Informational Articles for 2011+

“Mentoring”, this Greek term has been used in countless ways so you can expect that there are various wise mentoring quotes that abound. But it all refers to the same concept, giving guidance and advice to another person. The term “mentoring” actually comes from the Greek word that means enduring. This is a committed relationship between a youth and an adult wherein the adult has the patience to teach the youth whatever he knows from life. It is the adult’s responsibility to provide support, assistance, and guidance as the younger one faces new challenges and problems everyday. Mentors usually take the role of the parents when the parent is busy or unavailable during the critical stages of a person’s life.

There are basically two types of mentoring; the first is natural mentoring and the second is planned mentoring. Natural mentoring can come from everyday situations wherein anyone can be your mentor. You can learn through collegiality, through friendship, through teaching, or through counseling. On the other hand, planned mentoring comes from a structured program wherein the mentor and the mentee are chosen from a list and matched through a formal procedure.

Currently, mentoring is becoming increasingly popular in the workforce as well as for personal development. This is partly due to various testimonials among people who have tried it and derived a lot of advantages from the mentoring program. But how does mentoring exactly work? Well, if you wan to look into the formal mentoring programs, you should be aware that your mentor will be chosen by an authority figure through interviews, comparative index outlook, and by looking at their personal profiles.

The information about Mentoring presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about Mentoring or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

Of course, in most cases, the mentor and the mentee would need to get acquainted first before the mentoring program can start. Mentors are needed because they can be a positive influence on the mentee who is learning from them. As Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Mentors can be a force of change and they can influence a lot of people, including you, by becoming a respected authority figure.

Ralph Waldo Emerson stated that, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” And indeed, mentors are doing kindness when they take on the responsibility of helping other people learn from their experiences. Through this, they can give back to society and make career growth, personal development, or intellectual achievement possible for the person they are mentoring.

As you can observe, mentoring is helpful for educational purposes wherein the mentor will help the mentee improve their overall academic achievement. Likewise, mentoring is also very helpful in the workplace because mentors can provide the necessary insights and perspectives on what a person should do to achieve his goals. Meanwhile, having a mentor would also be a very helpful option in your personal development because the mentor can help you during tough personal and social stress and offer guidance just when you need it the most.

A very nice quote from an unknown author read, “A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.” The mentor does just that, they believe that their mentees can do it. This, in itself, is usually encouragement enough for the mentee to do their best to succeed in life.

I hope that reading the above information was both enjoyable and educational for you. Your learning process should be ongoing–the more you understand about any subject, the more you will be able to share with others.

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The only way to keep up with the latest about Mentoring is to constantly stay on the lookout for new information. If you read everything you find about Mentoring, it won’t take long for you to become an influential authority.

Being a guide for someone is definitely not an easy task. You have to be experienced and wise enough to be able to share knowledge and wisdom, and moreover, you need to be able to know how to share your knowledge and wisdom well enough in order to be completely understood. You also have to know how to approach people, how to empower and encourage them, and how to make them feel better about themselves without babying them. You also have to tread the fine line between cloistering people and keeping them away from the wrong path in life, while still giving them the chance to learn on their own by making a few mistakes on their way to greatness.

There are many different ways that you can be a guide to a potential follower, and it all depends on what you aim to do, as well as on how control you are willing to exert. There are three main paths that you may want to take as the guide, and you can do this through mentoring, coaching, or directing. Although these three different types of guidance are often mixed together or interchanged in both conversation and media, there are actually subtle differences amongst them that you need to understand and explore.

In mentoring or mentorship, you are dealing with a relationship between a mentor, who is more experienced, knowledgeable, and wise; and a protégé, who is less experienced, probably (but not always) younger, and sometimes flighty and uncertain. A mentor will often be more prominent than the protégé, or more skilled in a particular field. The mentor is then the teacher of the protégé, and serves as the guide for the protégé to do better in the field. Most often, a mentor will teach by example on the job itself: for instance, a mentor opera singer will have a protégé who the opera singer will take on while the opera singer is at the peak of his or her career, and while the protégé is just starting out. By emulating the opera singer, the protégé will hopefully succeed one day as well.

It’s really a good idea to probe a little deeper into the subject of Mentoring. What you learn may give you the confidence you need to venture into new areas.

On the other hand, coaching refers to a guidance process in which a person, acting as a leader, oversees a group of persons, or sometimes even a single person, with the aim of achieving a goal. Coaching differs from mentoring in that a coach will often be out of or done with his or her career already, and will therefore be teaching a younger generation based on his or her experiences. Another difference between coaching and mentoring is that coaching often has only a single goal in mind, while mentoring might be more abstract and widespread in its aims.

