What Mentoring Is

Think of the first year in a new job. You know your technical work, but many questions are not in any procedure. How do decisions really get made here? Which skills should I build next? How do I handle a difficult client without damaging the relationship? Many people answer these questions with the help of one experienced person who takes an interest in them. That person is a mentor.

Mentoring is a relationship in which a more experienced person helps a less experienced person to learn and develop over time. The person who receives the help is the mentee. Some organisations say "protégé" or "mentoree", but "mentee" is the word most widely used in workplace programmes, and this course uses it.

The word itself comes from an old story. In Homer's Odyssey, a character named Mentor is asked to look after the hero's son. Over the centuries, "mentor" came to mean a wise and trusted adviser.

Informal mentoring and mentoring programmes

Much mentoring happens without any plan. A senior colleague notices a promising new starter and offers to meet for coffee now and then. This informal mentoring can be very valuable. Its weakness is that it is uneven. People who are confident, well connected or similar to senior staff tend to find mentors. People who are quiet, new to the country, or different from the people at the top often do not.

A mentoring programme (also called a mentoring scheme) is an organised way to make mentoring available to a chosen group. The organisation sets a purpose, recruits and matches mentors and mentees, trains them, supports the pairs, and checks whether the programme works. This course is about designing and running such programmes, and about what mentors and mentees need to do inside them.