Mentoring Future Leaders

Mentoring Future Leaders
© Learning Link International
March 2005
Can Your Mentor Be Your Friend?
Some mentoring relationships develop
progressively into friendship. Once two people
have connected at a deep emotional level, they
tend to have a special bond that lasts beyond
their official contract.
Outsiders who are not familiar with the dynamics
of the mentor-mentee relationships might frown
upon it, especially if the relationship is between a
male and female.
If the relationship is friendship, both parties have to give and take from it
without an expectation of a reward.
Clutterbuck and Megginson conclude:
Richard Field, a respondent in Clutterbuck’s study, is
not ambivalent about the matter. For him “A mentor is
a friend, a coach, a judge and an encourager. You
have got to have enormous trust and a long-term
relationship which can be created in moments. To
do this you have to be prepared to be totally
vulnerable – when I have given trust, I don’t think I
have ever been let down.” (2000, p.163)
“On the one hand there is a keeping of professional boundaries, on
the other a modelling of single-minded commitment. Those of us who
mentor are faced with a choice in this matter and, as in so much about
this engaging subject, there are no easy right answers. The way
forward is to do what you do to be your kind of mentor, with
conscious awareness, and with the humility to check that it is working
for the others involved.” (p.163)
Module 3 - Building Trusting
Relationships
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