Mentoring is the process of teaching an employee about a business and increasing his skills through a one-on-one relationship with another employee, typically a manager, who has a greater amount of experience in the company. Mentoring is used by many companies to teach things that cannot be passed along in broad training: the culture of the company, the wisdom that experience imparts, the inner workings of higher positions that may not be immediately visible and many other types of important information. Mentoring can typically occur in either a formal setting created by a business or an informal setting that occurs more naturally.
Formal
Formal mentoring relationships occur when a business chooses a particular mentor and links her with a particular "student" or lower-level employee. This often occurs during leadership development programs, where a number of employees are chosen based on their potential and trained by mentors to fill higher positions. Formal mentoring allows a business to create very specific goals for the mentorship process and to reach those goals reliably.
Informal
Informal mentoring is an organic process in which junior employees form relationships with employees above them while asking questions about the company and their job. This is more common in companies in which the business culture encourages free-form teaching and on-the-job learning; it is not often found in a company where there are many levels of management. In businesses where management positions are very demanding, few leaders will have the time for informal mentoring.
Indirect Benefits
Indirect benefits refers to the intangible advantages of mentoring, the talents and encouragement that are passed along, which cannot be taught any other way. Informal mentoring works the best for this process. Informal mentoring is based on a rapport that the student and mentor already have, which makes it much easier for the student to pick up indirect benefits. When a company chooses a mentorship strategically, the mentor and student may not like each other at all, so valuable learning opportunities can be lost.
Perception of Mentoring
The perception of mentoring is also very important in a business. Informal mentoring is rarely seen as a threat, especially in a business where the culture encourages such relationships. Formal mentoring, while creating solid expectations, can create more serious interpersonal problems. A mentoring relationship may occur with a leader different from the employee's direct manager. In this case the direct manager may feel threatened by the relationship and try to sabotage the employee to save a job, authority or pride.
