MENTORING

Developing Mentoring Skills for the Workplace



Developing Mentoring Skills for the Workplace

Mentorship presents a relationship in which one person helps, guides, or teaches another person. The first person is mentor, sometime also called as a tutor or coach, and the second person/persons is/are mentees/mentee. The first person has more experience and more information. On the other hand, other person/persons is/are less experienced and knowledgeable. Nevertheless, only answering particular questions and providing occasional help is not the name of mentorship but it contains constant relationship of learning and challenges. As mentioned above, mentoring is relationship based and comprises communication. It is informal transmission of information because of it process. The existence of “Mentoring” in Europe has been observing since Ancient Greek times and has spread throughout the United States since 1970s (Megginson, 1999 pp. 16-17).

The Purposes of Mentoring

The purpose of mentoring may be varied;

To help someone for a new post

To give power to the mentees

To give access of new thoughts and situation

To offer information

To ask questions or challenges

Enabling the mentees to create their own capability, skills, and strategies with no presence of the mentor are the basic design of “Mentoring”.

Relationship between mentor and mentees

A mutual association of mentor and mentees on a purposeful program planned to communicate precise content is mentorship. It is not a name of accidental happening nor does it fruitful results come immediately. It all base on relationship, and its value is above friendship relation. It is not only “two people spend time together for sharing” Bob Crosby

Mentoring ModelsOne-on-one mentoring

The specific quality of one-on-one mentoring model is personal and individualized to develop a close relationship between mentor and mentees. On the other hand, this model does not meet the mentees requirements if the mentor is not good enough or good qualified because it represents only one point of view (Cummings, 2004).

Team Mentoring

Some mutual natures of experimental, fundamental, and translational research frequently demand a team-based approach for accomplishment. In this way, it is helpful to consider team mentoring when a mentees assembles his team of researchers. In this model, both, the mentees and mentors sit together as a team which is beneficial for all. Being mentor, one can discover new colleagues/ collaborators and, on the other hand, being mentees, one can have access to different points to discuss to senior researchers.

Distance mentoring

In this model, the process of mentoring is distant and made through telephone calls, e-mail and infrequent visits. It is also effective for mentees along with mentors at some institutions. Some institutes hearten their mentees to look outside their institution to find an outdoor specialist when a particular part of experience is available within the company. Anyhow, there are many other reasons mentees seek an external mentor. However, it is a convenient way to work with a mentor or mentees. If a relationship has already been established between mentor and mentees, this method of mentoring may be more effective.Situations of Mentoring

There are various approaches to manage an organization. Some organizations manage to educate their ...