142 Who Are Our Friends?
Second, the chapter draws on research to present a conceptual model to
explain when mentors become friends and vice versa. This model highlights the
defining characteristics that move friendship to mentorship and mentorship to
friendship.
Finally, the chapter analyzes future directions for mentoring researchers and
practitioners. Two trends are likely to influence mentoring. Flatter organizational
hierarchies, with more job and career changes, suggest the role of friends as mentors
may become increasingly important. Second, technology is making it easier to con-
nect with individuals around the world and develop friendships and mentorships
that were previously impossible because of geographical constraints. How might
these trends be taken into account as people develop their personal network or
oversee a mentoring program?
Mentorship and Friendship
There is an opportunity to examine more closely the intersection between men-
torship and friendship. Mentoring scholars rarely consider friends as mentors or
protégés. Yet, there is consensus that some friendship behaviors (referred to as psy-
chosocial support) constitute an important function of mentoring. Similarly, schol-
ars of friendship rarely examine mentorship. This section first briefly reviews both
constructs and then explores the areas where friendship and mentorship overlap.
An examination of how friendship may contribute to and detract from mentoring
relationships concludes this section.
Friendship
Researchers have called for us to define better both friendship (Hartup & Stevens,
1997; Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000) and mentorship (Crisp & Cruz, 2009).
Friendships have been studied for over a century, but most of this scholarly atten-
tion has focused on friendships during childhood and adolescence. Hartup and
Stevens call for a life span approach to studying friendship because they find that
“friendships are developmentally significant throughout the life course” (p. 366).
Studies of friendship have focused on five factors that make up this relation-
ship: companionship, intimacy, commitment, affective tone, instrumental help,
and conflict (Hartup & Stevens, 1997). Most people have friendships in childhood
(75%– 80%) and during midlife (90%). The benefits of friendships are more eas-
ily visible in the face of life’s challenges. Individuals with high- quality friendships
do better than individuals with no friends or low- quality friendships when faced
with life events like the loss of a spouse or illness (Hartup & Stevens, 1997). An
increasing number of studies have documented the benefits of friendships for adults
(e.g., Adams & Blieszner, 1995) that protect individuals when they encounter life