TRAINING AND

DEVELOPMENT DTA
4022
CHAPTER 4
MENTOR
◦ A mentor is an individual with expertise who can help develop the career of a mentee.
◦ Mentors are individuals with advanced experience and knowledge who take a personal interest in helping the
careers and advancement of their protégés.
◦ Mentors may or may not be in their protégés' chain of command, be employed in the same organization as
their protégés, or even be in the same field as their protégés.
◦ A mentor often has two primary functions for the mentee.
i. The career-related function establishes the mentor as a coach who provides advice to enhance the mentee’s
professional performance and development.
ii. The psychosocial function establishes the mentor as a role model and support system for the mentee.
◦ Both functions provide explicit and implicit lessons related to professional development as well as general
work–life balance.
MENTEE
◦ A person who is advised and helped by a more experienced person over a period of time
◦ A mentee is someone who is guided or tutored by someone more experienced, also usually called a mentor.
◦ The mentee needs to absorb the mentor’s knowledge and have the ambition and desire to know what to do
with this knowledge.
◦ Mentee needs to practice and demonstrate what has been learned.
◦ A mentee is the "gauge" to measure how interactive the connection between the mentor and mentee will be.
◦ Mentee determines the capacity of the mentoring connection.
◦ The mentee decides upon the amount of help and guidance he/she needs
◦ Mentee should take the initiative to ask for help or advice and to tackle more challenging task.
MENTORSHIP
◦ Mentoring relationships may range from focusing exclusively on the protégé's job functions to
being a close friendship that becomes one of the most important relationships in the protégé's
life.
◦ Mentorship is a professional relationship established between two people, where a more
experienced person guides less experienced person through the subject where professional
development is desired.
◦ Mentoring is just-in-time help, insight into issues, and the sharing of expertise, values, skills, and
perspectives.
◦ Mentoring should be one part of a larger process, that of career planning. Career planning is
essential for all professionals, whether they anticipate a technical or managerial track to their
careers.
STAGES OF MENTORSHIP
◦ INITIATION
◦ CULTIVATION
◦ SEPARATION
◦ REDIFINITION
INITIATION

◦ Both mentor and mentee must prepare individually and in partnership - Mentors explore personal motivation
and their readiness to be a mentor, assess their skills and identify their own areas for learning and
development - Both: establish clarity about expectations and roles - Do not look for chemistry: it is natural to
look for chemistry when meeting a prospective mentoring partner. Chemistry is overrated. Instead ask
yourself: “Can I work productively with this individual? Do I honestly feel that I can further this person’s
learning?”
◦ Once mentee and mentor decide to work together, a series of processes take place: introductions,
establishing goals and accountability measures, setting and understanding boundaries, and determining
accountability strategies. During this stage both mentee and mentor are working to learn about each other,
what will be needed to work together, and the best ways to do this. You are also working to develop trust
between each other. Trust develops from being able to honestly articulate what is needed and being able to
share this information without judgment or feeling as if one is being judged. Without this, the other stages of
the mentoring relationship will not be successful.
CULTIVATION
◦ The initiation stage may vary in length for each relationship. After you
have established the parameters of the relationship, and the ways in which
mentoring will occur, a much harder stage begins: that of cultivating, growing, and
maintaining the relationship.
◦ To do this, mentee and mentor must continuously commit to and work towards
meeting the intentions and goals established during stage two. However, each must
also be willing to acknowledge personal and professional growth. Intentions and
goals, therefore, must be revisited regularly to ensure that mentee and mentor are
aligned. This stage may deepen your relationship or highlight the fissures of the
relationship. If you have maintained strong communication – all with the intent of
assisting the mentee – moving forward will be supported through the intentions of
meeting the needs of the mentee, recognizing growth, and committing to change
that will lead to the mentee’s success.
SEPARATION
◦ There will be a point in your relationship where it may be necessary to separate from each other. This may be
for multiple reasons: change in interests; graduation; life changes; mentee and mentor have grown apart; or
perhaps the relationship was not successful. Whatever the reason, how you transition from the relationship is
as important as how you initiated it. Clear communication about why the separation is needed will assist
mentee and mentor in being able to acknowledge the growth or failure that has occurred and define the
reasons why separation at this time would benefit both. Separation could be as simple as it is time for the
mentee to graduate or to begin his/her own professional career. Or, it could be as complicated as an
unsuccessful mentoring relationship.
REDEFINITION
◦ Eventually, the mentee will become a mentor or transition to her or his own career. This is a delicate time
that requires the mentor to acknowledge that the mentee may now be a colleague or collaborator. It is also a
time when the mentee must acknowledge her or his success and become more confident about her or his
research. This stage is very exciting: both former mentee and mentor can choose to continue the relationship
or end it. If the former, the relationship may still need to be negotiated to incorporate the mentee’s new
status as professional. If the latter, how does one negotiate the mentee’s new status as colleague who no
longer needs this particular mentoring relationship?
CHARACTERISTIC OF EFFECTIVE MENTORS
Wants to mentor another employee and is committed to the employee's growth and development
and cultural integration.
