Institutionalizing Mentoring in South African Police Service in South Africa

Mentoring is a mutually beneficial relationship in which a knowledgeable and skilled veteran officer (mentor) provides insight, guidance and developmental opportunities to a lesser skilled and experienced colleague (protégé).For this article mentoring is a unique interpersonal relationship between two individuals (Janasz et al. 2013: 1437).The article's main goal is to establish whether and how mentoring can be used to promote development. The key purpose of mentoring relationships is to support and challenge both parties toward their learning and development (Parsloe and Wray, 2004; Garvey, 2014). Mentoring is to connect an individual who has a lot of knowledge and experience with someone who hasn’t gained the same knowledge or experience yet. Parsloe and Wray suggest that when all the theory is taken away, mentoring is still a simple one-to-one meeting held regularly to support the mentee in their ambitions to make improvements either in their personal or working life.A mentor, therefore, is a leader and a counsellor, who relates on a one-on-one basis with an individual, usually a younger person called a mentee (Akinade, 2001).S/he focuses on giving direction and imparting knowledge. The relationship should be based on mutual understanding and respect. The mentee is aware of his/her need for guidance and deliberately adopts the counsel of the mentor after careful consideration (if it is about making a personal choice). Hence, the mentor is not imposing himself/herself on the mentee. The relationship is not designed to obliterate the personality of the mentee neither is it meant to focus on the superiority of the mentor