Key Information About Mentorship

As a manager, one of your primary responsibilities will be to foster the personal and professional development of your staff members so that they can contribute more effectively to the overall goals of the company and the department.

Mentoring is one of the most important aspects of modern society. Mentoring and coaching are often used interchangeably but have distinct meanings. That's not the case at all. They are obviously different from one another.

With the definition of a mentor in place, we can move on to discussing what makes a good one.

The Definition of a Mentor

Just who, exactly, is a mentor? First, let's agree on some common terms. Mentor is one of Odysseus' friends from Homer's Odyssey who is tasked with educating Odysseus' son, Telemachus, according to Merriam-Webster.

Fundamental to this story is the concept that the mentor is in a privileged position to provide guidance. This context makes the term equivalent to "tutor."

Mentoring: What They Do

On Wikipedia, “mentoring ” has a similar meaning. A "mentor" is someone who "teaches, helps, and advises a less experienced and often younger person," as defined by the authors.

The Mentor-Protégé Relationship

In business, there's usually more to it than that. To paraphrase Harvard Business Review, "mentoring is a relationship between one person (the mentor) and another (the mentee) in which both benefit from one another's knowledge, experience, and example."

A mentor is an adult who has been through similar formative experiences as their mentee. In this way, they can prepare themselves for the challenges their mentee will face. This hints at more than just a tutor-student relationship based on the dissemination of information.

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