Course for mentor in the sector of eco-industry

Re. 6.What competences of the mentor are deemed key in the organisation?
Re. 7. What competences of the mentee are the most important?

The EU Competence Framework for the Mentor may be found helpful for determining the mentor's key competence, as it defines thoroughly knowledge, skills and competence of the mentor in distribution into the following areas: development of good relations with mentees in the mentoring process, co-operation with the mentee and its support; planning, negotiation and implementing the work-based learning programme, support and motivation of the mentee at work, progress monitoring and feedback, evaluation of the traning process and of one's own contribution into it.

The literature includes many developed sets of attributes, features and competence that should describe the mentor. D. Clutterbuck mentions ten key competencies of the mentor, including:

• professional and business knowledge,
• untinterrupted self-education,
• mentoring relationship management,
• self-understanding (self-consciousness),
• understanding of other people (behavioural awareness),
• interest in development of other people,
• clarity of goals,
• conceptualisation,
• communicativeness,
• sense of humour and proportion.

It is worth to emphasise that subjective criteria, instead of the objective ones, determine whether somebody becomes the mentor, or not. If the mentor is for somebody who experiences support from him/her in his/her personal development – the mentee considers the mentor freely the authority, in inspired by its master, listens to him/her and identifies itself with him/her, so it may determine on its own competencies the mentor should have from the point of view of its personal development.
It is recognised that the perfect mentor is a person who identifies itself with the mentor's role, can motivate well, is a good organiser and can plan well, knows its industry (is a good expert) and is a good teacher (can transfer knowledge and skills), while being also communicative, good listener, commands trust and is able to preserve confidentiality.

Desired competencies of the mentee depend on several factors: one of key ones include expectations and requirements of the organisation in which mentoring is to be implemented, posed for employees on specific positions (they may be formalised as competence models). From the mentee's point of view, the willingness of development, openness, attitude to acquisition of new knowledge are the most important. The mentoring programme's goals should be related to the needs of employees participating in mentoring and expectations of the organisation, as key competencies of mentors and mentees shall depend also on them.