Coaching is most popularly seen in sports teams, where a person who has once been a good player is now helping other players to succeed in their game, and with the aim of as many victories as possible for the team. Another popular coaching technique is that of life coaching. In this case, a person is not necessarily dead done with life, and coming back to teach the living. Instead, a person is already successful enough and is probably ready for retirement, but is coaching other people in making their lives start to work. In a variant of life coaching, a person who has already faced all of his or her fears can also coach persons who are still living in fear, helping them to get over their anxieties and emerge as better people.

Lastly, the process of directing involves the instruction of a higher person to that of a lower person. In the mentor and protégé relationship, the mentor acts as a guide, not as someone who makes orders; a guide will steer a student through to the right path, but not point it out directly. In the coach and team relationship, the coach acts as an encouraging person, and even as a trainer, but not as someone who directly tells the team what to do. In directing, a boss-employee relationship would be closer in definition, especially when the higher person is ordering the lower person on how exactly to live his or her life.

Now that wasn’t hard at all, was it? And you’ve earned a wealth of knowledge, just from taking some time to study an expert’s word on Mentoring.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO to claim your $1 trial membership!

Guiding people through the right way through life can be a daunting task for any person who is tasked to do it. A person who has to do the guiding has a lot of delicate balances to strike: he or she has to be strong enough to reprimand the person who is following him or her when that follower is not being obedient or is straying from the right path; on the other hand, he or she has to sometimes allow the follower the chance to stray, so that the follower can gain experience and thus be much wiser. There are many different things that a person has to do to guide his or her follower or followers, and these concepts of guidance are covered under coaching and mentoring.

The process of mentoring involves the relationship and bonding between master and pupil, a togetherness that is more commonly referred to as mentor and protégé. A mentor is someone who may sometimes be older, but who is certainly more knowledgeable, more wise, and perhaps even more serene and settled than what might predictably be a less knowledgeable, less wise, and flighty protégé. The mentor’s task is to be the guide for the inexperienced protégé: as the protégé learns more and more from the mentor, the protégé is farther thrust into greatness.

The mentor-protégé relationship has long existed in history, and has been glorified by pop media. There are also many different mentor-protégé relationships in the modern world. For instance, when an employee first enters a company or business, he or she is adopted by someone who has been in the company or business for a long while. Because a new employee might experience culture shock, or might not be prepared for the rigors of the current workplace, the mentor serves as a buffer and guide through how the company or business operates, making the transition easier for the protégé.

Hopefully the information presented so far has been applicable. You might also want to consider the following:

Still in line with workplace relationships, an existing employee might show potential as someone who could one day lead, or who could move on and be great elsewhere. In this case, a person experienced in the company could informally take on this employee and be his or her mentor. In this relationship, the mentor will teach the protégé the necessary skills to advance in the workplace, so that one day, the protégé might perhaps take the mentor’s place, advance elsewhere in the hierarchy, or move on to another company and do even better.

The concept of coaching, on the other hand, is quite different from that of mentoring. In coaching, a method is employed in which a leader or overseer directs the movements of a person or a group of persons. In coaching, the instruction and training given are done with a definite end goal in mind. The methods of directing people’s movements and thought process might include giving motivational talks. There are also ways to train people in order to make them perform better, such as through seminars or workshops, or through practice, such as those done by sports teams.

In mentoring, a mentor teaches a protégé how to live better or how to function better. In coaching, perhaps better seen as a more specific method of mentoring, the coach guides his or her team in order for them to meet an end goal. For sports coaches, this will mean victory in a game. For marriage coaches, this will mean a stronger marital bond. For family coaches, this will mean a stronger familial bond, between parents and children, and sometimes, amongst the children themselves.

There are many different kinds of mentoring and coaching, as well as different techniques associated with each. For more information, you can talk to professional mentors and coaches, or do more research online.

You can’t predict when knowing something extra about Mentoring will come in handy. If you learned anything new about Mentoring in this article, you should file the article where you can find it again.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO to claim your $1 trial membership!

When mentoring is mentioned, what comes into anyone’s mind? It could be Socrates and Plato. Or it could be Jesus the Christ and his disciples. Whether these men used ?ice breakers’ to make their students feel at ease, we would never know. But for sure, ice breaking exercises open doors for both mentor and student relationship or student to student relationship.

Mentoring is doing something valuable such as leading a less experienced individual to improve aspects in his life. It could be his faith, his skills or even simple time management. But even if you are the best mentor in the whole world, you would still need to break that barrier that comes with the stranger whom you will now teach. And this is the area where ice breakers come in.

An ice breaking exercise need not be an unruly game. In fact, it doesn’t always come in the form of a game. Sometimes, ice breaking exercises could simply mean the mentor introducing himself to his students and encouraging them to do the same. It could also be storytelling time for everyone. The main purpose is to make the students relax and feel comfortable.

