Another aspect of understanding the legal and ethical requirements is knowing about the potential barriers to a good relationship between mentor and apprentice, and how these can be overcome.
Most barriers to effective mentoring stem from:
- Personality issues between those involved in the mentoring relationship
- Lack of awareness of what the role of the mentor really is.
Common barriers include:
- Poor mentor/apprentice matching
- Lack of support from elsewhere – such as the rest of the business or the training organisation
- Dissatisfaction with the way the mentoring is conducted and its objectives
- Canceling mentoring meetings
- The creation of unrealistic expectations as to what mentoring can hope to achieve
- The lack, or blurring, of boundaries in terms of the mentor/apprentice relationship.
You need to think about some of the potential barriers to a good relationship between a mentor and an apprentice and how you might overcome them.