Abstract
What, if any, are the challenges faced by ‘high-flying’ minorities when mentoring others with whom they share socio-collective identities? Drawing on contemporaneous ‘microstoria’ on mentoring as narrated by high-flying black minorities, we explore what we term the ‘legging up burden’ – the call to support organizational members with whom they share, or are presumed to share, ethnic characteristics. These stories suggest three paradoxical outcomes of intersectional identities that influence the mentoring experiences of high-flying minorities, stemming from: a sense of identity drive; obscured challenges that reify the mentoring burden; and identity-drifting coping behaviours that are triggered in response. Emphasizing the need for better approaches to pursuing diversity in organizational workplaces without tokenizing or overburdening existing, relatively sparse high-flying minorities, we advance understanding of the consequences of how high-flying minorities, sometimes without the ‘broadest of shoulders’, are compelled to carry the significant burden of supporting and progressing the careers of fellow minorities.