MENTORING TECHNIQUE: A REFLECTIVE WARNINGS ON DYSFUNCTIONAL MENTORING ON DEVELOPING LEADERS IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE PROFESSION

The review of literature shows that one of the finest methods to groom the latent leadership quality in new librarians and other information science professionals is by mentoring. Mentors take significant share in the development and moulding of new entrants into any profession as tutors and role models. However good, the use of mentoring looks in the leadership development of new librarians and other information professionals, there exist combinations of putative crucial aspects in mentoring, which have adverse consequence on the neophyte. These antithetical aspects include mentors diminution of the mentees, usurping the duties of mentees, personality brawl, illicit relationship, sexual nuisance, exploitation, verbal insults, and enviousness or mentors handling the mentees like gofers. This paper looks at the implications of dysfunctional mentoring affiliations and how these grave destructive occurrences can be circumvented. This paper therefore scrutinizes the jeopardies in mentoring as a process of building emerging young librarians and other information professionals and suggests ways of reinvigorating mentoring association to make it a greater beneficial instrument for mounting the future library and information professionals. The time is ripe to seriously and exhaustively look in details at mentoring affairs for the benefits of the triple parties - the mentors, the mentees and the library and information profession as an entity