The Evolution of “Mentorship” from an Idea to a Culture and the Transformation of “Protégé” to “Mentee”: An Exploration Based on 14 Mentorship Types

Abstract

First described in the 1980s, mentorship has evolved from an idea to a culture. Simultaneously, in general, the younger person in this relationship transformed from a “protégé” to a “mentee”. Lacking is an examination of how a sequence of various forms of mentorship demonstrates this evolution and transformation. Examining fourteen types of author mentoring relationships, experienced over 39 years using chrononarratology as a form of qualitative research narrative inquiry, compared with relevant peer-reviewed publications, amends this. The transition from idea to culture demonstrates that mentees are not equivalent to protégés, who, with their mentor, develop their careers and psychosocial competencies. When mentees choose their mentors, the mentor’s experience is comparable to the mentee’s, and the mentees consider the experience as aiding their problem-solving, then mentorships are most effective. As such, mentees require a particular self-awareness to identify that they have a solvable problem, anticipate a solution, and can effectively utilize the mentor’s experience. Therefore, the effort in organizing matches to advance the mentorship culture can be unproductive. In contrast, effective mentorship matching aids relevant self-awareness in mentees and provides them with options for selecting mentors who are willing and able to share their pertinent problem-solving knowledge through mentoring.

1. Introduction

According to a well-cited 1965 publication, “idea” was formally defined in the 17th century as representing an immediate object of thought or perception by an individual [1]. In this regard, when two people—one more experienced and the other less experienced—considered their relationship as “mentoring”, “mentorship” became an idea. Regardless of the type of relationship, it was perceived as a mentorship by those considering it. In 1871, culture was defined as encompassing social practices (rituals, customs, institutions, and norms), knowledge systems (beliefs, arts, laws), and individual behaviors (capabilities, attitudes, and habits) of those associated with these societies [2]. As such, the primary quality that differentiates mentorship as a culture is that it is something more than individual understanding. It becomes a socially complex and well-defined arrangement of individuals. In other words, mentorship as a culture takes on a life of its own, beyond the idea of the two individuals participating in the relationship.

The idea of mentorship as a distinct topic for study began with two peer-reviewed publications in 1983 [3,4]. Both works follow the insights of a 1980 doctoral thesis on the theme [5] by the same author of publication [3] that defined mentorship by a particular process undertaken between a younger person and an older one in phases: Initiation (lasting between six months and a year), Cultivation (two to five years), Separation (six months to two years), and Redefinition (an indefinite period leading to friendship). Publication [3] does not name the younger person in the mentor relationship. However, ref. [4] refers to the younger person as the protégé(e), concluding that mentorship is “a critical on-the-job training development tool for career success for both men and women”. That norms for mentorship were being constructed by the authors of these publications as if it were a well-defined culture is notable.

By 2007, based on a systematic review of mentoring, publication [6] collected thirteen disparate definitions of the term that had emerged between 1983 and 2005. Given the 1980 directive regarding the phases necessary for a mentorship expressed in [5], it is unexpected that twenty-seven years later, the definition of mentoring has expanded to thirteen. As these thirteen definitions are unique, the author of [6] considered it relevant and valuable to develop the theory of mentorship. To do so, this 2007 review contrasts mentoring with formal training and with socialization based on five variables: (1) number of participants, (2) relationship, (3) recognition, (4) needs fulfillment, and (5) knowledge utility. What differentiated mentoring from the other two forms of career advancement in this systematic review was that the relationship is: (1) a dyad, (2) informal and unequal in terms of knowledge, (3) acknowledged for role enhancement, (4) fulfilling the needs of the two voluntary participants, and (5) work-related, driven by the self-interest of both participants. What is specific about this definition of mentoring is the extent to which it identifies the type of mentoring that occurs within a hierarchical institution, known as traditional top-down mentoring [7,8,9].

“Mentee” was a cautiously introduced term in 1990 [10]. Still, by the 2007 review [6], the person with less knowledge in the relationship is referred to exclusively as the “protégé”. Yet, in 2022, although a publication on demystifying mentorship [11] claims to follow a 1993 National Education definition of mentorship that refers to the less experienced person as the protégé [12], the article itself uses the term “mentee” exclusively. This evolution comes with increasing attention to a 1985 paper [13] that suggests prudently that peer mentoring is an “alternative” to mentoring between older and younger persons. In 2018, research on this topic was limited [14]. It grew, as of a 2021 review [15]. And, after 2022, peer mentoring was considered an expectation in successful mentorship [16,17]. Group mentoring emerged as another component in the development of the idea of mentorship [18,19], in contrast to the earlier view that mentorship depends on a dyad. Each of these changes helped reduce the dominance of the term “protégé” in mentorships. It is likely relevant that the increasing popularity of the term “mentee” in contrast to “protégé” coincided with the evolution of mentorship from an idea to a culture.

