers, who were emotionally strong, independent women. Some of the participants were informally mentored by former HoDs when they were novice teachers or a new appointee to a school. Therefore, some of the participants looked upon their former HoDs or senior managers as their mentor or role model. The participants without a mentor or role model for the professional domain looked upon significant people in their lives as their role models or mentors. These were usually family members.
Some of the women HoDs in this study laid claim to multiple mentors and role models, while others had only one. Higgins and Kram (2001) propose that it may be best for women to have a diverse network of mentors because female mentors provide more personal support while male mentors, in general, are able to assist women to advance in their careers. Therefore, having a network of mentors and role models forms a strong capability set as women have more support and encouragement to function as middle managers. In the context of role models and mentors, Hema‟s and Arthi‟s capability sets differed from each other with Hema having a strong capability set and Arthi a weak capability set. Hema indicated that she had many role models and mentors and there is evidence that this provided her with diverse forms of support in her career. Arthi on the other hand, indicated that she did not have a role model or a mentor. This absence could be a weakness if it lessens the career support that could be seen as essential for women‟s advancement in their careers. In the next section I
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discuss the influence of role models and mentors in allowing women to be capable middle managers.
6.2 The Influence of Role Models and Mentors in the Personal Domain