How and When Does Leadership Mentoring Benefit Female Protégés’ Leadership Development? Evidence from South Korea

Scholars have contended that paying theoretical attention to leadership development as a construct is necessary to fully understand how people become good leaders. In this study, we attempt to address a call for continuous efforts to integrate social cognitive theory to help fill the void in our understanding of the effectiveness of leadership mentoring designed to foster female protégés’ leadership self-efficacy and motivation to lead. We examined an underlying mechanism through which leadership mentoring affects female protégés’ leadership development (i.e., self-efficacy) and the roles of personality in the relationship between leadership mentoring and motivation to lead. We collected data from nine organizations in South Korea. We found that leadership mentoring was positively related to female protégés’ motivation to lead through strengthened leadership self-efficacy. In addition, female protégés who were higher on openness and conscientiousness obtained more benefits from leadership mentoring than those who were lower. We provide theoretical and practical implications to help break the glass ceiling in South Korea and elsewhere.