Inter-cultural mentoring for newcomer immigrants: Mentor perspectives and better practices

Abstract

The objective of this study was to draw from mentor feedback and reflections and examine the practices of mentors successful in mentoring immigrant newcomers. The paper reports on how mentors related the competencies they reported as foundational for decoding, absorbing, and transferring tacit/explicit knowledge holdings. Capturing rich insights, the guidelines for best practice are presented for mentoring of immigrant newcomer mentees in smaller/medium cities (SMC) with emerging immigrant populations. Findings identify seven key themes by mentors: mentees’ culture, mentors’ cultural self-awareness, building relationality and accessibility, sponsorship, deep learning, racism, and small city truths as they influence (a) knowledge transfer and personal learning within the dyad, (b) acculturation/adaptation, and (c) perceived business and network gains on the part of the mentee. This paper also petitions for clarification of the multiple meanings accorded to the use of inter-cultural mentoring (ICM). A purposeful sampling strategy and best practice research (BPR) were employed for this research investigation.

Keywords

• inter-cultural mentoring (ICM)
• cross-cultural mentoring (CCM)
• newcomer immigrant entrepreneurs
• best practice research (BPR)
• applied research
• smaller/medium cities (SMC)