In Elements of Mentoring, W. Brad Johnson and Charles R. Ridley provide a guide for professionals to serve as mentors to young proteges in the corporate environment. Mentoring relationships are complex and require inward and outward awareness and understanding. Such relationship are dynamic, reciprocal, and personal; ones where the mentor serves as a guide or teacher to a less experience coworker. As Johnson and Ridley define them, "Mentors provide proteges with knowledge, advice, counsel, support, and opportunity in the proteges pursuit of full membership in a particular profession" (p. xv). The benefits of the mentor relationship for proteges include higher wages, more promotions, fast-track career movement, greater professional competence and others.
The authors provide a review of professional research on mentoring and identify a number of main elements for effective mentoring that they group into six categories: 1) Matters of skill; 2) Matters of style and personality; 3) Matters of beginning; 4) Matters of integrity; 5) matters of restoration; and 6) Matters of closure. Each of these themes guide mentors in successful mentoring relationships. In matters of skill, the authors outline what excellent mentors do. What they do includes things like selecting protegees carefully, offer encouragement and support, affirm, and they display dependability and other behaviors. The skills, attitude and knowledge of mentors must be adapted to each protege for ultimate success. As the authors' relate, "You should understand how each distinct mentoring element is crucial for your proteges development and how you might most effectively deliver it in your unique context or professional field" (Johnson and Ridley 1). In matters of style, the best mentors have particular traits and personal qualities that make them more effective in protege interactions, like "listening actively," "tolerating idealization," "embracing hu...