E-Mentoring For Professional Growth

Since the days of King Arthur who thrived under the tutelage of Merlin, the benefits of mentoring for the protégé have been well documented. More recently, mentoring has been shown to be beneficial to the mentor and the organization. At the turn of the century, however, individual mentors are often a luxury that excludes women, minorities, and many others in need of professional coaching. Fortunately, the rise of the Internet has helped alleviate this shortage by making e-mentoring a rapidly expanding alternative to the more traditional format. This paper builds the case that all professionals can benefit from both being a protégé and being a mentor. It will look at the incidence of e-mentoring and the types of relationships and benefits that result. The authors will suggest that e-mentoring should not replace the more traditional mentor-mentee relationship when it is available, but is a valuable substitute when supply and demand are not a good match. Likewise, e-mentoring can be a helpful substitute to the person-to-person mentoring relationship which is often organization-based as opposed to profession-based. Finally, the authors report on professional organizations that are taking an active role in mentoring junior members or even students and pose questions as to whether the IPCC might take a more active role in this type of professional development