Mentoring Methods and Ideas

http://www.theevansgroupllc.com/published-articles/nurturing-mentoring-and-networking/
Mentoring Methods and Ideas
A mentor is more than an adviser. A mentor provides you with intelligence, technical knowledge, assistance, support, empathy and respect throughout, and often beyond, your graduate career. Mentoring helps learners understand how their ambitions match graduate education, department lifestyle and career choices.

An effective coaching relationship develops over time. The student benefits from the mentor’s support, skills, wisdom and coaching. Later, both people deepen their working relationship, perhaps collaborating on projects in which the student develops in to a junior colleague.

After a while, the mentee may need some separation from the mentor to test their own ideas. This distancing is a sign that the coaching relationship is maturing and providing the mentee with all the skills needed to function separately. Finally, both mentee and mentor may redefine their particular relationship as one of equals, characterized over time by informal contact and mutual assistance, hence becoming true professional colleagues.