Negotiating Effectively: Practice Mentoring

On page 66 from The Essential Guide to Communication, by Dan O’Hair and Mary Wiemann the book discusses how mentoring works. A mentor is someone who has more experience and is able to be a role model for others who are less experienced, the protégé, by helping them out and setting a good example for them to excel too.

We can usually see mentors in the work field wherein they teach and help protégés develop their skills because they were the ones who have been there.  For the mentor-protégé relationship to work, the protégé should be willing to learn from and work with the mentor. On the other hand the mentor should be willing to “be approachable, confident, and secure,” for the protégé should be “ambitious, loyal, and open-minded,” so the relationship could work well and result in a positive note (O’Hair, 67).

The mentoring stages are:

1.       Initiation: this is when the mentor and protégé know more about each other, wherein the mentor gives advice to the protégé. As for the protégé, this is when he or she should be open-minded and ready to learn from the mentor.

2.       Cultivation: this is when the mentor and protégé create a deeper bond wherein the mentor “protects and promotes the protégé” (O’Hair, 67). Respect and familiarity is gained during this stage.

3.       Separation: this is when the mentor and protégé begins to drift apart, either because somebody moved to a different department or the protégé can handle him or herself on their own.

4.       Redefinition: this is the point wherein the relationship between the two is successful, and usually when the mentor and protégé see each other as equal. However, the mentor can still share advice with the protégé.