How common was it for a mentor to fail to delegate responsibilities appropriately?
Not that common. The more common experience had to do with mismatches and, surprisingly, neglect: mentors who seemed completely disinterested, [who] provided no feedback, [who were] evasive when protégés needed support and guidance, or who excluded protégés from important meetings. It seems counter to what we think of as mentoring. Q: What did you find in the second study? A: We looked at the extent to which protégés who have negative experiences also report lower job satisfaction or a higher intention to leave the organization or higher stress. And we found that negative mentoring does appear to influence all three. We [also] found that the effect of negative mentoring was more pronounced if the relationship had been developed formally [by an employer]. There may be a couple of reasons why. One might be that [because] formal mentoring tends to be very visible in organizations, it may be much more difficult for a protégé to end a bad relationship. Q: What advice would you give to a per
