Understanding team-level career mentoring by leaders and its effects on individual team-source learning: The effects of intra-group processes

Team-level career mentoring by supervisors is conceptualized as mentoring that provides career support for all team members. A new model of mentoring and individual team-source learning is presented. Data from 192 individuals in 37 intact work groups in the banking industry were used to examine how intra-group processes might influence the team mentoring process. Team-level leader-member exchange, peer mentoring, and proactive member behavior were examined for their influence on team-level career mentoring by supervisors. Our results suggest that aspects of the team context (represented by mean leader-member exchange and mean peer mentoring) influenced team-level career mentoring. Team-level career mentoring (TCM) had a positive effect on individual team-source learning and had mediating effects on the relationships between the team contextual factors and individual team-source learning. The implications of this research for studying supervisory team-level career mentoring are discussed.