**6.1 Role mentoring plays for faculty and staff members [RQ1]**

Data supported the first research question by showing that mentoring plays a major role in higher education. Seventy-five percent of participants either agreed or strongly agreed that they had been mentored in their current position at the institution. For the majority of these individuals, these mentors were a combination of both men and women (57%), and these mentoring relationships were formed informally (69%). Then, participants were asked if they had been mentored throughout their career in the past (not just at their current institution/position) and again 74% said either agreed or strongly agreed. These mentors were also primarily a combination of men and women (66%). Participants were asked how often they had served as a mentor to others, and 61% said always or usually and another 30% said sometimes. The majority reported that their mentees were both males and females. Seventy-two percent of respondents said they mentored students, 61% said they mentored faculty members, and 44% said they mentored staff members.

The first open-response question asked, "What is the most important thing you have learned from your mentor?" The 78 comments were coded into four main themes that correspond to the dimensions of relational leaders [26]. These themes were: communication processes, social interactions, network, and self-concept. The majority (50%) of comments emphasized self-concept while 29% focused on social interactions, 13% on network, and 8% on communication.

Comments, such as, "Communication is the key to success," and "Learning to listen well," represented the communication process theme. The social interaction theme was evidenced by two comments that simply read, "Compassion." Another social interaction comment indicated, "She gives advice on how to interact with admin." Comments about network included, "how to get along in the culture of the school" and "working within the system." Finally, many comments emphasized aspects of improving one's self-concept, including, "to trust my own competence and abilities" and "have confidence in myself." A word cloud of the comments for this question is represented below (**Figure 1**).
