Tuesday's Wall Street Journal carried a piece titled "Career Mentors Today Seem Short on Advice but Give a Mean Tour." You can pretty well guess what it's about from the title. Today's "mentors" aren't mentoring.

You might think that's because today's managers don't want to take time for pesky and less-experienced folks. But the core of the problem is outlined in the following quote from the middle of the article.

"The mentor-mentee relationship used to be a partnership between a manager and a new hire. The experienced boss coached his rookie. When the newbie looked good, the boss looked better. Now, with managers stuck volleying emails, tackling expense-account systems and dodging high-velocity blame, time for teaching has evaporated. The HR answer to this void: the assigned-mentor program."

A true mentor-protégé relationship can't be assigned. It grows. And it's marked by affection as much as it is by learning.

There are serious problems with assigned mentor programs. One is that you risk assigning people as mentors who have no aptitude or desire for the role.

The best mentors are "serial mentors." They have many protégés, sometimes more than one at a time. They love the teaching and the relationships.

Not everyone is cut out to be a protégé, either. Many young people aren't mature enough. Many people at any age can't handle feedback well, or don't appreciate wisdom.

I'm not suggesting that a true mentor-protégé relationship can't start with an assignment. That's how it happened in classical literature.

When Odysseus left for the Trojan War, he asked his friend Mentor to care for Odysseus' son Telemachus and Odysseus' palace. Relationship and affection grew from that.

We run into trouble when we try to turn natural human relationships into programs. They don't work that way.

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