From time to time I hear the word “mentor” used in the workplace. I think most of us define a mentor as somebody who instructs others in work-related processes, especially through difficult points.

If instead of thinking of work solely as a means by which to earn a living, we consider work as a pathway towards human development, the word “mentor” goes beyond the machine level aspect of one’s work, and takes on a human dimension. With this in mind, I find Robert Aziz’s definition of a mentor to be instructive: 

Mentorship, as with parenting in its deepest sense, is about one individual supporting and holding in consciousness that which is seeking to emerge in another individual, almost always unbeknownst to the latter. Mentorship is about creating space. In its highest form, it is about one individual creating the space for the emergence into life of that which constitutes the core meaning of the individual process of another. Mentorship cannot be fabricated. One cannot, even with the best of intentions, support in another individual the emergence of that which one does not in truth understand oneself. (The Syndetic Paradigm, p. 106)

Here, mentorship is about more than simply helping someone to become a more efficient machine. Instead, it is about the conscious furthering of life at its deepest and most meaningful level. While this form of mentorship might well involve overcoming programming difficulties, such help would be offered in the spirit of evolving the individual into a more conscious, related human being.

Say that I am a perfectionist. If my mentor perceives my tendency towards perfectionism, and recognizes that this tendency is killing my ability to process work in a related way, there are several ways he might help me step out of it. For instance, he might take a direct route and discuss the issue of my perfectionism face to face with me, or he might take an indirect route such as assigning me an impossible programming task that will cause me to fail miserably, so that he can pick it up and show me a less perfectionistic yet ultimately more successful approach towards it.  

In any case, I like Aziz's deeper definition of mentorship better than the typical definition (e.g. someone who helps me when I get stuck), since it has greater potential to make my work environment more meaningful.