The Power of Mentoring as a Career Development Tool

The Power of Mentoring as a career development tool is immense for the mentee, mentor and organizations alike as it is growing in popularity in a variety of settings. Here is a summary of the questions and highlights from my recent talk entitled “Mentorship Out of the Box” at the Calgary Public Library on January 20, 2012

What is Mentor ship?

Mentor ship has always been looked upon as a relationship between someone with a great deal of experience and someone of less experience who wanted to follow on a similar path to their older more experienced mentor. Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring said that mentoring occurs when a mentor “supports and encourage a mentee to manage their own learning in order that they may maximize their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be." There are two types of mentoring relationships usually informal which occurs when a person identifies another person who they believe can mentor them and then asks them to be able to be their mentor. The second type of mentor ship is more formal in nature and usually is both initiated and carried out to accomplish some predetermined goals that are between an organization and their employees.

Mentor ship is a really powerful career development tool and is presently growing in use in high school, post- secondary educational programs, professional associations, community programs, immigrant serving organizations, career development organizations, youth programs, churches and workplaces. It is powerful because it provides people who have a clearly defined idea of who they (i.e. their values, interests skills, and  career direction) with a connection to a mentor that provides them with recognition, encouragement, support, professional and social connections, career advancement opportunities, on- going  learning and most of all increased self-esteem and confidence.