The Importance of Trust in Mentoring Relationships for Women’s Outdoor Leadership Development

Abstract

Mentoring is an important tool that organisations can implement to help address gender barriers in women’s progression in sport and the outdoors. However, there is much still to learn about what makes for effective mentoring in these contexts. This paper explores what makes for positive and ‘successful’ mentoring relationships within a formal mentoring programme for women’s outdoor leadership development. A qualitative, interpretive approach was adopted. Twenty participants who took part in a ten-week women’s outdoor leadership course and experienced mentoring by either a male or female mentor were interviewed using semi-structured interviews lasting 30-60 minutes. Transcripts were analysed through the framework of trust and trustworthiness (Hardin, 2002), paying attention to the significance of gender for cross-gender mentoring relationships. Findings show the importance of the key elements of openness and honesty, benevolence, reliability and competence for experiences of positive mentoring relationships and we highlight the issues raised when mentoring expectations are not met. The data reveal the value of both male and female mentors but also highlight the ambiguities and uncertainties for women in cross-gender mentoring. In particular, we show the importance of the mentoring relationship as a psychologically safe space where women’s experiences in the male dominated context of the outdoors can be understood, recognised and validated. Recommendations for mentoring programmes are provided.