Mentorship: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies

This document discusses the benefits and challenges of mentorship in organizations. It explores how mentorship programs can bridge the gap between high performing and average performing employees. The document also highlights the various benefits of mentoring relationships, such as higher performance by mentees and leadership opportunities for mentors. However, it also addresses the challenges faced by mentors, including assessing mentees' background, dealing with inexperienced mentees, and setting reasonable goals. Strategies for overcoming these challenges are also discussed.

Running head: MENTORSHIP
MENTORSHIP
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Most of the organizations are creating as well as implementing different types of mentor
programs for helping to bridge the gap between their high performing employees as well as their
average performing employees. The mentor relationship is developed with a mentee when more
experienced employees take the responsibility of coaching as well as advising junior employee.
In this relationship, the mentors get the chance of sharing his own experiences with another
person of the company (Choong 2017). Mentoring relationships can have various types of
benefits like that of the higher performance by the mentees, leadership opportunities by the
mentors and many others. It can also help in building the employee morale and help new
employees to get a grip of their job roles and activities and accordingly develop their skills.
However, several challenges also remain associated with mentoring. Some of the common
challenges that develop in the mentoring relationships include challenges with the program as
well as lack of commitment as well or even challenges with compatibility.
Being a mentor, an individual might face various types of challenges when they want to
deal with the mentees. The mentor might face issues in correctly assessing the mentees
background like that of knowledge and skills and face issues to judge the motivation of the
mentees. Another challenge that might also be faced by the mentors is dealing with
inexperienced mentees who lack basic knowledge and skills. They also need to address basic
misconceptions of the employees about science (Agalga and Thompson 2016). They may also
have troubles in setting reasonable goals for the project as different mentees might possess
different levels of knowledge and hence teamwork might be affected. Many mentees also face
challenges in keeping mentees engaged and might need to support mentees financially. This
might become burdensome for the mentees. Building mentees confidence as well as fostering
independence of the mentees is also some of the barriers faced by mentors during their sessions

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with mentees (Douglas et al. 2017). Often giving negative feedback to the mentees on lack of
progress, allocating time, remaining patients and finding resources are also some challenges
faced by mentors.

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References:
Agalga, J. and Thompson, E.S., 2016. Mentoring As A Tool For Career And Human Resource
Development: The Case Of The University For Development Studies. Uds International Journal
of Development, 3(1), pp.33-50.
Choong, P.L., 2017. Mentoring for leadership development of middle managers in Singapore
primary schools (Doctoral dissertation).
Douglas, L., Jackson, D., Woods, C. and Usher, K., 2017, October. The challenges and
effectiveness of at-risk young people mentoring their at-risk peers: a research protocol.
In International Journal Of Mental Health Nursing (Vol. 26, Pp. 10-10). 111 River St, Hoboken
07030-5774, Nj Usa: Wiley.