Mentoring – Introduction

Mentoring is the process of guiding those employees who are excellent performers. The idea behind mentoring is not so much to extract the best performance out of the employees, as to keep them focused and dedicated to their standards of performance.

The idea behind mentoring is to engage a person with more experience in a specific job responsibility in sharing his work experience with younger and newer employees who are doing great, so that they understand the further responsibilities and expectations they will be facing in the future.

Mentoring helps employees make a smooth transition from their current working responsibilities to the ones that they earn with their good performances. They are groomed and nurtured in an organization under the guidance of another senior manager with proven credentials.

This differs from counselling, or coaching, where the objective is to provide corrective assistance to those performers who deliver average to poor output. The desired course of action in coaching is more supportive that guidance-oriented, as compared to mentoring in which a person with better skills, expertise and experience becomes a role model to good performers with the objective of enhancing the employees’ career development and personal development.

Coaching, or counseling, is a supportive process to define and correct personal problems or skills that affect performance. The counselor rectifies behaviors and provides direction and discipline as needed for as long as necessary.

The person providing mentoring is referred to as a ‘mentor’, and the ones he guides are known as ‘mentees’. Mentees are also referred as ‘protégé’s’.