The differentiation between “protégé” and “mentee” is more than semantic regarding the expected relationship between the less experienced individual and the mentor. A protégé is a person taken under the charge of a mentor who attempts to further the career of the less experienced colleague within a particular organization, while simultaneously having the protégé’s accomplishments reflect well on the mentor and enhance the organization’s goals [20]. Thus, a hierarchy of potential positions within a single organization is evident, established, and maintained within that organization in a protégé/mentor relationship [21,22]. A synthesis of the ideal protégé qualities is in a 2009 publication [23]. These include: love of learning, self-starter, confidence, risk-taker, resilience, enthusiasm, open-mindedness, commitment, loyalty, and gratitude. It is neither expected nor appreciated by the mentor if the protégé attempts to take charge of their career path in this relationship [24]. What differentiates the mentee/mentor relationship from the protégé/mentor relationship is the mentor’s focus on helping the mentee meet self-defined goals in the latter [25]. Organizationally common goals may be irrelevant. In this regard, mentors help their mentees because they have the sought-after information readily available, and there is no inconvenience to them in providing help in expressing prosocial behaviors [26]. There is nothing the mentor intends to gain personally from the encounter, unlike the relationship between protégé and mentor [27,28]. However, in such a relationship where the mentee gains and the mentor does not lose, the mentor must be aware and accept that the relationship is asymmetrical in this regard [29].

Mentorship as an idea evolved into a mentorship culture [30] when workplaces and educational institutions began to establish policies and procedures regarding it, with a view to accountability, openness, flexibility, and understanding, based on research demonstrating that such mentoring is effective for personal and professional development [31]. The goal in creating a mentoring culture was to foster collaboration and learning in support of organizational advancement [32]. However, in the development of cultural safeguards and opportunities to define the culture of mentoring [33], consideration of why the need for mentoring arises was not the issue.

The assumption in this mentorship culture is that the need for mentoring is psychologically innate to both employees and students as members of organizations [34]. The neglect is recognizing that mentoring is necessary only when there is a problem that a less experienced person wants to solve [35], and they consider that how to solve it is by referring to the living memory of someone who has experienced this same problem themselves and, in the view of the mentee, has solved it successfully [36]. If it were self-evident to a mentee how to proceed in an employment or educational practice, the need for mentoring would not arise. Therefore, the importance of problem-solving must be recognized as the core reason for mentorship [37] when assessing its success as a culture. In this regard, ideal mentorship arises when a mentee with a problem to solve seeks out a mentor, and the person they approach is someone the mentee considers has previously solved this problem and does not feel burdened in providing the relevant information to the mentee.

A 2008 study of healthcare professionals, published in 2011, substantiated this ideal with five themes defining an outstanding mentor: (1) admirable personal qualities, (2) tailoring support individually, (3) strong time commitments, (4) a personal/professional balance, and (5) role model setting international standards for mentorship [38]. A 2016 study of undergraduate psychology students, which asked “Who is your ideal mentor?” identified three qualities: guidance, understanding, and role modeling ethical values [39]. The consideration is that these differences arise because employees possess more self-awareness regarding what represents a problem in their field compared with students—something that is improved with increased experience, as recognized in a 2015 study [40].

An example of this ideal form of mentorship that transcends the distinction between employees and students in their assessment of mentors is the 1999 “hole in the wall” experiment, regarding an embedded, Internet-connected computer in a wall facing a slum in Kalkaji, New Delhi, India. Having never seen a computer before, children between 5 and 16 years old began to use it immediately, although they had limited knowledge of the English language needed to understand functions related to computing. Unaided by adults, within a few days, they taught themselves the basic operations of the computer, with those who had acquired a computer skill informing others of their discovery if asked by their peers [41]. Several of these computers were later installed in other locations with similar results [42]. This type of mentorship was ideal because the children wanted to understand how to use the new machine, and some were more successful than others. At the same time, once they learned a feature, they were willing to share their knowledge with others working on the same problem. Importantly, the knowledgeable ones provided their results incidentally, rather than as teachers, and their age was irrelevant—in some cases, younger children solved the problems faster than older ones.

Keeping in mind this ideal type of mentorship, this study examines mentorship research in relation to the long and varied history of mentorship by this author from 1987 until 2026. The aim is to reveal various types of mentorship during this period, their level of success, and how their outcome relates to the development of the culture of mentorship during these years, compared with reports of mentorship in peer-reviewed publications.

