Mentorship is a relationship in which a more
experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or
less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger than the person
being mentored, but she or he must have a certain area of expertise. It is a
learning and development partnership between someone with vast experience and
someone who wants to learn. Mentorship experience and relationship structure
affect the "amount of psychosocial support, career guidance, role
modeling, and communication that occurs in the mentoring relationships in which
the protégés and mentors engaged."
The person in receipt of mentorship may be referred to as a protégé (male), a protégée (female), an apprentice or, in the 2000s, a mentee. The mentor may be referred to as a godfather/godmother or a rabbi.
"Mentoring" is a process that always involves communication and is relationship-based, but its precise definition is elusive, with more than 50 definitions currently in use. One definition of the many that have been proposed, is
Mentoring inEurope
has existed since at least Ancient Greek times. Since the 1970s it has spread
in the United States mainly in training contexts, with important historical
links to the movement advancing workplace equity for women and minorities, and
it has been described as "an innovation in American management.”
The roots of the practice are lost in antiquity. The word itself was inspired by the character ofMentor Mentor
Age Teaching Youth by Blake
Historically significant systems of mentorship include the guru–disciple tradition practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism, Elders, the discipleship system practiced by Rabbinical Judaism and the Christian church, and apprenticing under the medieval guild system.
In the United States, advocates for workplace equity in the second half of the twentieth century popularized the term “mentor” and concept of career mentorship as part of a larger social capital lexicon—which also includes terms such as glass ceiling, bamboo ceiling, networking, role model, and gatekeeper—serving to identify and address the problems barring non-dominant groups from professional success. Mainstream business literature subsequently adopted the terms and concepts, promoting them as pathways to success for all career climbers. In 1970 these terms were not in the general American vocabulary; by the mid-1990s they had become part of everyday speech.
The focus of mentoring is to develop the whole person and so the techniques are broad and require wisdom in order to be used appropriately. A 1995 study of mentoring techniques most commonly used in business found that the five most commonly used techniques among mentors were:
Different techniques may be used by mentors according to the situation and the mindset of the mentee, and the techniques used in modern organizations can be found in ancient education systems, from the Socratic technique of harvesting to the accompaniment method of learning used in the apprenticeship of itinerant cathedral builders during the Middle Ages. Leadership authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner advise mentors to look for "teachable moments" in order to "expand or realize the potentialities of the people in the organizations they lead" and underline that personal credibility is as essential to quality mentoring as skill.
The person in receipt of mentorship may be referred to as a protégé (male), a protégée (female), an apprentice or, in the 2000s, a mentee. The mentor may be referred to as a godfather/godmother or a rabbi.
"Mentoring" is a process that always involves communication and is relationship-based, but its precise definition is elusive, with more than 50 definitions currently in use. One definition of the many that have been proposed, is
Mentoring is a process for the
informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial
support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional
development; mentoring
entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained
period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant
knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to
have less (the protégé)".
Mentoring in
History of Mentoring
The roots of the practice are lost in antiquity. The word itself was inspired by the character of
Historically significant systems of mentorship include the guru–disciple tradition practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism, Elders, the discipleship system practiced by Rabbinical Judaism and the Christian church, and apprenticing under the medieval guild system.
In the United States, advocates for workplace equity in the second half of the twentieth century popularized the term “mentor” and concept of career mentorship as part of a larger social capital lexicon—which also includes terms such as glass ceiling, bamboo ceiling, networking, role model, and gatekeeper—serving to identify and address the problems barring non-dominant groups from professional success. Mainstream business literature subsequently adopted the terms and concepts, promoting them as pathways to success for all career climbers. In 1970 these terms were not in the general American vocabulary; by the mid-1990s they had become part of everyday speech.
Mentoring Techniques
The focus of mentoring is to develop the whole person and so the techniques are broad and require wisdom in order to be used appropriately. A 1995 study of mentoring techniques most commonly used in business found that the five most commonly used techniques among mentors were:
- Accompanying: making a commitment in a caring way,
which involves taking part in the learning process side-by-side with the
learner.
- Sowing: mentors are often confronted with
the difficulty of preparing the learner before he or she is ready to
change. Sowing is necessary when you know that what you say may not be
understood or even acceptable to learners at first but will make sense and
have value to the mentee when the situation requires it.
- Catalyzing: when change reaches a critical level
of pressure, learning can escalate. Here the mentor chooses to plunge the
learner right into change, provoking a different way of thinking, a change
in identity or a re-ordering of values.
- Showing: this is making something
understandable, or using your own example to demonstrate a skill or
activity. You show what you are talking about, you show by your own
behavior.
- Harvesting: here the mentor focuses on
"picking the ripe fruit": it is usually used to create awareness
of what was learned by experience and to draw conclusions. The key
questions here are: "What have you learned?", "How useful
is it?".
Different techniques may be used by mentors according to the situation and the mindset of the mentee, and the techniques used in modern organizations can be found in ancient education systems, from the Socratic technique of harvesting to the accompaniment method of learning used in the apprenticeship of itinerant cathedral builders during the Middle Ages. Leadership authors Jim Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner advise mentors to look for "teachable moments" in order to "expand or realize the potentialities of the people in the organizations they lead" and underline that personal credibility is as essential to quality mentoring as skill.
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