MENTOR: to advise or trainAn individual with expertise (mentor) guides another individual with less experience (protege) through support, coaching, and feedback in order to help the mentee gain experience that they will be able to use throughout their career. Obtaining a mentor is an important career development experience for an individual that can lead to better performance on the job, faster advancement within an organization, more career satisfaction and less likely to turnover. The protege strives to set and achieve career goals under the guidance of their men (Akanni, 2011). Mentoring provides support across three dimensional functions: career, psychosocial, and role modeling. Mentoring career functions include coaching and feedback, psychosocial include acceptance and confirmation, and role modeling functions include a source of guidance in shaping beliefs and values (Blake-Beard, Bayne, Crosby & Muller ,2011).
There are formal and informal mentoring styles, with formal mentoring a mentor and a protege are partnered to meet goals of the organization and the relationships usually lasts up until the goals are met. Informal mentoring relationships are when mentors and proteges work toward career and personal goals for the protege. Informal mentoring allow individuals to create a natural relationship built over time to guide and support the protege throughout their career (Akanni, 2011). In order for proteges to get the most from either form of mentoring there are rules that help them focus on doing their part to get the most out of the relationship to prevent negative experience or bad outcomes. Students that have been mentored tend to do better than those that are have not been mentored. Having access to an individual that can address questions, concerns, and/groom you throughout the process of career development is a positive advantage. The gender or race of the individual and their mentor matters far less than the mentors ability to help the individual. Recommendation letters, encouragement to participate in scholarly activities, and access to models of effective professional behavior and interpersonal skills will definitely serve as an advantage for students that have mentors (Blake-Beard et al., 2011). The key to mentoring is creating a platform for a relationship that can be cultivated over time to support and guide individuals throughout their careers. Successful mentoring is when the mentor can help the protege, not just providing the student with a great experience but guiding them toward better performance. There is so much focus placed on the conditions that will impact the comfort of the protege when the emphasis needs to be on matching a student with a mentor that can help the student and bring out the best in them to yield better performance throughout the career of the student. References: Blake-Beard, S., Bayne, M. L., Crosby, F. J., & Muller, C. B. (2011). Matching by race and gender in mentoring relationships: keeping our eyes on the prize. Journal of Social Issues,67(3), 622-643. Retrieved from http://proxy.ohiolink.edu:9099/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=65380976&site=ehost-live Akanni, A. A. (2011). Mentoring relationship: a protégé experience. IFE PsychologIA, 120-128. Retrieved from http://proxy.ohiolink.edu:9099/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=66960298&site=ehost-live |