Video Summary: The Good Mentor

Being a mentor is a task that would require an enormous amount of organization and responsibility for one person. Although a mentor has difficult requisites, it is up to someone to stand up and take a role, and I believe that I have the enough potential to guide future leaders through the beginning of their path to success.

Clutterbuck & Megginson (1999, p.17) describe mentoring as being like ‘standing in front of a mirror with a trusted other, who can help you see things that you do not know how to see, or that have become too familiar for you to notice’. It is a helping relationship between an individual with potential and an individual with expertise. This multi-dimensional relationship is a partnership between those in similar roles, who can support each other. A number of roles of the mentor have been listed by Bolton (2010, p.193): role model, enabler, teacher, encourager, counsellor, befriender, facilitator, coach, confidante, supporter and ‘un-learner’. To be successful roles and responsibilities of those involved need to be clear and they need to be matched to each other and understand expectations of them.

"Mentoring is a special quality, skill set and attitude," she says. "The benefits are not only between the mentor and mentee, but the future generations."

A mentor is someone we all have whether it's your parents, friends, or even a total stranger! What makes them all the same? They all have great qualities. It could be that one of them happens to be an extraordinary listener or ]they might have great wisdom and patience. When you are looking for a great mentor, you are going to want someone with patience, determination, and listens

It takes a lot of commitment to be a mentor, an appropriate meeting time needs to be discussed between mentor and mentee so that it doesn't conflict with family, school, and/or social life. Mentors are usually provided for: troubled teens, young children with busy parents that work, children or teens with special needs such as Autism or ADHD, or anyone under or over the age of 18 who needs to have one on one time with someone they trust and can talk to confidentially.

Mentors are influential, senior organizational members with advanced experience and knowledge committed to providing perception to a mentee’s career development. A mentor supports a mentee’s views of self within a work role as well as it supports the mentor’s sense of self for the valuable wisdom and experience they have to share.

As stated in an article by Christopher Vogler “The mentor helps the hero in some way, furnishing them with important skills and advice. They may appear at important moments to help the hero get over an obstacle, then disappear. Typical mentors are old and wise. Although they may also be younger, they are still likely to be older than the hero as they offer their superior knowledge and experience in support. Perhaps once they were a young hero themselves.” (Vogler). To put in other words, a mentor is typically an older being with knowledge that provides the student with important skills and advice. I agree with the author that a mentor provides important skills and advice, which confirms my statement because a mentor provides skills to the student to better them. An example of this archetype is Micky in the movie Rocky. He is an older man with experience and knowledge that he teaches Rocky. He takes it on as his responsibility to make Rocky the best fighter he can be, and this makes Micky his mentor. This relates back to the article because Rocky receives skills and advice from his mentor like stated in the

In life, we all have a mentor who looks out for us. A figure that stands out and serves as a foundation for how our future ends up. Mentors can be our closest relatives, our best friends, or even people that we’ve never met, just those who stand out to us. Mentors teach us principles that they want us to follow and think is best. They mold us with their knowledge and shape us into people that they want us to be.

Mentoring is an initiative that has been found effective and transferable from business to education (Wallace, Montgomery and Pomerantz, 2010), indeed Linney (1999) suggested that mentoring is a very popular tool in various contexts and fields. In the field of education, Daloz (1987) felt that teachers and mentors played a vital role in allowing students to gain confidence, insight and passion to progress in their academic lives.

Mentoring employs similar methods as coaching; however a more personal relationship is formed between the mentor and mentee. A mentor, as Zey (1984) writes, is ‘a person who oversees the career and development of another person, usually a junior, through teaching, counselling, providing psychological support, protecting and at times promoting or sponsoring’.

Finding a good mentor is like finding a gold mine. You might be good at something, but a mentor can guide you into becoming the best you can be. You might be a diamond in the rough, but a good mentor can train you in such a way that you become exceptionally valuable. Many people never achieve their full potential, nor reach their destiny because they lack the expert guidance of a mentor.

Mentoring for the mentor is about challenging himself to perform to greater capabilities while nurturing a mentee and stretching them to realise their full potential. Mentors counsel, tutor and guide their mentees in developing themselves.

Mentors are a very valuable asset, they go beyond that of a networking colleague and help guide you towards success in life both at work and outside of work. At my present job, not my practicum, I have a mentor that I talk to once in a while and she provides me with some guidance and recommendations that are not only work-related, but also life

A Learning Mentor is a relatively new concept in the field of education and is used within schools to support them in raising standards.

With the development of the more organic and less formal organisational structures the role of mentors has shifted with these changes. Unlike previously where mentors where seen as formal trainers who taught newcomers the processes and got them acquainted with the cultures and the systems within the organisation. Which required good interpersonal skills and a good knowledge of the activity or tasks the mentee would have to undertake, and be able to effectively relay or demonstrate the tasks or activities to the mentee. As opposed to more recently where a mentor would have to be more of an emotional counselor and demonstrate more skills than were traditionally required from