Mentoring has evolved to embrace a wide range of activities in recent years: from being allocated individuals who respond to queries that an individual has and give moral support, to schemes that border on counselling given the complexity of the needs of the mentee.

Why you need a mentor?

Having a mentor can provide you with many advantages. “Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen and a push in the right direction.” Source: John Crosby. A mentor can help to shorten your success and achievement curve, open your mind to new ideas and possibilities, identify opportunities and advise on how to promote yourself.

Why mentoring is so important?

Mentoring is important, not only because of the knowledge and skills you can learn from mentors, but also because mentoring provides professional socialization and personal support to facilitate success in course of life endeavours. Quality mentoring greatly enhances our chances for success.

A sound working definition offered by Eric Parsloe:

‘Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own life in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be.’

The following points command our attention:

• ‘Supporting’ and ‘encouraging’ suggest it is non-directive.
• ‘Manage their own life’; suggests that the responsibility for this lies with the mentee.
• ‘Maximise potential, develop their skills, improve their performance’ identifies the spirit of growth and development.
• ‘The person they want to be’ clarifies that this is about an individual establishing their own goals with help.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In sit amet fermentum augue. Nullam bibendum consectetur lacinia. Etiam sit amet lorem sodales.