ILLUMINATING RELATIONALITY IN LEADERSHIP MENTORING PARTNERSHIPS: A DYADIC METHODOLOGY

This paper presents a novel dyadic methodology that emerged from its application in a multiperspectival qualitative study exploring women mentees experience of leadership mentoring. The study responded to calls for future research on the dyadic microsystem and a better understanding of the psychology of mentoring. An unfolding of experiential insights within and across mentoring dyads was enabled by this dyad analytical process. Mentoring is concerned with an interpersonal one-to-one developmental relationship between two individuals, mentee and mentor, ‘matched’ as part of a leadership mentoring programme. The leadership mentoring programme was designed by one higher education institution (HEI) in Ireland. It was specifically offered to women mentees in a single HEI context. The research question examined was: how do women mentees experience leadership mentoring in an Irish higher education context? Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was the chosen methodology. Underpinned by phenomenology, hermeneutics and idiography, it allowed the exploration of participant experiences in their own terms, setting aside pre-existing assumptions and ideas of the researcher. As a phenomenological endeavour, IPA offered a clear pathway to illuminating the intersubjectivity within mentor/mentee dyads. Unlike conventional IPA techniques that rely on a single case, this study employed a novel dyadic analysis to enhance experiential insights. Therefore, it is used to anchor and justify the dyad methodology proposed in this paper. Twelve participants, comprising six dyads, each of a woman mentee who participated in the leadership mentoring programme, and her matched mentor partner, were recruited. Semi-structured interviews were held. The data analytical process innovatively consolidated dual units of analysis; ie individual and mentor/mentee pairs to construct the dyadic level insights. Addressing the considerable complexity in planning and conducting a multi-perspectival study was central to the dyadic methodology contribution presented in this paper.