The Dao of Maslow: A New Direction for Mentorship

Abstract

Despite its historical importance for human achievement in many fields, mentorship has received meager research attention until relatively recently. Now recognized as a distinct personal relationship, mentorship is linked to a variety of psychological benefits to mentees including greater self-esteem, well-being, career focus, and leadership capability. Mentors have also been found to experience gains related to generativity. However, lacking has been a meaningful conceptualization of mentorship based on humanistic psychological concerns related to the “whole person.” In particular, the idea that mentoring can facilitate the self-actualization process has been neglected in the literature. In this article, we draw upon Maslow’s writings, particularly related to Daoism, to propose a new conceptual model. For at the time of his sudden death, he was directly seeking to apply Daoist notions to a variety of helping relationships including teaching, counseling, psychotherapy, and even friendship and parenting. After differentiating growth-centered mentorship from skill-centered mentorship, we delineate the former’s essential features based on Maslow’s unfinished legacy in this domain. These aspects include (a) incorporating and fostering the far goal of self-actualization; (b) guiding mentees to better identify their calling by identifying peak and foothill experiences; (c) helping mentees to overcome what Maslow termed the Jonah complex, as well as what subsequent researchers have dubbed the imposter syndrome; and (d) recognizing the mutuality of growth for both participants into a potentially synergic relationship.