As a trainer of mentors and facilitator of mentor-mentee relationships I like to keep my eye out for developments and thinking in the field. Over the weekend I had the pleasure to read a newspaper article from a retired professor named Jim Mroczkowski. In his article Jim explains a mentoring relationship that occured after a shift from one university to another. He describes the relationship as being more like a master-apprentice relationship than a modern mentoring relationship and attributes the success of his career to the foundations that he learned during his time as an ‘apprentice’. Jim’s article is titled Lessons Taught and Lessons Learned and is worth the three minutes that it will take to read the article.

The success of his experience got me thinking. How present are master-apprentice relationships these days? Might there not be some perfect opportunities for such relationships to develop today? Are any of our members currently participating in such relationships and if so, how do they work?

I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on these questions and to hear your experiences relating to master-apprentice relationships.