The Influence Of Formal And Informal Mentoring Approaches On Leadership Development: A Study Of Women In Technology In Kenya

ABSTRACT

Leadership development is a challenging aspect of talent management within the information communication technology industry in Kenya. As part of the strategies to bridge career development gaps, mentoring is one approach used in organisations. This study adopted an exploratory method to review and establish the effectiveness of mentoring approaches either formal or informal when used as a talent management strategy for leadership development. In order to qualify the premise of the problem, the study focused on the Information and Communication Technology industry where initiatives on mentoring have been more widespread as a tool for equipping participants with leadership skills. Respondents were purposively selected and using n=30 assessed via questionnaire and face to face interviews and data analysed using a methodology to establish whether the research questions around mentoring could be answered in the Kenyan context: attribution of mentoring approach and characteristics to leadership development strategies, the design of mentoring approaches , entrenchment in talent management interventions. From the study, the mentoring approach used has no influence on the impartation of leadership styles due to statistic similarity of the sample studied. This study therefore concludes that mentoring approaches should be viewed beyond reviewing traditional markers for mentoring success e.g. gaining of hard competencies and shift focus to indicators of subjective success such as career success and work commitment.