Humanistic Professionals Perceptions on Workplace Mentoring to Support Professional andPersonal Wellbeing: A Narrative Inquiry Study

Abstract

This research explores workplace challenges as experienced by four Malteseprofessionals in the management, education, health, social welfare and law fields, and theirperceptions on how mentoring arising through understanding of compulsory supervisionin therapeutic practices might impact their professional and personal wellbeing. Informedby collating the narratives of these professionals, I analyse the beneficence of mentoringsupport practices if implemented in these humanistic fields. Supervision is an inherent partof being a practitioner in the talking therapies and supports the practitioners personaland professional wellbeing since, according to Spagnuolo Lobb (2019), individual andorganisational wellbeing cannot be separated. This rationale can be applied to mentoringin other humanistic professions. In fact, mentoring developed in diverse humanistic fields,encompassing the notion that the support of a mentor to the mentee is not limited to careeraspirations but also includes support for the enhancement of personal wellbeing (Dutton2003). Narrative inquiry is the chosen research methodology, generating a transformativephilosophical approach. Purposive sampling was used and the data was collected through indepthnarrative interviewing (Bernard 2002; Lewis and Sheppard 2006). Thematic narrativeanalysis was utilised as an analytic tool to gain access to the narrators world (Polkinghorne1995) and MAXQDA was used to proficiently aid the analytic process. Quality in this researchwas ensured by considering procedural, situational, and relational ethical dimensions (Tracy2010). Following the analytic process, a model is depicted, followed by recommendations,amongst which are: informing humanistic fields about the benefits of mentoring provision;making supportive mentoring accessible for all humanistic professionals; offering formal,informal, internal, and external forms of mentoring; and ensuring that the mentor is trainedand supported.