An effective ice breaker is one that suits its participants. A more serious group could feel at ease with open forums or storytelling while an active group could easily relax physical activities. Ice breakers should also avoid activities that coerce communication, games that are not related to the course, games that take too long to finish, or activities that foster cultural biases.

In finding the perfect activities for a mentoring session, it is also important to consider the time factor. How long will the mentoring last? Would it take a week or two? Or will it only last for two days? You should be able to suit the activities to the available time that you have.

Here are some tips on making your games or discussions much more interesting:

How can you put a limit on learning more? The next section may contain that one little bit of wisdom that changes everything.

1. Be enthusiastic. Feel the game. You should be able to explain the mechanics with much liveliness in your voice. An important part of this is to know every detail of the game. You don’t want to be caught unaware that you are confused with the game yourself.

2. Experiment with a different game each time. Variety displaces boredom (which the mentor might feel once he gets familiar with the activity).

3. Bring props. Funny props create funny moments. Make fun of anything except someone from the group.

4. Encourage each member of the group to participate. Don’t leave anyone out. But if someone is implying that he is still not ready to be open or active, then respect his desire.

5. The mentor should actively participate in all given activities and not watch from a corner after explaining the mechanics.

6. Make fun of situations that are outside of the circle. Be careful of sensitive topics such as politics, religion, sexual preference, etc.

The most important part of mentoring is achieving the student’s goal which is academic, religious or social improvement. Although ice breaking exercises are fun activities, they are still a necessary part of the mentoring program. In fact, it’s so important that it’s considered as the key that opens closed gates. With that in mind, participants should pay more attention and participate more on their next ice breaker.

Sometimes it’s tough to sort out all the details related to this subject, but I’m positive you’ll have no trouble making sense of the information presented above.

About the Author
By Anders Eriksson, feel free to visit my latest venture: GVO to claim your $1 trial membership!

The best course of action to take sometimes isn’t clear until you’ve listed and considered your alternatives. The following paragraphs should help clue you in to what the experts think is significant.

Mentoring, training and coaching programs for novice teachers are excellent ways to improve the quality of skills and knowledge of a new teacher, his job satisfaction, and his professional competence. These programs available for the new teacher are also effective means of enhancing the student’s abilities and the mentor’s skills as well. In many US schools, these mentoring programs are mandatory to ensure that the new teacher is fully capable of handing the classes.

In some schools, mentoring programs are instituted not only to prepare the new teacher for the job but also as a way of addressing the problem of teacher shortage. A recent news published on Contra Costa Times reveals that almost 25% of new teachers in California leave their job in their first four years of teaching because of lack of support from the administration and fellow teachers. Also, the mentoring program adds bureaucratic burden both for the novice teachers and their mentors. Apart from the additional responsibilities that are given to the teachers, there’s a lot of paperwork that needs to be accomplished. This includes preparing lesson plans, evaluations, and progress and accomplishment reports.

In order to ensure that mentoring programs are successfully implemented, here are some tips and pointers to remember:

? Eliminate unnecessary paperwork and requirements ? this has been recommended by UC Riverside researchers after finding out that a lot of mentors and new teachers engaged in the program are complaining about the repetitive tasks and extra paperwork they need to accomplish. Aside from the fact that neophyte teachers are already overwhelmed by their new responsibilities, they are still burdened with lots of paperwork including preparing lesson plans, which usually consumes so much of their time. It is recommended that programs should focus on mentoring itself. The new and veteran teachers may engage in less taxing activities that would allow them to interact and share knowledge, skills and experiences freely.

You can see that there’s practical value in learning more about Mentoring. Can you think of ways to apply what’s been covered so far?

? New teachers must be matched with the right mentors ? It is important for the new teacher and the mentor to interact without any inhibition. To be able to achieve this, the administrators must strive to match news teachers with mentors who share with them same qualities and interests. This would allow the new teacher to freely ask questions and ask for tips and advices from the mentor.

? Have separate evaluators ? In order for the mentor and the new teacher to focus on their main tasks, they must be relieved from doing additional tasks such as evaluation of the program. A separate evaluator who shall meet the veteran and the new teachers to discuss the progress of the mentoring program may be assigned.

? Conduct regular assessment of the whole mentoring program ? Campus-level administrators should not only evaluate progress of the newly hired teachers but as well as the whole mentoring, training and coaching program of the school, which includes the mentors capability to coach neophyte teachers, the process of mentoring, the students’ progress vis-à-vis to the new teachers’ progress during the program, and other forms of support and assistance given to the new teacher.

It is also important to determine the thoughts or opinions of other teachers about the program and its impact on their desire to stay or leave the school or the teaching profession. These things are vital to the implementation and improvement not only of the mentoring programs of the particular school but of others as well.

Of course, it’s impossible to put everything about Mentoring into just one article. But you can’t deny that you’ve just added to your understanding about Mentoring, and that’s time well spent.