ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the practice of developing mentor competences. In a project that the Mentoring and Coaching Research Group at Sheffield Hallam University has recently carried out for the European Foundation for Management Development, in conjunction with practitioners and researchers in Germany and Switzerland, we have developed a new framework for developing mentor competences. A design consideration in using the skills approach is to decide how fine-grained the description of the skills will be. The focus in the business case approach is on helping learner mentors to relate the mentoring that they are to do to the context in which their organization is embedded. The conscious seeking approach seems best suited to the supportive/restorative process. Whatever approach is adopted, each has issues for the supervision of mentors. The term supervision is one that has been borrowed from other helping professions, for example counselling, psychotherapy, education, medicine and social work.
