The interaction of narcissism, agreeableness and conscientiousness in entrepreneurial mentoring: Implications for learning outcomes.

The personality configuration of mentors and mentees is important in understanding mentoring outcomes. While the best mentors appear to have higher degrees of agreeableness and conscientiousness, entrepreneurs generally score lower on agreeableness and have higher degrees of narcissism, a personality trait that could be detrimental to mentoring. We investigated the interaction of narcissism with two traits from the Big Five Inventory, namely agreeableness and conscientiousness, to see how this interaction influenced learning from the relationship of mentee entrepreneurs.