The Art of Mentoring

Mentoring is the process of coaching, guiding, and counselling someone, who needs help in a specific situation or someone who is new to a job. The one who mentors is called mentor and the one who is being guided and counselled is called a mentee.

Mentoring is a relationship between a mentor and his/her mentee or group of mentees. Sometimes this relationship is said to be similar to the relationship between a leader and a follower. But these are two entirely different relationships. While in the leader- follower relationship, both the parties are trying to achieve the common objective, in the mentor mentee relationship, the purpose is mentee’s growth, learning, and development.

Then he is left free to achieve the goal. Mentee’s goal may not be the mentor’s goal, but the follower has to follow the goal of the leader. One thing is sure, the mentors can be role models, as the leaders are. Trust building is equally important in both processes.

Also Read: What’s the Right Way to Find a Mentor?

Mentoring can be formal-informal, structured- unstructured depending on the surroundings around the mentor and the mentee. If the process of mentoring is taking place in an organization, it is normally formal and structured. But later it can take informal and unstructured form also. Normally an informal environment is responsible for informal mentorship. An achievable goal for the mentee is the first condition for effective mentorship.

Effective leadership is a prerequisite for mentoring. Mentoring is also known as the art of creating leaders for the future. Mentor must act like a friend, philosopher, and guide for the mentee who shows him the path of wisdom with the torch of his knowledge and experience.

If you get a chance to mentor someone, then you should consider yourself fortunate, because this reflects your seniority to others in the organization. And this gives you an opportunity to emerge as a role model for others.

A mentor is not just a leader who is influencing the group to act in such a way that a common objective can be achieved. He has a greater role to perform- he is a coach, who has to discover special areas of expertise of his mentees and then make the mentees excel in that field. A mentor is supposed to develop a mentoring system that helps the mentees to achieve their goals.

According to Ramesh K Arora, “Dynamic organizations can and should create a mentoring system that would help promote a mentoring culture, small, viable mentoring groups.” In this monitoring system, the input will be mentor’s advice, his/her leadership skills, and the act of advising and coaching is the process and a well-equipped employee or an improved personality is the output. The following diagram explains the process of mentorship as a system:

If the above process is followed by the mentors, the mentees surely find growth in their career and satisfaction from the job. This is the reason, companies like IBM and Hewlett Packard follow this mentorship program for their new recruits.

In the end, the mentors must remember Plutarch’s quote that “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” So, mentorship should be considered as the mentee’s first step in starting the journey towards development. Mentor’s honest coaching is the reason behind this first step.

Good luck to all the Mentors and their mentees!!!!

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