Mentoring Innovation

A good practice in Sliven Municipality

Once upon a time, when the omnipotent Zeus ruled and Homer wrote his stories, the mighty king of Ithaca, Odysseus, undertook his adventure in the Trojan War. On his departure, Odysseus left his friend Mentor to take care for his son, to be his tutor and his support, to advice and to stand by him in the painful path to maturity. From then on, ?mentor? stands for a tutor, a role model, generally more experienced and wise a person.

Nowadays, the mentoring is a widespread approach in Bulgaria used for new employees? induction, and applied when working with interns. Usually, mentors are people with proven professional competence, who have the motivation and the ability to hand down their practical knowledge to the younger employees. Thus, in the business world the notion reigns that the mentor is an elder person supporting a younger one in his learning process.

Fundamentally, the mentoring is an interaction which allows the mentee to learn from practice, to build relationships, to experiment with different behaviors. Moreover, this process helps people to immerse in the organizational culture and learn the way things are done in the particular company. The whole of these opportunities is available for the inexperienced employee by the means of the mentoring.  And people with substantial life and professional experience, with good working habits and skill, how do they approach new fields of learning?

Sliven municipality and their EU partners worked out an interesting approach to mentoring with their ?Mentoring and Guidance for Adults? project. Sliven municipality takes the challenge to overcome the traditional way of mentoring. They apply an innovative solution to people over 50 to acquire new skills, to become more adaptive and to get to know the situation in the area they want to continue their professional realization.

In Sliven, 11 persons over 50-years old actively work with younger mentors, implementing detailed plan for development is different business areas such as tourism, accounting, human resources and social services.

If the mentoring practices appeals to you and your organization, contact us for more information and learning materials for mentors on info@development-zone.net and +359 2 9802202. Take also a look of www.adults-mentoring.eu, www.sliven.bg.