People become mentors to pass down information to the next generation. Mentors guide technically and professionally. Mentors teach proteges skills necessary to survive daily experiences and promote career-scope professional development. Mentors protect proteges from major mistakes by limiting their exposure to responsibility. Mentors provide opportunities for proteges to observe and participate in their work.
Mentors are role models.
Mentors sponsor proteges organizationally and professionally. Mentor-protege relationships end, amiably or bitterly. Some school systems have formalized mentoring processes as part of newly developed induction programs, thus compromising some of the mentor-protege relationship characteristics. Voluntary participation becomes mandatory for the protege. At the same time the sphere of influences in which the mentor would ordinarily affect the protege is decreased by time and authority restrictions.