What is the Purpose of Mentoring?: Now and in Tomorrow's World?

The purpose of mentoring may vary depending on the context in which it is used and the mentoring goals to be achieved to yield high returns on the investment involved.

NOW it is generally accepted that at the heart of mentoring is a trusted relationship between the mentor and mentee which will enable the more experienced mentor to use his or her tacit skills and knowledge to guide the mentee to successful personal and professional growth.

This will involve the mentor facilitating the mentee’s positive learning; critical thinking; decision making; building self-confidence and self-discovery. A mentor serves as a valued and trusted advisor, as someone the mentee can turn to for help, advice and guidance.

The purpose of positive, dynamic mentoring is to inspire and enrich the mentee’s journey of lifelong learning, continuous improvement and self-discovery.

However, in Tomorrow's World the purpose of mentoring will have to change. 

The Purpose of Mentoring has undoubtedly changed from mentoring's inception to today's fast changing reality.

My perception is that mentoring has gone through 4 stages of change at increasing speeds, as below, and is now in stage five requiring a future-focussed approach unimaginable at its inception.

The Five Stages of Change in the Purpose of Mentoring Since Its Inception

1. Inception: Clone the Mentor:
a clear simple purpose requiring the transfer of tacit skills and knowledge from mentor to mentee and guidance and confidence building for the mentee.

The role of the mentor would largely be that of a guide to the younger less mature and inexperienced mentee, helping him or her to avoid unseen pitfalls and obstacles and learn more effective ways of getting results.

2. Personal and Professional development:
this added to the mentoring process networking opportunities and particular skills capability development.

The role of the mentor would continue to be a guide but would require guidance to the mentee of relating well to others and valuing collective learning.

Also, the mentor would provide more focussed guidance to help the mentee develop capability at specific skills highlighted as his or her needs and goals.

3. Career advancement:
this was a widening of the mentee-benefits, opportunities and timeframe requiring accountability and motivational outcomes,

This would require the mentor to help the mentee enlarge the scope of mentoring in terms of his or her external environment.  In particular the mentor would guide the mentee to consider his or her future career and what would be necessary to advance it.  For example, a sponsor; technical educational qualifications; specific learning experiences.

It would also require the mentor to help the mentee embrace accountability to more senior leaders or others who might make career decision opportunities available.

4. Now: Contemporary technology and AI are providing instant information and for-real feedback and communication outcomes which are changing mentoring significantly. The rate of change involved (Future Shock) has created some 'turbulence' in traditional mentoring.

The role of the mentor now has morphed significantly from the guide of earlier times.

Whilst guidance is still essential it must now integrate with facilitation, coaching, giving and receiving honest feedback, reciprocal learning and an adaptability mindset and skills by the mentee.

Today the mentor is helping the mentee learn how to deal with complexity and the reality of complex adaptive systems.

5. Next: Mentoring in Tomorrow's World:

Although tomorrow's world is largely unknowable and unpredictable, the mentor's role is to focus on the future skills the mentee will need rather than the tacit skills of the mentor from yesterday's world which are increasingly made obsolete by the rapid rate of change.

In particular, the mentee will need to apply what is learned as a means of developing his or her potential.

The mentor will need to re-focus his or her role to become transformative with the mentee; create a microcosm of a desired culture; and help the mentee to apply released potential to transform the 'impossibles' and unrealised possibilities into realities.

This is a long way from being just a guide and will require our shared training and learning experiences for mentors, mentees and their leaders, as outlined below, if it is to be achieved.

It Needs Our Current Bespoke and Different
Five Key-Points Approach Below

Our current methodology is designed to facilitate a future based bespoke and different approach with the following key collaborative characteristics:

a) Shared learning.

Our training deliberately brings together mentors, mentees and their leaders to share training and create synergy. The outcome is that everyone involved has clarity about their role and others' roles and can offer mutual support as needed by the mentee, you or your business

b) Capacity development.

Whereas early emphasis on capabilities would have a narrower skill focus, we help people to truly learn adaptability, resilience, creativity. That is, help themselves to increase their capacity to develop their own future. A major outcome of this for you is....

c) Release and realisation of potential of your people and your business.

We define potential as unrealised possibilities and 'impossibilities'. We develop intrinsic motivation, whole brain thinking and synergy in our training and learning experiences. This is a very important outcome of our mentoring, making the last two points below an achievable benefit for you.

d) Transform 'impossibles'.

If I had said, before we started mentoring, that 70 employees in our client Lubrizol would save the business from closure and increase profitability by £40,000 in their first month, most people would have said or thought, 'Impossible!'.

But that is exactly what the employees did. 

Click the link to read The Lubrizol Story

When I said that Bettina, Head of Operations, in our client Pfizer Ireland had 121 direct reports, they said, 'that can't work. Impossible!. How does she manage and control them?'.

Bettini answered the question by saying, 'I don't manage or control them, they do!'.
And, of course, it did work, brilliantly.

The plant was a record-breaking, award winning, financial major success for 13 years.

Click the link to read The Pfizer Ireland Tablet Plant Story

e) Optimum ROI for you both in terms of financial returns on investment (e.g. Pfizer) and the growth and personal and professional 'ROI' of mentees and employees (e.g. Lubrizol) become realised possibilities through our self-managing applications of potential projects.

Finally, we have evolved and use a working definition of mentoring's purpose that is different to the traditional one:

mentoring is a shared learning process to help others to help themselves to release and realise more of their potential.

I believe that the above is the true purpose of mentoring in tomorrow's world of ever increasing and accelerating change.

Purpose of Mentoring?:
a metaphor

Mentoring inspires us to realise our wings of potential and soar far beyond the stars to transform impossibles into reality