This investigation has value for two reasons. The first is that the literature has not examined the evolution of mentorship from an idea to a culture—the 39 years of the author’s mentoring relationships cover this transitional period—providing the opportunity to identify when the changes occurred and to what degree. The second is that over this same period, there was a transition from considering the less experienced member of the mentoring relationship a “protégé” to viewing them as a “mentee”. Because the change they document is longitudinal and diverse, the author’s experiences with mentorship are relevant.

Through differentiating “idea” from “culture”, a theoretical contribution to the field is provided by this study. In 1959, although there was a proposal of several definitions of culture during the ensuing period, White [43] endorsed the 1871 definition of culture by Tylor, which he quotes: “Culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws and custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” [2]. What he deleted with the ellipsis is “or civilization”. As such, this consistently recommended understanding of culture did not differentiate it from civilization, limiting its rigor. By 2023, Sewell had noted that the current understanding of culture identified several concepts. Culture as (1) learned behavior, (2) an institutional sphere devoted to the making of meaning, (3) creativity or agency, (4) a system of symbols and meaning, and (5) practice. The theoretical contribution of this study regards the second concept of culture. It does so by intending to chart the historical development of the idea of two people associating—one with relevant knowledge to share that the other considers personally relevant—to an institutional realm that designates meaning. This point is not to say that the understanding of mentorship corresponds with only this concept of a culture. Rather, this study makes a theoretical contribution in this way specifically. What is unique is that, previous to this study, there has been no consideration of this evolution.

The empirical contribution provides longitudinal evidence regarding a variety of mentorship types, demonstrating the evolved differences in reenvisioning the protégé as a mentee. This development has practical value as the use of the two terms continues to be uncritical and interchangeable. Such unsystematic use promotes misunderstanding regarding the purpose of mentorships, leading to negative results for the participants [44,45].

The mentorship types differed regarding four areas: who initiated it, their success, length, and structure. The relevant factor concerning the success of the association depends on the initiator of the mentorship, representing the focus of the Results section. Regarding the success of the mentorships, they were most effective when (1) the mentee selected this author as their mentor regarding a problem, (2) the author as mentor was aware of how to solve their problem, (3) the mentee could incorporate the author’s solution to solve their problem, (4) other factors regarding the author apart from problem solving as a mentor were irrelevant, and (5) there was no expectation of continuing the relationship beyond solving the relevant problem. The timespan of the mentorship matters—the longer a mentoring relationship, the more likely it is to transition from one type of mentorship to another. As such, the Results of this study will highlight these transformations in the author’s mentorships. Whether the classification of the association is as an idea or a culture depends on the structure of the mentorship. The Discussion section examines the findings from this perspective.

This work is a historical study. An examination of the fourteen different mentorships in which the author participated over the 39 years follows an explanation of the methodology. The examination includes the origin of the mentorship and its level of success for each of the fourteen. Additionally, there is a presentation of relevant research regarding each of the fourteen types. The Discussion then considers the two major claims of this article regarding mentorship: (1) forms of mentorship have evolved from an idea to a culture of mentorship, and (2) there is a difference between protégés and mentees. The limitations, suggested future research directions, and Conclusion then follow. The paper provides empirical historical evidence to answer how the idea of mentorship evolved as a culture, the result, and the correspondence of this cultural evolution with the change from viewing the less experienced member of the mentorship as a protégé to a mentee, and its effect on the author’s various mentorships. The research questions in this regard are: (1) What were the various mentorships? (2) How did they differ regarding the relationship between the author’s mentee and me? (3) How successful were they? The challenge is that much of this evidence depends on the author’s recollections over this period.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Materials

Historical documents [46,47] relevant to a historical analysis [48,49] represent the materials. They include the documents accumulated regarding the author’s mentorships since 1987: the author’s CV, peer-reviewed publications about the mentorships in which the author has participated, documents produced by the author regarding mentorship, emails, Messenger texts, entries in private Facebook groups, documents emailed to the author by mentees, and announcements on websites. Some of these materials are public. Others, by their nature, are private. When documents are private, this presents the possibility of bias in their assessment [50]. However, the practice of evaluating private documents in historical analysis is an often-encountered feature of this academic discipline [51]. As such, being mindful of the potential for bias is a feature of historical research in examining private documents [50]. The aim in collecting materials from these disparate sources, which include private documents, is to ensure the documentation of every mentorship of the author. They concern narratives of each of the author-participated mentorship relationships from 1987 to 2026.

Mentees

As a historical research study, the mentees are not participants in a pre-designed investigation. Instead, what identifies this research as empirical is an analysis of the documents produced by these mentees—they represent the materials. These documents vary depending on the mentee and their experiences. Student mentees communicated with the author as a mentor using various platforms. These meetings included those that were: in-person, via Messenger, using a specially designed app, by email, and in postings to private Facebook groups. For those mentees who were not students, the communication method was any of the following: in person, Messenger, or documents emailed to the author as mentor. All materials sent are stored online in iCloud, in the Messenger app, or in the relevant private Facebook groups.

