Patterns of informal mentorship in policing: A case study

Workplace mentoring is widely regarded as vital for professional development in private and public organizations, and may be especially valuable in policing, which uniquely entails the discretionary application of coercive authority. Workplace mentoring can be informal and spontaneous or formal and structured by the organization. This paper explores the patterns of informal mentoring within the New York State Police. It is based on a mixed-methods study that included semi-structured interviews with 27 troopers, 60 sergeants, and 30 lieutenants and captains (commissioned officers), and surveys of 886 troopers, 414 sergeants and 141 lieutenants and captains. Framing the questions with reference to an expansive literature based largely on research in private sector organizations, we describe the characteristics of mentoring relationships, the mentoring functions performed, and the benefits experienced by the protégés. We also examine how informal mentoring relationships were influenced by the characteristics of the protégés. We found that while mentoring was provided widely, and with few and small distributional disparities, mentoring functions appear to have been performed at fairly modest levels. We conclude that elevating the level of mentoring beyond that found in these data would likely require some formalization, and that a number of options could be pursued.