Mentoring guidelines for wildlife professionals

Mentoring is the process by which one or more senior professionals guide a protégé through the institutional or organizational socialization process. One common misconception is that the benefits of mentoring primarily accrue to the protégé. We suggest that mentors and protégés benefit in numerous dimensions. The benefits of being a mentor include personal satisfaction, social change, building professional capital, career enhancement, and resource development. The benefits of being mentored include career and psychosocial benefits (Kram 1985). Formalized mentoring can be used to increase recruitment and retention, especially for ethnic minorities and women. In addition, mentoring provides an opportunity to transfer cultural and organizational knowledge associated with specific disciplines to developing professionals. We provide guidelines for mentoring relationships during the preparing, negotiating, enabling, and closing phases of mentoring. Finally, we conclude with some strategies for successful matching and managing the mentoring process.