Mentoring has a long history. Waymer explains that mentoring occurred for early human survival and “has been in existence since the dawn of civilization” making mentoring “firmly entrenched in our human culture” [1] (p. 403). Documentation of mentoring can be traced back to Homer’s “Odyssey”, estimated to have been composed around 700 BCE [2]. However, the term “mentor” first appeared in François Fénelon’s work and had a profound influence on education [3]. Fénelon, the royal tutor for the Duke of Burgundy, created novels to address the Duke’s behavioral issues; the most influential novel titled “Les Aventures de Télémaque, Fils d’Ulysse” (1699), portrays the character “Mentor” as someone who shared knowledge and guided in ways that were “interpersonal and mutually affectionate in nature”, capturing aspects of nurturing development [4] (p. 129). As Blunsden explains, “it was the result of The Adventures’s huge popularity during the course of the eighteenth century that the word ‘mentor’ came into common usage in French, German, Italian, and English to refer to a person who provides advice and guidance to somebody less experienced.” [4] (p. 131). Garvey contends that “Fénelon’s Mentor offers us a model of Mentor that is still relevant today and includes such qualities as fostering independence and self-efficacy by supporting and challenging the learner” [3] (p. 9). Caraccioli’s later writings in 1759 reinforced Fénelon’s work and emphasized altruism in mentoring where mentors were ideally to focus on the mentee’s “holistic growth … without capitalizing upon or exploiting their dependence” [4] (p. 133). Not long after, in 1778, mentoring appeared in Ann Murry’s publication of “Mentoria: The Young Ladies Instructor” in the United States furthering the ideas and practice [5].

Grounded in Fénelon’s and others’ subsequent work, mentoring conceptualization and practices emanated and expanded in education fields to guide and share knowledge while enhancing mentee development. Organizations such as Big Brothers (founded in 1910) formalized mentoring programs and expanded mentoring that focused on developing youth beyond academic contexts [3,5]. By the 1980s, mentoring practices became more widespread in education. Hobson and colleagues trace “the modern rise of mentoring as a means of supporting the initial and early professional learning of beginning teachers” to programs in England, North America, and other parts of Europe, with the United States and Europe sometimes requiring mentoring programs to increase retention and attract educators [6] (p. 208).

While mentoring has a long history in educational settings in terms of theorizing and practice [6], industry’s interest in mentoring research is more recent. Prior to the 1970s, while employers were receptive and there were some experiments, there was not a systematic focus on mentoring research with only 2 publications on mentoring between 1975 and 1979 [7]. By the 1970s, mentoring and coaching research expanded with the constructs treated as two separate fields [7]. According to Underhill, “in 1983, Merriam published the first critical review of the literature on mentoring. At that time mentoring was believed to create success in the career of the protégé, but this belief was not readily substantiated by research at the time” [8] (p. 293). In the same year, Kram’s study of dyadic mentoring relationships in a public utility company identified career and psychosocial functions of mentoring in the United States [9].

Kram subsequently published “Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life” in 1985, which noted the ways mentors could provide career mentoring and use their influence to advocate on the behalf of mentees [10]. That same year in the United Kingdom, Clutterbuck and Devine’s book “Everyone Needs a Mentor: How to Foster Talent Within the Organization” was published [11]. This book included five case studies to explore how to identify and develop potential managers, equip experienced employees with knowledge and awareness of potential career options, enhance network development, and increase women’s promotions [10]. “In the first edition of “Everyone Needs a Mentor”, Clutterbuck incorporated an acronym, MENTOR, which comes from another source, to indicate that the mentor must: Manage the relationship; Encourage the protégé; Nurture the protégé, Teach the protégé, Offer mutual respect and Respond to the protégé’s needs” [10] (p. 142). Kram and Clutterbuck’s works oriented to mentoring differently based on their cultural context with Kram’s United States focus concentrating more on what mentoring does (sponsorship model) and Clutterbuck’s European focus attending more to the mentoring process (developmental model) [12,13]. By the third edition of Clutterbuck’s “Everyone Needs a Mentor”, he noted evolving work on developmental mentoring in the United States and Canada where mentoring was increasingly promoting self-sufficiency and self-reliance [14].

Around the 2000s, there was also increasing interest in making distinctions between mentoring and coaching, as well as recognition of overlapping elements [7]. As Stokes and colleagues differentiate:

Coaches often have a specific, clear goal and provide targeted advice for improvement, which is not encumbered by social and personal expectations commonly found in mentoring relationships [15]. Even so, coaching often includes characteristics, skill sets, and experiences related to mentoring making it difficult to distinguish between the two [16]. Further, Garvey contends that there is “a hybridization of coaching and mentoring beginning to emerge across different sectors” [3] (p. 14).

Regardless of the distinction between mentoring and coaching, the practice of mentoring has increased in prominence and attracted scholarly research. By 2005–2009, there were 320 mentoring related publications, and that rate has increased in subsequent years [7]. Mentoring has been substantiated as a mechanism for personal and professional development [17,18,19], employee retention [20,21], and to enhance organizational culture [22,23].

Considering extensive scholarship across international contexts and disciplines including communication, business, education, medicine, engineering, psychology, sociology and others, this entry reviews pertinent research and scholarly work to define and explore what is known about mentoring. In working to provide a comprehensive definition of mentoring, we synthesize mentoring research and theory across international contexts and disciplines in this entry. We recognize that no definition fully encapsulates all the nuances of the depth and breadth of research; therefore, we lean heavily on scholarly work to support this conceptualization. We also note variations in the conceptualization of mentoring across different international contexts. As previously noted, the foundation of mentoring research in the United States focused primarily on career sponsorship and support, whereas European work focused more on developmental aspects of mentoring [12]. While distinct cultural contexts, a greater focus on relational and developmental aspects of mentoring is gaining attention in the United States [17,20].

