At its most basic level, mentoring is a process in which an individual with more experience or expertise provides encouragement, advice, and support to a less experienced colleague, with the goal of helping the person being mentored learn something that he or she would have learned more slowly, less effectively, or not at all if left alone. As defined by Margo Murray in Beyond the Myths and Magic of Mentoring, mentoring is the deliberate pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a lesser skilled or experienced one, with the agreed-upon goal of having the lesser skilled person grow and develop specific competencies.
Mentoring can be formal or informal. Aviation instructors and schools who seek to offer structured and personalized transitional experience to their newly-certificated instrument pilots and novice flight instructors may want to consider establishing a formal program. Such a program may involve both a structured transitional experience syllabus and the opportunity to work through it in consultation with a trained and standardized mentor pilot.
Here is a link to a great publication by the FAA – Best Practices for Mentoring in Flight Instruction. This is a must read for all new and experienced pilots and flight instructors.
