Dear Jayesh,
Study of mentoring subject would reveal that Mentoring is an OD intervention and not a competency. Mentor is a senior person who is amalgamation of guide, coach, counsellor, trainer etc. A Good mentor possesses following skills:
a) Listening Skills
b) Questioning skills
c) Counselling Skills
d) Feedback skills
e) Interpersonal skills
f) Motivational skills
g) Coaching skills etc
In addition to the above skills, mentor should be thorough with organisation's philosophy. He/she should be able to interpret situation and give a judgement whether decision conflicts with the organisation's values.
To implement mentoring programme successfully, first you need to have sound mentoring policy. In this policy you need to clearly enumerate what is to be done, when is it to be done, who will do it, how long to do and who will monitor and who will maintain what records, what are the risk factors etc.
While mentoring is important but organisation should have some maturity also. Once I was conducting training programme on Mentoring. It was for Mentees. Participants had spent couple of months in the company. One participant rose and asked me in the mentor-mentee meeting, whether he can ask to mentor questions that are related to organisational affairs but which are ticklish one. I told him yes. Then he tossed 3-4 questions and told that none of the mentor will have answer to these questions and they all started laughing. Somehow controlled the situation. Therefore, my request to you is that please give primacy to this maturity factor rather than competency factor lest mentoring becomes perfunctory.
Thanks,
Dinesh V Divekar