Has the job content knowledge necessary to effectively teach a new employee significant job
knowledge.
Familiar with the organization's norms and culture. Can articulate and teach the culture.
Demonstrates honesty, integrity, and both respect for and responsibility for stewardship.
Demonstrates effective communication skills both verbally and nonverbally.
Willing to help develop another employee through guidance, feedback, and occasionally, an
insistence on a particular level of performance or appropriate direction.
Initiates new ideas and fosters the employee's willingness and ability to make changes in his or her
performance based on the constant change occurring in their work environment.
Has enough emotional intelligence to be aware of their personal emotions and is sensitive to the
emotions and feelings of the employee they are mentoring.
Is an individual who would be rated as highly successful•
in both their job and in navigating the
organization's culture by coworkers and managers.
Demonstrates success in establishing and maintaining professional networks and relationships,
both online and offline.
Willing to communicate failures as well as successes to the mentored employee.
Able to spend an appropriate amount of time with the mentored employee.
Open to spending time with diverse individuals who may not share a common background,
values, or goals.
Able to initiate conflict to ensure the employee's successful integration into the organization.
Willing to acknowledge, as a mentor, that an employee may not succeed in your organization.
Able to say when the relationship is not working and back away appropriately without regard to
ego issues or the need to assign blame or gossip about the situation.
CHARACTERISTICS OF PRODUCTIVE
PROTEGES
◦ Motivated –A mentor more than likely values his or her time and wants to use it wisely and thus on
someone who will act on the knowledge passed down.
◦ Time – A protege needs to be able to carve out time in their schedule.
◦ Positive – It’s never any fun to work with someone that isn’t positive around you. The protege should look at
things in the context of the "glass is half full.“
◦ Respectful – You want a protege that is respectful of you and your time.
◦ Willing to Learn – This goes along with being motivated, but you can be motivated and still not willing to
learn. "An investment in knowledge pays the best dividend." – Benjamin Franklin
◦ Honesty – It’s a complete waste of time if the protege isn’t honest with you. Benjamin Franklin
with a quote on honesty: “Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools that have not the wits
enough to be honest.”
◦ Communication – The protege needs to be vocal in whether concepts are clear. The protege also
needs to be able to vocalize his or her thoughts and help steer their development. The protege
doesn’t need to be a gifted speaker or the most opinionated, but they need to be able to carry on a
conversation.
◦ Confidence – This isn’t a must, but it’s probably necessary to start out with some resemblance of
confidence.
◦ They understand their responsibilities in the relationship – It is the responsibility of the
protégé to take initiative and seek help when needed, rather than relying on you to routinely check
in. The right mentee also knows to come to each meeting prepared with questions that will help
them work toward their professional goals.
Effective mentoring relationship
◦ assess your needs
◦ set goals and clarity expectation
◦ focus on cultivating a relationship
◦ seek opportunities to maintain contact
◦ develop a mentoring network
BENEFITS AND PROBLEM WITH
MENTORING
◦ Benefits of Mentoring Relationships Both mentors and protégés can benefit from a mentoring relationship.
Research suggests that mentors provide career and psychosocial support to their protégés. Career support
includes coaching, protection, sponsorship, and providing challenging assignments, exposure, and visibility.
Psychosocial support includes serving as a friend and a role model, providing positive regard and acceptance,
and providing an outlet for the protégé to talk about anxieties and fears. Additional benefits for protégés
include skill development, higher rates of promotion, larger salaries, and greater organizational influence.
Mentoring relationships provide opportunities for mentors to develop their interpersonal skills and increase
their feelings of self-esteem and worth to the organization.
BENEFIT MENTORING
◦ benefits of mentoring relationships, many organizations attempt to replicate informal mentoring
relationships by creating formal mentoring programs
◦ Formal mentoring relationships develop with organizational assistance or intervention-usually in the form of
voluntary assignment or matching of mentors and protégés. A second distinction is that formal relationships
are usually of much shorter duration than informal relationships; formal relationships are usually contracted
to last less than a year.
◦ protégés with formal mentoring relationships received less compensation than protégés with informal
relationships.
◦ they also reported less psychosocial and career development functions and less satisfaction with their
mentors than informal protégés.
PROBLEM WITH MENTORING
•Mentor delegates too much work to the protégé
•Mentor abuses his/her power over the protégé
•Mentor inappropriately takes credit for the protégé's work
•Mentor attempts to sabotage the protégé
•Mentor intentionally deceives the protégé
•Mentor intentionally is unavailable to or excludes protégé
•Mentor neglects protégé's career, or does not provide support
•Mentor is too preoccupied with his/her own career progress
•Mentor lacks technical competence and cannot guide protégé
•Mentor lacks interpersonal competence and cannot interact with protégé
•Poor fit in personality between mentor and protégé
•Poor fit in work styles between mentor and protégé
•Mentor has a bad attitude about the organization or job
•Mentor cannot mentor effectively due to problems in his/her personal life
•Mentor sexually harasses protégé