Mentoring Pays

The study, High Potentials in the Pipeline: Leaders Pay it Forward, finds those who mentor and build up proteges experience greater career advancement and even receive higher pay than those who don't -- an average $25,075 more between 2008 and 2010 than non-mentoring workers. (The report was based on the responses of 742 people surveyed online who had graduated between 1996 and 2007 from M.B.A. programs at 26 leading business schools in Asia, Canada, Europe and the United States.)

Why the higher salary? Catalyst, in its release about the findings, poses it "may be that developing other talent creates more visibility and a following within the organization for the high-potentials who are doing the developing, which leads to greater reward and recognition for the extra effort."

The study also finds those who have been successfully mentored in their past are more prone to give back by helping others succeed. The men and women studied who are more likely to be developing others have, themselves, received developmental support (59 percent) versus those who have not received this type of support (47 percent).

And of those most likely to mentor, more women (65 percent) than men (56 percent) choose to go this route. What's more, 73 percent of the women developing new talent are developing women, compared to only 30 percent of men.

"This report dispels the misconception that women's career advancement lags behind men's because they don't pay it forward to other women," says Ilene H. Lang, president and CEO of Catalyst. "The notion that women executives are queen bees who are unwilling to support other women needs to be put to rest."

People who choose to mentor others also tend to be the high-performers who understand the goals of an organization and the importance of bringing the right kind of talent into key roles. Of those respondents currently "paying it forward" by coaching and mentoring, 64 percent are in senior executive or CEO positions versus those at...