The Power of Feedback to Foster Wellbeing, Relatedness, and Goal Achievement in Mentoring Relationships

Abstract Mentoring programs and processes are diversely conceptualized and enacted. Broadly speaking, mentoring provides valuable onboarding supports, promotes psychosocial functioning, and fosters wellbeing. This chapter examines the online reflections of graduate students who studied how giving and receiving feedback influenced wellbeing in mentoring relationships. The four key findings show that: purposeful, constructive feedback builds healthy mentoring relationships, mentoring is emotionally charged and linked with wellbeing; feedback delivery affects wellbeing, yet mentors need time to understand and develop effective feedback skills, and scholarship can help with the understanding of and developing mentor-mentee relationships. With a dearth of professional learning and development focused on how to give and receive feedback effectively, this topic is essential for all mentoring programs and courses, with particular attention to how purposeful constructive feedback practices can establish trust, support, and care in mentoring relationships.