Mentoring Centre for Excellence

We are committed to shining a light on mentors and their contributions, ensuring they are recognised, valued, and elevated within the professional community. Find out how we reached our definition here.

Mentoring practice is dynamic and evolving in a rapidly changing global context. A definition needs to reflect and enhance professional practice. The EMCC Mentoring Review Group, was tasked by the Global Executive Board (GEB) to review the existing definition and make recommendations for an updated understanding. In alignment with EMCC values of professionalism, diversity, and inclusion, the Review Group adopted a triangulation approach, which included a literature search, focus groups and survey of members.

The findings reflect and incorporate the perspectives of the wider community of mentors, including views from inside and outside the EMCC’s global community. From this research, we have created a new fit for purpose definition of Mentoring.

The new wording serves not only as an updated definition but also represents EMCC’s current understanding of the essence of Mentoring. We recognise that this definition encapsulates a broad view, and, as work in progress, we would love any feedback and development suggestions.

While creating the new Mentoring definition, we recognise that Coaching and Mentoring share many of the same characteristics, lying along a structured conversational continuum. But that there are some very different views held globally e.g.:

• One school of thought, more common in the US, believes that coaching takes the form of a non-directive intervention, while mentoring allows for directive advice giving.
• Others argue that both ought to be non-directive (and are based on coaching skills), but that a difference arises in the level of relevant knowledge and willingness to contextualise and share this expertise.

EMCC seeks to cover these views together with nuanced versions, thus, to be a truly global definition of Mentoring

This new proposed definition has been broken down in the table below and the sources of different aspects of the new definition are exemplified in the numbered references.

Table 1 Key parts of mentoring derived from the consultation

[1] Several leading professionals refer to learning and describe the Mentor/Mentee dynamic as a relationship.

[2] All interviewees talk of skills, knowledge, and expertise being transferred or shared between Mentor/Mentee. The Survey lists Knowledge transfer as the top keyword. Expertise reflects references to Domain Knowledge and experience.

[3] Developmental Conversation: is the result of the initial definition and additional ideas from survey results, and the idea that the setting in which Mentoring takes is a conversational space.

[4] Experience Sharing: Suggests that a Mentor may have experience of the mentees desired knowledge gain. A number of those surveyed suggested a person with greater experience share; that the relationship adds insights into each other’s values and skills; and that the Mentor needs specific knowledge (implicit in experience)

[5] Role Modelling: This was mentioned very often during our feedback gathering

[6] Contexts are very broad reflecting the understanding of mentoring in the Americas, Australasia compared to Europe, for example, the IMA stress the value of mentoring in sharing of network relationships and for career development.

[7] Two-way partnership: All experts reflected on the learning the Mentor takes from the mentoring relationship, supporting a two-way experience.

[8] Mutual Learning: A Mentor learns from each meeting as does the Mentee – learning exchange, also having benefits for the mentor, mutually beneficial, 2-way development relationship, reciprocal, yet asymmetrical relationship established for the personal and professional development of the participants and mutual knowledge transfer

[9] The new definition simply states, ‘valuing differences’ and ‘inclusive’. The original EMCC definition used the following words: “between peers or across differences such as age, race or discipline” but we felt that simplifying this was better to embrace all possible differences rather than prescribing a specific narrow list of values/qualities that a Mentor or Mentee should hold/be aware of.