A Mentor is the person who identifies the hidden potential and capabilities of his successors or team members. He guides, coaches, offers advices, trains, elevates, enlightens, motivates, shows the sources of help, grooms, encourages his efforts towards the desired goals and helps the successor reach the top of the career ladder. There are Political Mentors, Spiritual Mentors, Sports Mentors, Career Mentors, Industrial Mentors, Business Mentors and Academic Mentors.

Mentoring is a successful business strategy to share the wealth of knowledge. Mentoring is a new work opportunity for the early retirees who are very well versed with the business operations, human resource management and Knowledge Sharing. It also gives them great satisfaction and fulfillment. The mentor passes on the fruit of his experience, hard work and sometimes even the reputation and goodwill earned by him over the years. He shares the practical lessons he learnt in the field and tells his follower what to do and what not to do. He utilizes all the resources and means to bring out the best from his successor.

The Mentor has to : -

- Set a goal for his team member
- Develop him to his fullest potential
- Let him undergo rigorous training in the fields which are new to him; that is the department in which he had no chance to work so far
- Assign him challenging projects and assignments
- Continuously monitor the progress and measure his improvement
- Give him feedback about his development
- Dissuade him from giving up the challenge
- Restrain from discouraging or demoralizing him by negative criticism
- Encourage him to be bold, by constant appreciation
- Persuade him to seek help from different sources
- Show him the different avenues of assistance/help
- Motivate him towards success
- Get the goal achieved

Experienced staff has to be motivated by the organization to guide the younger generation staff. The younger generation employees will be energetic and dynamic and will be benefited to a great extent by Mentoring. Mentoring enables to attain career success at an early age. Early achievers are fast in decisions; they also wish other youngsters have the similar privilege and good fortune. All the great leaders had Mentors for them and they always acknowledge that they are indebted to their Mentors. Mentoring enthusiastic women and employees from Minority group is always a great job done. Unfortunately not all the meritorious employees of the organization are lucky enough to have a Mentor for them. Most of the times they leave the job or opt for early retirement out of frustration and a sore feeling that the organization never realized their worth nor recognized their sincere contribution to the organizational goal.

Mentoring helps to retain the young as well as the old talent in the organization. Research indicates that seven out of ten middle aged employees switch over to other jobs for they were denied promotion in their present organization. Their ego does not permit them to take orders from younger boss. They feel they are worthless here; they are no more an asset in this organization. They grudge that all these years they have wasted here in vain only to see his subordinate getting promoted. They feel very low of themselves and to show that they are capable of getting an equal or better job elsewhere they quit the job. It is a real loss to the present organization. Had they had the guidance of a Mentor there would not have been this brain drain. In the new organization if they are lucky they get a Mentor and their progress is very fast. Now they have great sense of accomplishment. They are happy that this is what exactly they wanted to show to the world, especially to their previous employer. Their ego is satisfied and life time wish fulfilled. Most of the women are not ready to relocate for they do not want to jeopardize their family and children. For them their family is the priority. In the first place no one in the organization wants to Mentor a woman employee. They feel that it is waste to do so. Without a Mentor unable to compete with career-oriented men, unable to reach the top, most of the women in their middle age either resign their job or opt for early retirement and become happily complacent. Research shows that only two percent of CEOs are women, even in the developed countries. So Mentoring plays a very important role in preventing the mass exodus.