What do the Greek goddess Athena, Professor Xavier, Morpheus, and Rooster Cogburn all have in common? Each of these characters is a mentor who, by their teaching, support and example, inspires and empowers their mentee, or protege to grow, to take successful action – to be a hero.
Business studies demonstrate the difference having a good mentor can make to your career (as well the bottom line of companies who use a mentoring system). Experts emphasize the importance of picking a mentor carefully, and provide selection guidelines to ensure a good fit between mentor and protege.
What kind of career mentor are you looking for? Have mentors in popular culture skewed your expectations?
Is Your Model Derived from Popular Culture?
Television, the movies, comics and other works of fiction are full of mentor figures. Some mentors are powerful magic users; others are all-too-human, wounded or flawed.
Fictional mentors usually follow one of four tropes:
- Magic Mentor
- Childhood Mentor
- Unlikely Mentor
- Advisor/Mentor
Magic Mentor or Guardian Deity
The word “mentor” comes from the Odyssey, where the goddess Athena, patron of Odysseus, appears to advise his son in the person of a servant named Mentor (Odyssey, Book II, 257-258).
In many fairy tales, fairy godmothers play role of mentors, watching over their charges, and stepping in to produce everything Cinderella needs for the Prince’s ball, or transform the death curse on Sleeping Beauty to a hundred years’ sleep.
Modern-day examples of “guardian deity” mentors include characters such as Mr. Waverly in “The Man From Uncle”, Charlie in “Charlie’s Angels”, Professor Xavier of the X-Men, and Hettie Lang in “NCIS”. These mentors are, in essence, magic. They are often invisible, off the scene, physically or emotionally remote. They initiate the action and equip the protege with advice and tools to execute their mission.
Sometimes they intervene as a deus ex machina to rescue or help the protege (“the hero) in times of crisis (Glinda the Good Witch of the North in “The Wizard of Oz”; Angel in early “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, various gods in Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology).
Guardian deity are typically “good guys”, fiercely loyal to the hero, but mysterious and somewhat unpredictable. They intervene to initiate the action or turn the tables in the hero’s favour. Then they’re gone. This type of mentor is not the most useful in career and life, because you cannot easily learn by following their example. Too many rescues and you never have to grow up.
Childhood Mentor
Childhood mentors are the teachers and parents of the hero in childhood, who appear briefly at the beginning of the story, if at all, having taught the hero as much as they could.
Examples of this type of mentor include Master Po (Kwai Chang Caine’s teacher in “Kung Fu”), D’Artagnan’s father in “The Three Musketeers”, and the parents in many fairy stories. They are good people, who may have taught lasting lessons, but they are unavailable to us today.
Unlikely or Flawed Mentor
This mentor shares something in common with the magic mentor – they appear fortuitously on the scene when the hero has a critical need for help. 
Examples include Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda in Star Wars, Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid, Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, all the scenarios where an unlikely, apparently down-and-out “has-been” coaches an unlikely contender to overcome their adversaries. They encourage and motivate the hero to accomplish the necessary task, but you don’t necessarily want to grow up to be like them, or to tread the same career path.
Mentor/Advisor
The mentor/advisor helps the almost adult protege understand and adapt to new surroundings and circumstances. The protege wants to grow up to be like them. This mentor enlightens and prepares the protege to meet new challenges. Through this experience, the mentor often learns and grows too.
Once the challenges have been met, the protege may have changed or advanced so much that they have outgrown a given mentor/mentee relationship. Then the mentor is left behind, or the relationship may be reversed or transform into one of equals or near equals. Examples of this type of relationship include: Socrates and Plato, Morpheus and Neo, Stilgar and Paul Muad’Dib (“Dune”), Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter, Dr. Larry Fleinhardt and Charlie Epps (Numb3rs).
Working With a Real-Life Mentor
A good career mentor is not magic and is not primarily a “rescuer”. Lisa Quait, in her CareerWoman blog, says: “A mentor is generally someone farther up the career ladder than you, someone you admire for their professionalism, for their knowledge and for their ability to succeed in difficult situations….They act as your advisor and provide suggestions and guidance on development opportunities, career paths, and leadership strategies.”
Your company, university, or professional association may actively promote mentoring or be willing to help broker a mentor/protege relationship. If this service is not advertised, ask.
A good mentor knows when to let go. If you continued to be dependent and did not, or could not move forward into your full responsibilities, you would have failed, and (to a greater or lesser degree) your mentor would also have failed.
Once you hit your stride, your relationship with your mentor may change or cease. Later you may seek another mentor, or become a mentor yourself. Your successes may equal, surpass or be completely different from those of your mentors. (Holly L. Roberts notes that “One of the most famous mentor-protege chains starts with Socrates, the Greek philosopher whose protege was the philosopher Plato. Plato, in turn, mentored Aristotle, whose protege was Alexander the Great.”)
Does Everyone Need a Mentor?
Many people are successful in their careers without mentors; however, mentors can make it easier by helping you connect the dots, more quickly. If you decide to seek a mentor, make sure you are at the right stage of your career to benefit from such a relationship, and that you share similar values.
Also examine your motives: Is a mentor is actually what you want – and need right now? If you’re experiencing stuckness or wanting to increase your effectiveness in your chosen field, a personal or career coach may be a better way to go. If the stuckness seems to stem from emotional issues, you may get more out of psychological counselling. (A coach friend of mine once remarked that well over 50% of the people who came to her for career coaching, she sent away to get marriage counselling first.) If you discover the issues are spiritual, spiritual direction or pastoral counselling may be a better choice. Revisit business mentoring as, and when, appropriate for you.
Jennifer
I’ve worked as an independent writer and career consultant, for 20 over years. I am most grateful for the Mentor/Advisors in my life. Have you had a good (or a challenging) experience as a mentor or protege? Please share it here.
Let's explore new ways of thinking about your career and business. 
Don’t overlook the value of tormentors as well as mentors. Those hard-to-please, apparently malign supervisors who provide valuable insights in how to accommodate yourself to life’s difficulties.
Good point, Peter. Satisfying a tough customer can be a great learning experience, so long as they are not, in fact malign (“crazy boss”, “impossible customer”). When dealing with repeated bad behaviour, the best learning may come from moving on, as gracefully as possible.
Agreed. I think the distinction I would make is that the tormentor has no idea that he (or she) is actually teaching you while they are misbehaving. Whereas the mento presumably has a goal to help you understand and learn. I told one of my excellent managers at Nortel that I had learned more from my worst manager. He got the compliment:)