October 27th Is National Mentoring Day, so I'd like to take this opportunity to start a discussion around what makes a good mentor.


It doesn't only have to be those through the IET Mentoring Service (although I do think we have nearly a thousand excellent mentors in our service supporting mentees toward professional registration and are always looking for professionally registered mentors to help us widen this support) it could be anyone in your career who has supported or helped you, given you a safe space to talk and develop your ideas (without judgement) or helped you to make more from your successes and learn from your mistakes.


For myself, I've had some really terrific mentors in my career - from my first manager who helped me to identify what I needed to learn in terms of workplace transitioning in my first real job, to my interactions with our volunteers who help me to better understand the world of engineering (which is helpful for someone from a non-engineering background) - some of the best mentoring moments are those that it has only occurred to me after they occurred that I was being mentored, so it's not always been a formal process, but all of  it has helped me to get  where I am today.


What about you? 


What are your mentoring experiences?