Mentoring–A Practitioner’s Guide to Touching Lives

Mentoring is a personal enhancement strategy through which one person facilitates the development of another by sharing known resources, expertise, values, skills, perspectives, attitudes and proficiencies. As Andrea L Jaeger Miehls rightly observes “Mentoring can occur at any time and in any place. An effective mentor should be a good listener, a good communicator, empathetic, thoughtful, and inspiring”.1 And these mentors could be as formal as advisors, committee members, bosses, teachers, coaches, leaders or as informal as family members, friends, or even somebody whom one meets quite often in the park. While the Mentee has an opportunity to gain wisdom from someone who has traveled the path before him, mentors have an opportunity to invest themselves in someone who seeks what they can offer. Thus, mentoring brings value to everyone involved in its practice.