MENTORS’ COMMUNICATION STYLES AS PREDICTORS OF MENTEES’ ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

According to an organizational mentoring literature, mentors often implement two important communication styles: interpersonal communication and communication openness. The ability of mentors to properly implement such communication styles may lead to an increased mentees’ academic performance. Although this relationship is interesting, little is known about the effectiveness of mentors’ communication styles as a predicting variable in the mentoring program models. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the relationship between mentors’ communication styles and academic performance using self-report questionnaires collected from undergraduate students in a defence based university, Malaysia. The outcomes of testing hypothesis using a multiple regression analysis showed two important findings: firstly, interpersonal communication insignificantly correlated with academic performance. Secondly, communication openness significantly correlated with academic performance. Statistically, this result confirms that the ability of mentors implement interpersonal communication has not been an important predictor of academic performance. Conversely, the ability of mentors practice communication openness has been an important predictor of academic performance in the studied organization. Further, discussion, implication and conclusion are elaborated.