What's new
What’s new in research
What’s new will provide updates on research from published journal articles. We’ll be providing summaries of what the research tells us about coaching or mentoring entrepreneurs, along with recommendations for how you can apply them to your practice. Click on the boxes below to read the research summaries and access the full versions if you would like to read the full articles.
When can mentoring build an entrepreneur’s self-efficacy?
What does the research tell us? St-Jean and Mathieu (2015) showed that mentoring increases the entrepreneur’s self-efficacy and confidence in capacity to clarify their business vision and increase their management skills. The increased self-efficacy results in the entrepreneur feeling more positive about their future success potential. Read more
Managing the perception of coachability
What does the research tell us? Bryan et al. (2017) used a dataset of high-growth startups in a university incubator and found that it was possible to predict which firms were more likely to follow advice than others. Firms that followed advice from a mentor were likely to be newer and smaller teams and were thus perceived as more coachable than firms that did not follow advice and who were seen as stubborn (Bryan et al., 2017). They also found that the reason some firms were not following advice could be because they already possessed the capabilities relating to the advice given, which may not have been easy to be for the mentor to observe. Read more
Demonstrating coachability
What does the research tell us? Coachability is defined by Ciuchta et al. (2018) as “the degree to which an entrepreneur seeks, carefully considers, and integrates feedback to improve his or her venture’s performance.” They found that coachability serves as a signal in a pitch setting and can influence a potential investor’s willingness to invest, depending on the investor’s prior coaching experience i.e. potential investors with a higher level of prior coaching experience are more likely to notice and value the coachable entrepreneur. Not only can coachable entrepreneurs be perceived to offer higher potential financial rewards, but higher potential non-financial resources such as energy, time and emotion (Ciuchta et al., 2018). Read more
Impact of the mentor relationship on entrepreneurs
What does the research tell us? Ahsan et al. (2018) used the multiple case study approach to explore how the mentor relationship and affective (emotional) state of student entrepreneurs has an impact on their venture progress. They found that the mentor relationship is key to developing an entrepreneur’s identity (e.g. inventor identity, founder identity, developer identity) and that student entrepreneurs who engaged in self-reflection and gained feedback from mentors, were able to project positive affect and accumulate the resources they needed to move forward. Hence, they suggested that the most effective mentors were able to recognise and address the needs of student entrepreneurs and take actions that positively impact their affective state. Read more
Managing the learning goal orientation of an entrepreneur
What does the research tell us? The learning goal orientation (LGO) of an entrepreneur is their approach to managing difficulties. Entrepreneurs with a high LGO would be expected to master challenging tasks and work harder when faced with difficulties than entrepreneurs with a low LGO, who would be expected to value mentoring more. St-Jean and Tremblay (2020) found the opposite through their study i.e. that entrepreneurs with a high LGO sought mentors more frequently, but it was the entrepreneurs with a low LGO that benefitted more from mentor help. Read more
Matching mentors and mentees
What does the research tell us? A study by Kuratko et al. (2021) showed there was a strong association with an entrepreneur’s mentorship expectations based on the mentor-founder similarity they perceived. The perceived similarity was based on thinking, values and problem-solving approaches, though not gender. They also found that entrepreneurs may be more receptive to feedback when they can relate more to their mentors (Kuratko et al., 2021). Read more
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