A Comparison of the Mentor and the Guide Roles

©1992, Barry Sweeny

The following chart is to illustrate how I differentiated between the jobs of the Mentor (working with a protege with a year or less recent experience), and a Guide (working with a protege who has more than a year of recent previous experience).

This approach was used for the four years that I was the coordinator of both the Mentor and Guide Programs at an organization in Wheaton, Illinois, and worked very flexibly and well. Specifically, the benefits of this dual role system are listed below, but also include greater flexibility in matching support providers to proteges when less-than-ideal matches must be made. Further, if a stipend is attached to the mentoring role, you may get complaints or even union grievances when using only a mentor role, and when two different mentors are each assigned proteges, but where one protege is more experienced and easier to mentor than another.

The basic concept behind this roles structure is to:

The diagram illustrates that BOTH the mentor and guide will help with location-specific orientation and assistance, and with a friendly supportive relationship, but that ONLY the mentor also provides assistance designed to facilitate the protege's professional development.

A MENTOR  

does #1, #2 and #3

  1. A Helper Role

Orientation To the:

  • Building
  • Organization
  • Community
  • Traditions & culture
  • Expectations

A GUIDE

does #1 and #2

 2. A Collegial Role A friend, listener & confidante
 3. A Role Model Challenging & facilitating the professional growth of another employee

Acting as a one-to-one staff developer and coach

Modeling the continuous search to be the best employee possible, thru openness to feed back & learning from others.		  

© 2003 by the International Mentoring Association

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