Leadership & the Challenges Of Mentoring
Mentoring can be de
fined as the process of influencing, guiding and directing of a younger, less experienced leader (protégée) by an older, wiser, trusted, more experienced leader (mentor). Such influence usually contributes greatly to shaping the personality, principles, beliefs, values, vision and life of the protégée.
Every leader will eventually move on from his current leadership position. Effective leaders ensure that when the time comes for them to move on, they have credible, capable and competent leaders to replace them. Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore ( the man who led the team that transformed Singapore from a third world jungle to a first world oasis in three decades) says that concerning the building of the modern Singapore, their greatest and final task was to find worthy successors who would carry on effectively from where they stopped.
Families, churches, organizations and nations have realized that consistently superior performance is possible only if one generation of credible, capable and competent leaders is replaced by another. This not only ensures continuity of progress towards the vision, but also consistency of corporate culture. The result is consistent performance across board and levels.
In order to achieve this, pro-active organizations must institute formal mentoring programmes, aimed at identifying high performers and ensuring a transfer of their skills, knowledge, attitude and passion to the next generation of leaders.