Mentorship: A Pathway to Career Success

About the Book

Mentorship is as old as human behavior and one of our most powerful methods of learning. So why aren’t more working adults using this process to advance their careers? Mentorship is the process of learning through an extended dialgoue between an experienced person with a rich fund of knowledge and expertise and one who has less knowledge and experience in a particular field or profession. The threat to mentorship in the workplace may come in the form of “Baby Boomer” retirements -  radically shrinking the pool of experienced professionals who make up the mentor population. The time is now to start the transfer of your organization’s knowledge legacy so that succeeding generations can grow and develop.

The goal of this book is to provide information that will motivate more working adults to become involved in mentorship and see this process as essential for achieving career success. Readers will learn that there are people with information in every workplace who can provide the means to be more successful. With the insights  provided here, you will become more observant and opportunistic and take advantage of the sea of knowledge that surrounds you.  

Contrary to popular belief, growth through mentorship is not an accident and does take effort. Mentoring partners must learn to produce positive results for themselves; whether they are in an organization with a mentoring program or an entrepreneur plying their trade alone. Numerous examples drawn from real-life mentoring partners will give the reader a flavor for the benefits that can be derived from mentorship. Material in the book is drawn primarily from the feedback of hundreds of mentor/mentee pairs in formal programs and interviews with informal mentoring partners representing a wide range of job categories and employees at many levels in a variety of industries, businesses and public service agencies.

About the Author

Dr. Rita Boags is an organizational consultant, educator and founder of Leadership Technologies. For more than 20 years, the firm’s consulting focus has been the design and implementation of human resource development programs that impact diverse populations in organizations. The firm specializes in programs that include career and leadership development, diversity talent management and mentoring.

Since her graduation with a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California as a Ford Foundation Fellow, she has accumulated a wide variety of professional experiences in corporate settings, public sector and academic organizations.

Leadership Technologies has designed programs for such companies and agencies as: E. I. DuPont de Nemours, Inc., Fannie Mae, Hughes Aircraft Company, TRW, Inc., ICI Americas, Inc., The World Bank, Dow Corning Corporation, Phillips Petroleum Company, General Motors Corporation Finance Group, U.S. Department of Labor, Abbott Laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, UNITY: Journalists of Color, State Farm Insurance Companies, Mazda North American Operations, the Coca-Cola Company, Ernst & Young, LLP, USDoD - DFAS, Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., and Quest Diagnostics, Inc.

Dr. Boags has addressed a number of professional organizations which include the Minority Corporate Counsel Association; the International Mentoring Association’s Diversity in Mentoring Conferences; The Conference Board; Boeing Global Diversity Summits; Maynard Media Institutes; the Texas Diversity Conference Glass Ceiling Summit; and the California Diversity Council’s Leadership Conference. She is a featured speaker with the National Diversity Council hosting webinars and Mentoring Summits throughout the country.

The firm has played an instrumental role in the 1998 DuPont Mentoring Conference; 1999 NIST Best Practices in Mentoring Conference, the 2001/2002 Best Practices in Mentoring Conference.

Along with professional accomplishments as a psychologist and former chemist, Dr. Boags is a single parent with a family of three adult children.