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Jared Sandberg's column in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal bears the title: "With Bad Mentors, It's Better to Break Up Than to Make Up." Here's a key excerpt.

"Successful people usually credit their rise to the good counsel of mentors who can work wonders. But when a mentor takes you under a wing you don't want to be under, it becomes a trap that's hard to escape."

As Sandberg describes, that's an awful position. And it's far more likely to happen in companies with formal "mentoring" programs than in situations where the mentor-protégé relationship develops naturally.

Assigned mentoring programs are unnatural. I think of them like Dr. Frankenstein's monster.

The good doctor wanted to be able to produce something natural. Instead he produced a being that sort of looked human, but turned into an agent of destruction.

Mentoring can be a business-enhancing and life-enriching relationship for both mentor and protégé, but only if you go with the flow of human nature and not against it. Here's what you need for a mentoring relationship to work.

You need a protégé who is willing to listen and use the advice that he or she gets from the mentor. The protégé should also be willing to devote time and effort to the relationship. Many young people, especially very smart ones, are not ready for this and mentoring will not work for them until they are.

You need a mentor who enjoys the role and works at it. Mentoring programs often match up potential protégés with senior people who are assigned to be mentors. Most successful mentors are serial mentors and take on the role whether or not there's a program.

You need a mentor who knows the right stuff and has the ability to share it. The right stuff at one stage of a career might be technical, while at another it might be political. You're not limited to one mentor, so over a career there may be several who provide different help and learning and support.

Finally, but maybe most importantly, you need chemistry. You can have everything I've mentioned, but if there isn't chemistry there probably won't be a productive mentoring relationship.

Now, what are the benefits? For the protégé, they're usually pretty obvious. The protégé gets advice on work and company/industry politics. The protégé may get a senior leader as an advocate, who supports the protégé's ideas and programs and represents them in senior councils.

And the mentor? The mentor can get a lot of satisfaction from mentoring relationships. I surely have.

But there can also be more tangible benefits. Protégés are often fresh from school and have recently spent time on the latest technical or management issues. Protégés are usually younger and have the forward-only perspective of youth as well as fresh eyes for problems and situations.

Mentoring in some cases turns into a lifelong, high quality relationship. But even shorter, less permanent relationships can have great benefits for both parties. The kicker is that when all these good things happen they're most likely to happen naturally.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.

Request your free copy of "Meeting the Challenges of the Boomer Brain Drain: An integrated approach."

Wally Bock has helped people learn to be great bosses for more than a quarter century. His latest book, Performance Talk: The One-on-One Part of Leadership, makes learning key leadership principles almost effortless by teaching through a story and providing lists of resources for further growth.

Click here to find out more about Wally's coaching services.

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check our Wally Bock's Three Star Leadership Letter.

Click here to find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.