Humans are social beings meaning men and women can’t really live alone. The much used phrase “no man is an island” refers to the fact that humans are perpetually learning. Almost everyone needs help from someone to be guided through ups and downs in life, help them make the right decision and so on. As humans grow older they get a chance to guide someone younger and inexperienced. This helps keep people connected and loved and instills the feeling of importance, to the learner as a student and to the learned as a mentor.

Mentoring helps strengthen the bond between the mentor and the protégé and helps their mutual growth. A mentor is one who is more experienced, though not necessarily aged, but certainly wiser and is ready to impart the knowledge they have gained to others. A protégé or mentee is one who is inexperienced, is eager to climb the ladder of experience with only a little guidance. The mentorship concept has been known since the existence of mankind. Homer’s odyssey first coined the term “mentor” from its character by that name. Mentor though being a debilitated old man himself is used by the Goddess of Wisdom, Athenato guide Odysseus’s son Telemachus when he passes through difficult times.

Mentorship has taken different forms in different periods and cultures in history. Ancient Greeks followed pederasty, wherein teachers honed young men to greatness. Hindu and Buddhist religions follow the concept of guru; a religious wise man leads as the spiritual guide for anyone seeking the eternal Truth. Judaism and Christianity have discipleship in known history as well as current practices. Here too a clergy or deeply spiritual person guides the followers through the path of spiritual enlightenment. Finally in the medieval period a financial system was built to help apprentices learn from guild masters, which also ensured tat their respective crafts were carried on after them.

There are many mentor-protégé relationships since known history. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are greatest of the examples in this regard. These great minds in philosophy actually preceded each other. Socrates was a mentor to Plato who in turn mentored Aristotle. Alexander the Great is known to have been the protégé of Aristotle. Christian faith has spread its wings thanks to the preachings of St. Paul setting another good example of mentorship. Rapper Dr. Dre in the music industry has been a great mentor to numerous younger rappers like Snoop Dogg and Eminem. Late Sir Laurence Olivier, the very famous British actor has set similar mentorship in the movie industry to his protégé Sir Anthony Hopkins who has been awarded multiple times.

Fiction too has focused on mentors and protégés. The Jedi knights in the famous Star Wars series, Qui-Gon Jinn taken on Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan Kenobi mentors Anakin Skywalker; Anakin’s son Luke Skywalker is trained by Yoda. This master-padawan relationship of the Star Wars series is similar to a mentor – protégé, not really as fighting partners.

Coming to the current era, in the employment field there are formal mentoring programs to help new employees perform better. Like in new-hire mentorship, fresh employees are taken under the wings of experienced persons in the organization to help them get accustomed to the culture and environment of the company. On the other hand, in high-profile mentorship in an organization experienced senior personnel take on existing promising employees and see them progress through the company hierarchy by imparting training and knowledge.

These are just a few facts associated with mentoring. Many formal mentorship programs are available these days for people interested to learn from the wise and learned in any given field. You may find more information about them on the Internet.

There are various techniques on how to become the perfect guide to a potential follower, all of which should depend on your personal goals and how much control you are willing to give. Generally, there are three primary paths that a guide may take: mentoring, coaching, or directing.

It is always great to guide someone, but it is hardly ever easy. Experience and wisdom is necessary, in order to share knowledge. Moreover, knowing how to share this knowledge effectively, in order to be completely understood, is even more necessary. Being approachable, empowering, encouraging, and knowing how to make others feel better about themselves without treating them like children is another needed trait, as is pointing them towards the right directions in life while still enabling them to learn for themselves and from their mistakes on their way to success.

There are various techniques on how to become the perfect guide to a potential follower, all of which should depend on your personal goals and how much control you are willing to give. Generally, there are three primary paths that a guide may take: mentoring, coaching, or directing. A lot of times, these three types of guidance are combined or interchanged when in conversation or in the media, but there are several differences amongst them, however subtle, that need to be explored and ultimately understood.

Mentoring or mentorship pertains to a relationship between a mentor, who has more experience, knowledge, and wisdom and a protégé, who has less experience, is usually younger, and is sometimes uncertain and flighty. Mentors are usually more prominent and more skilled in certain areas of life than protégés. Mentors serve as teachers to protégés to guide them in becoming better in certain fields. Usually, mentors will do so by teaching through examples of the job itself while protégés are just starting out on their careers. By emulating their mentors, protégés will then have more of an idea of how they, too, can become just as successful as their mentors one day.

Coaching pertains to a guidance process, where a person who acts like a leader overlooks a group of people, or a single individual, with the aim of reaching certain goals. Coaching is different from mentoring because coaches are usually already done with their careers before they try and lead younger generations based on their own experiences. Also, coaches often only have a single goal in mind, while mentors may be more abstract and widespread with their goals. Coaching is most common when it comes to sports teams, where someone who was once a star player now helps other players in becoming successful in their own games and the goal is usually to earn as many victories by winning as many games as possible for the team.

Another known technique of coaching is known as life coaching. In this case, a successful person that is ready to retire may teach other people who wish to start their lives in work. In a deviant version of life coaching, a person who has been through fear in life may coach individuals who still live with the same particular fear and help them get over their anxieties and come out as improved individuals.

Directing pertains to a higher person’s instruction of a lower person. Mentors simply guide their protégés, but do not make orders; they point them towards the right direction, but don’t push them towards it. Coaches encourage their teams to train, but do not necessarily tell them exactly what they must do. But in directing, there is a closer definition to the relationship between a boss and an employee, most of all when the boss is ordering the lower people how their lives should be led.

There are various techniques on how to become the perfect guide to a potential follower, all of which should depend on your personal goals and how much control you are willing to give. Generally, there are three primary paths that a guide may take: mentoring, coaching, or directing.