EVERYONE LIKE

Source Original in mentoring program handbook for TMI public seminars.
Copyright 1989 The Mentoring Institute Inc.

The Real Mentoring:
Mentoring is as old as humanity itself. Mentoring is a process, a set of behaviours, and a relationship. Before the advent of public schooling and formal training programs, mentoring was the primary means for learning from those who had gone before -- parents, teachers, leaders, healers, warriors, priests, artists.

Though some may mistakenly conceive that mentoring in times past was only of the informal sort as we now call it, in fact it was anything but. The process was commonly contractual, followed a series of clearly understood stages, involved tests of ability and had a progressive but clear delineation between the novice and the expert. Where control was possible (such as in the preparation of the young to take over from their elders), nothing was left to chance in a world filled with uncertainties such as the daily quest for food, war, decimating plagues, high infant mortality, short life span, natural disasters, perilous travel conditions, constant competition for economic and organisational leadership.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Dictionary of Occupational Titles calls mentoring: ...the most complex of all human activities" because it involves and amalgam of teaching, counselling, negotiating, supervising, coaching, persuading, and other personal and interpersonal skills.