Harvard Business School professor, David A. Thomas, arrives in Bermuda this week to deliver a presentation at Thursday's human resources conference at the Fairmont Southampton.

A one day conference has been organised by management consulting firm HR Associates. It will include talks by several Human Resources professionals as well as the results of the first annual Bermuda Chief Executive Officer survey. The purpose of the survey is not to reveal who is the best boss in Bermuda, but rather to identify the market place challenges and management issues of most concern to Bermuda CEOs.

Professor Thomas was chosen as a keynote speaker for his ground-breaking research into executive mentoring of black professionals.

Assigning a junior employee to a more senior "mentor" can be an effective tool for career and personal development.

The challenge for most organisations is to make their managers understand that part of their role includes being a mentor.

According to Professor Thomas: "It is very important to have mentoring relationships early in your career. As you advance in your career, peers become more significant as sources of feedback and role models."

But race and culture can have a major influence on mentoring relationships. Asked whether strong connections between races can be formed in this context, he said:

"They do form, but they are less likely to happen than are relationships between people of the same race. People are much less likely to become close."

Whereas they may converse freely about technical or task related subjects, he said that people of different races find it less easy to communicate on an intimate level about issues to do with "soft skills" such as dress, values and lifestyle.

"It is possible, but it takes more work" said Professor Thomas. "If you look at most large multinational US-based corporations, the majority of professional managerial positions are occupied by white employees, but there are a significant number of non-white employees. So we have to encourage cross race relationships."

Moreover he said that policies like affirmative action can create opportunities, but they cannot create development.

"When we bring people into an organisation, especially at a junior level, if they're not able to be developed properly, we're never going to see them at the upper echelons of the organisation."