Famous Mentors
Research shows that while 76% of people believe mentors are important, only 37% actually have one. Where would we be as a society today without influential mentor/mentee relationships such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, Dr. Benjamin Mays and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock? Oh, and let us not forget Jesus and the twelve disciples. Ultimately, mentorship is about sharing valuable information that one has learned and passing it on to the next generation. If this transaction of knowledge does not occur, some professions could be in real danger.
FUN FACT
There was a time when mentoring played a major role in American business. Young adults were chosen and trained through apprenticeships. The mentee’s career advancement depended solely on the individual performance and support of their mentor. Siemens Stromberg-Carlson, a United States subsidiary of a $62 billion international company, headquartered in Germany, added more clinical courses to their two-and-a-half-year mentorship program, allowing their students to gain “real-life” experience and more confidence in the field. This company alone has trained 13,000 apprentices in thirty countries around the world.