Gilly Johnson, Director and Founder, AMC

How do you know what you want in a mentor?

These two questions are asked regularly by both mentors and mentees. An extensive amount of information has been written around what makes for a good mentor or what the skills are required to be a mentor, along with what to look for in a mentor. In January 2008, the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an article: Why Mentoring Matters in a Hypercompetitive World which contained a short section on what makes a good mentor?

 Triple Creek Associates

 Gilly Johnson, Director and Founder, AMC

 Karen Brown, Manager Mentoring Services, AMC

Larry Ambrose

"One-on-one mentoring is the most common form of mentoring, but it is not always possible in every organization. there are, however, alternative mentoring models to consider with their own unique benefits..."

Thomas J. Leonard

"Mentors hold and create a space of possibility. Mentors help us to evolve ourselves as human beings so that may move into that possibility..."

Jim Perrone

"As a mentor, your role is not to solve your protege's problems - it is to facilitate that individual's problem-solving efforts. This requires that you resist the temptation to tell your protege what to do and instead allow the individual to think through problems and come up with solutions independently..."

Rey Carr

"According to the Conference Board of Canada, the proportion of employers using specific compensation strategies to attract and retain key talent has jumped to 81 per cent from the 66 per cent a year earlier. And more and more organizations are conducting satisfaction surveys to deal with soaring turnover problems..."

Peter D. Thornton

"We all place emphasis on the quality of education for environmental health students because they are the future of our profession. We need just as much emphasis, however, on the mentoring that occurs outside of education, in the real world. A mentor is a teacher or coach. It makes little difference whether you are a manager, a supervisor, a faculty member, or the one showing the newest employee the ropes - you are a mentor. Being a mentor is an opportunity that is open to nearly everyone, but being a high quality mentor is a much different matter..."

Cathie Ann Schweitzer

"For many individuals, the effects of a mentoring program continue to exist beyond the life of an undergraduate mentoring program. Faculty and students should form mentoring relationships to provide opportunities of encouragement, counseling, academic guidance, and facilitation. Networks and contacts established through mentoring can enhance the professional experience. Although much has been written in both the professional and popular literature about mentoring, no single accepted definition of mentoring exists..."

Dr Marie Heartfield, Ms Teri Gibson, Dr Dagmar Nasel - University of South Australia (on behalf of Department of Health and Ageing)

These fact sheets aim to provide a resource for implementing mentoring as a professional support strategy for nurses in general practice. The fact sheets invlude:

• What is mentoring & what can it offer
• Benefits and limitations
• Useful terms
• Information for mentors and mentees
• Mentoring options and examples
• Designing a mentoring program

Primary Health Care Research & Information Service

"The Primary Health Care Research and Information Service (PHC RIS) supports primary health care providers to develop high quality research and evaluation knowledge and skills. One of the many ways this is being achieved is through mentoring. This fact sheet lists key information about mentoring matters."