Mentoring Styles
Mentoring is just-in-time help, insight into issues, and the sharing of expertise, values, skills, and perspectives. Mentors function as a catalyst—an agent that provokes a reaction that might not otherwise have taken place or speeds up a reaction that might have taken place in the future.
Just as there are different types of mentoring functions there are different mentoring styles that can be used individually or can be combined to meet your career goals.
Mentoring relationship styles
- Traditional mentoring is a supportive learning relationship between a mentor who shares knowledge and experience with a mentee to enrich their professional journey.
-
Reverse mentoring flips the traditional model. An early-career professional provides expertise and insights to a later-career professional.
-
Peer mentoring allows those with similar roles and responsibilities to formally support each other.
-
Group mentoring with a single mentor optimizes time and talents. A single mentor works with a group of mentees focused on similar objectives.
-
Group mentoring with many mentors accommodates varying objectives and newly surfacing challenges. There is no designated leader; each member self-identifies those with expertise to serve as a mentor for any given situation. Relationships are fluid; a member may serve as a mentor simultaneously to being mentored. As objectives are met, relationships organically reorganize.