Mentor - for what, for whom?... and is it Vital?

"Every change begins with setting goals. However, mere intention is not enough to reach the finish line. There needs to be a constant awareness of why we even embarked on this journey."

Mentoring is a discipline that involves teaching, inspiring, and managing the educational process of another person.Through this process, the competencies and practical skills of the mentee grow. The process always starts with analyzing the initial situation and determining where we are starting from and what needs to be changed, trained, or learned during the process. Next, we establish what the outcome should be and how the mentee will know that their expectations have been met. What criteria will we use to check if the process was successful? The next step is to plan actions that will guide the mentee from the start to the finish line or to the designated outcome. The mentor controls and adjusts the methods and means, as well as the results from each stage, which the mentee uses on their way to the specified result.

For a mentor to be well-prepared both intellectually and mentally for their role, a part of their professional work involves utilizing supervision from more experienced mentors. Supervision is the substantive, process-oriented, and psychological support provided by a professional coach, mentor, tutor, or trainer in conducting sessions with a specific client or group.

What mentoring is not- it is not therapy, coaching, or tutoring. It does not belong to therapeutic methods, nor is it treatment or healing.The main task of mentoring is to provide proven, model, and validated solutions for the mentee.Methods of action that will lead to the development of competencies until the desired outcome is achieved, along with proficiency and high efficiency.

Mentoring is based on the personal resources of the educator, their education, experience, competencies, and skills.The mentor's task is to achieve the result according to the initial agreements and to fit within the established criteria, which are indicators of success for the mentee. Most often, these criteria arise from the project in which the mentee operates, and the specifics of the discipline in which the mentor works. The project itself is a process in which the criteria for effectiveness are indisputable and non-negotiable throughout its course. The task of the mentee is to fulfill the criteria as fully as possible in order to achieve their desired result. In mentoring, effectiveness is based on proven models of action.

Edyta Dawiskiba