Who should serve as my mentor? The effects of mentor's gender and supervisory status on resilience in mentoring relationships

• Psychosocial mentoring is positively related to employee resilience.
• We examine the moderating roles of dyadic composition in mentoring.
• Gender composition influences the effect of career mentoring on resilience.
• Gender composition influences the effect of psychosocial mentoring on resilience.
• Supervisory mentoring influences the effect of psychosocial mentoring on resilience.

Limited research exists around how to effectively pair mentors and protégés in order to optimize employee well-being. The current study examines the relationship between mentoring functions and resilience and investigates the moderating roles of the gender composition of the mentoring relationship and supervisory mentoring on this relationship. With a field sample of 209 salesmen, it was found, consistent with expectations, that psychosocial mentoring was positively related to resilience. Results also showed that the linkage between career mentoring and resilience was more positive in cross-gender mentoring relationships than in same-gender mentoring relationships. In same-gender and supervisory mentoring relationships, the positive effect of psychosocial mentoring on resilience was stronger compared to cross-gender and non-supervisory mentoring relationships. The implications of these findings for the practice of creating and managing mentoring programs in organizational settings are discussed.