Broadly, mentoring is a series of communication interactions over time that involve the exchange of experiences or accumulated knowledge between individuals in a relationship with the intent of assisting growth and developing capacity [20,24,25,26,27]. As we unpack this definition further and explore mentoring scholarship, we note that across the mentoring literature, the individuals who are mentored are referred to as protégés or mentees. This entry uses the term mentees for consistency, except when quoting research studies. Below, each of the primary components of this definition is explained before discussing details of mentoring functions, formats, challenges and benefits, individual characteristics, and future research directions.

The first component of this mentoring definition, a series of communication interactions over time, highlights the important role of communication. Regular exchanges in ongoing intervals are a core feature of mentoring [25,28]. While mentoring structures and arrangements vary, mentoring relationships are developed and maintained through a series of verbal and nonverbal interactions that are necessary to nurture trust and share important experiences and knowledge [29]. These relationships generally begin by identifying mutual goals, values, and commonalities [30] which evolve through conversations over time as mentors and mentees learn about each other, identify similarities, engage in mutual confirmation [31], and establish trust [32,33].

Poor mentor and mentee communication is problematic, because “miscommunication, differing goals, and unclear boundaries often lead to dissatisfaction,” and mentees may not receive the assistance necessary to move toward their goals [21] (p. 19). Johnson and colleagues report that the mentoring relationships they studied during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered when relational development and maintenance became limited to videoconferencing [34]. Relying on technology rather than in-person interactions can make casual conversations challenging, and missing nonverbal cues increases difficulty in developing mutual understanding [26]. Yet Megginson contends that technology enables more possibility for communication between mentor and mentee across locations and organizations because actual face-to-face communication is not required to sustain the relationship [35]. Ultimately, ongoing, regular communication is at the center of developing mentoring relationships [36].

Second, mentoring involves the exchange of experiences or accumulated knowledge, as well as assisting growth and developing capacity, emphasizing the value of mentoring relationships [1,37,38,39]. From a United States perspective, the importance and pervasiveness of mentoring was noted by Lorenzetti et al. who explain that mentorship is “part of the ‘fabric’ of contemporary culture and is often viewed as essential to career advancement” [30] (para. 4). Ragins further describes that “mentoring is a critical career resource that predicts advancement, compensation, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, retention and even work-life balance” [20] (p. 1). Mentoring focuses on professional development and career advancement, psychosocial support to develop self-efficacy and confidence, and role modeling [19]. For this to occur, the mentor must be willing and equipped to share pertinent knowledge with the intention of enhancing the mentee’s development and career advancement. From a European perspective, mentorship is primarily focused on mentee development, where the mentor’s primary role is to support the mentee’s learning [12]. Clutterbuck’s fieldwork in 1985 resulted in identifying five developmental stages including: “rapport building, direction setting, progress making, maturation, and moving on” [10] (p. 187). Following these stages, the ultimate goal is to nurture mentees to become self-sufficient over time.

Third, mentoring involves individuals in a relationship that can be configured in a variety of ways. Mentoring relationships can be formally assigned or developed informally through voluntary interactions [31]. Mentoring has largely been conceptualized as a dyadic arrangement with a mentor and mentee [24]. The mentor is frequently more senior with extensive experience to guide the younger or novice mentee [40]. However, mentoring relationship success depends on a basis of trust and mutual respect [41], as well as the engagement of both individuals [42,43]. The International Mentoring Association emphasizes that mentoring involves an “intense, trusting, supportive, positive, confidential, low-risk relationship within which the partners can try new ways of working and relating, make mistakes, gain feedback, accept challenges, and learn from each other” [44]. Broadly, the dyadic relationship arrangement assumes a directional mentoring approach, where information is passed from the mentor to the mentee [25].

In contrast to Western contexts, Eastern mentoring relationships tend to be more formal and hierarchical. For example, “Chinese formal mentoring relationships often are ritualized with official ceremonies that mark their start” and “are embedded in mentors’ and mentees’ social networks” [25] (p. 300). In Japan, mentees respect hierarchical relationships and power distance by following the advice of their mentors [45].

Reverse mentoring is a particular dyadic relationship that is different from typical directional mentoring approaches in that the mentee is also responsible for sharing knowledge and experience with the mentor for mutual benefit [3,46]. In reverse mentoring, those normally considered mentors become mentees. For example, a more senior team member can benefit from learning new technologies or developing different skill sets from more junior mentees as the relationship involves reciprocal sharing [22]. In addition to technology and hard skills, reverse mentoring can be used to help those with non-diverse backgrounds learn from those with more layers of diversity and broader cultural experience, thereby enhancing an organizational culture of inclusion [20].

Further, not all mentoring relationships are confined to dyads. For example, cohort mentoring involves cluster hiring groups of people to engage in peer mentoring with introductions to a variety of organizational mentors over time; this creates opportunities for numerous mentoring relationships and support [47,48]. Buzzanell describes how feminist mentoring practices involve bringing people together through experiences to support and nurture each other over time [17]. Overall, relationships are central to mentoring. Next, we explore research on the different mentoring functions that researchers have identified.