Mentoring
Advantages
Learning partnership benefits
Ë
Mentoring is the honor and privilege of one person helping another learn something; having the relevant wisdom, life competencies, or truths useful to another; and having someone benefit from that wisdom. It is a relational training process in which a mentor, who knows or has experienced something, transfers that something to a protégé so that it facilitates development. To initiate development, a mentor and a protégé enter into a voluntary agreement to interact in certain ways. The relationship, which includes mentor services, is defined by the protégé’s perception as revealed by protégé inquiries and requests during conversations.
A mentor is a friend who loves learning, treasure sharing and giving, develops safe contexts for growth, and is willing to seek someone who could use what the mentor has to offer. Such a friend has been gifted, through who or what they know, to encourage a protégé to act toward major life goals or promote a protégé’s welfare. By accepting the protégé into their life, even though the mentor may have little if any vested self-interest in the protégé’s welfare, the mentor can mark the protégé’s life. For both parties, mentoring can address some of their affirmation desires, as there is no substitute for knowing and being known by a friend.
For the protégé, a mentor can encourage genuine growth, provide a model to follow, help the protégé act toward goals more efficiently, and influence the protégé in a way that others in the protégé’s life can benefit from. That is, the mentor may serve the protégé by being a source of information on mission and goals, tutoring skills and behavior, giving feedback, serving as a confidant, and assisting with planning. In other words, protégé growth can be facilitated with a relationship with someone perceived as significant who can influence development and offer motivation and accountability. Someone who wishes to seek a mentor to receive some of these benefits as a protégé can improve their prospects during information or networking conversations by being able to communicate some of their personal objectives, priorities, plans, dynamics, and learning styles.
For the mentor, benefits may include having a personal relationship with a protégé, personal renewal and revitalization, a sense of self-fulfillment, enhanced self-worth, and confidence of acting on their life purpose. In seeking a protégé, a mentor can consider potential protégé qualities that may be worth investing in or taking a chance on for the future. Potential protégé qualities may include goals, assignment or responsibility desires, initiative, eagerness to learn, personal responsibility acceptance, and feedback and coaching receptivity.
If mentoring occurs within an organization in the context of organization services, perhaps within a facilitated mentoring process, participants may focus on service performance. For example, participants within a business company may focus on improving employee marketplace performance, retention, and recruitment. As time goes by, participants may choose to consider personal development depending on their personalities, consensus, capabilities, and other qualities previously mentioned. As far as mentoring within an organization is concerned, possible benefits may include productivity, communication and understanding, experienced people motivation maintenance, effective recruitment efforts, service offering enhancements, and effective strategic and succession planning. Protégé benefits may include targeted development activities, greater success probabilities, less time spent in wrong positions, greater performance expectations based on less biased potential assessments, and greater organization knowledge. Likewise, mentor benefits may include enhanced self-worth, revitalized vocation interest, close interaction with the protégé, protégé loyalty, action on own development needs, intelligence gathering, and service project assistance.
For more information on informal mentoring, consider Howard and William Hendricks’ book entitled As Iron Sharpens Iron—Building Character in a Mentoring Relationship.[1] Even though this book is addressed to men and recognizes the needs and issues of men, the concepts and principles probably apply to women as well knowing that mentoring can benefit women. For more information on organization facilitated mentoring, consider Margo Murray’s book entitled Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring—How to Facilitate an Effective Mentoring Program.[2] This book offers concept, terminology, and scope questions and concerns an organization can deliberate on when considering facilitated mentoring.
Objective Thinker
Voicemail: 303.362.8425