2.2. Methods

Chrononarratology [52] examines the materials. It is a method that systematically examines historical change through narrative. This method is a form of qualitative research [53], representing narrative inquiry [54,55,56], a method most relevant to historical research [57,58], to which this work contributes. In examining the variety of materials historically, a longitudinal evaluation is possible—one that is sensitive to context [59]. The definition of qualitative longitudinal research is as having “special emphasis on time, the elapse of time and the changes or stability of practices, perceptions and interpretations when following actors through time” [60] (p. 8).

Chrononarratology is both a useful and feasible research methodology. It is useful because it studies cultural changes in chronological order as they have appeared through the information provided by first-person accounts. This type of data is considered significant and of primary value in public administration. The reason is that these matters are by their very nature “complex, interconnected, and vast” [61]. It is required when time and change are relevant [62]. Such historical research provides an organized structure to the data that is not apparent for contextualizing a cultural unknown by other means [63]. It provides a “multifunctional tool” in this regard, and additionally reveals myths about the past [64]. Yet, gathering such data requires a longitudinal focus on a particular problem. This focus may be challenging [65]. Often, this first-person view is missing. Even in cases where it exists, the view is subjective and lacks objective record-keeping [66]. What makes this study unique in this regard is that the author, although presenting a subjective experience, has kept records over 39 years on the fourteen forms of mentorship in which she has participated. This longitudinal research is both unique and a useful source of data that would be unavailable in any other way. This form of historical research has become increasingly valuable regarding studies on human–computer interaction [67,68].

2.2.1. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

The inclusion criterion in this context is that both the mentee and mentor acknowledge the author’s advice as representing a mentorship. As such, exclusion of the author’s advice was in other contexts that are categorizable by type: (1) directions to complete a task, (2) answers to questions, (3) comfort offered, (4) comments not intended as advice, or (5) responses to questionnaires. Additionally, both the mentee and mentor must be aware of the relationship. Thus, for example, people who have studied any of the author’s publications and used them for their own research, yet have not contacted the author directly, are excluded.

2.2.2. Timeframe of a Mentorship

A mentorship relationship began with the matching of a mentee with the author. This matching could occur in several ways. (1) The mentee approached the author to act as a mentor, (2) the author volunteered to act as a mentor to the mentee, (3) the mentee was matched to the author based on the criteria of a formalized mentorship program, or (4) the author assumed a mentorship relationship with the mentee as an extension of another important relationship between them. The relationship ended (if it has ended) with the achievement of the mentorship purpose—a judgment made by the mentee or upon the completion of a mentorship program.

2.2.3. Ordering of the Mentorships

The presentation of each form of mentorship is in order of its occurrence. The results of each mentorship relationship are then compared with the range of peer-reviewed publications relevant to the particular form of mentorship before continuing to the next type of mentorship relationship that the author experienced. The purpose is to demonstrate that (1) there are many forms of mentorship, (2) the most successful were regarding a solvable problem identified by the mentee, (3) the only relevant concern was that the mentor seemed to the mentee to have the ability to solve the problem, (4) the idea of mentorship evolved institutionally into a culture of mentorship over time, and (5) formalizing the culture of mentorship often lessened the likelihood of success for the mentorship relationship.

2.2.4. Document Analysis

A historical analysis of the various documents was by year and type of mentorship. The focus of the analysis is to answer the three research questions: (1) What were the various mentorships? (2) How did they differ regarding the relationship between the mentee and mentor? (3) How successful were they? Tabulating the results by discrete mentorships regarding who initiated the mentorship and their level of success answers these questions. Based on the results of this historical data, there is consideration of the two major claims of this work regarding mentorship: (1) forms of mentorship have evolved from an idea to a culture of mentorship, and (2) there is a difference between protégés and mentees. First, the Discussion reconsiders the same data corresponding to the three research questions regarding whether classification of the particular mentorship is as an idea or part of a culture. Defined as a culture, it is part of an institutional sphere devoted to meaning-making, determined by the identification of documented rules and procedures for participation in the mentorship. Next in the Discussion, the consideration regards the difference between protégés and mentees. Regarding these mentorships, the author only mentored mentees, not protégés. However—evident from a reexamination of the data—some mentees may have interpreted their relationship with the author as that of a protégé. It is a deduction from the unexpected behavior of some mentees and is a probable reason for failure of the mentorship when this occurred—an analysis resulting from self-reflection [69,70,71]. This method corresponds to Michel Foucault’s historical epistemology, which investigates how the conditions of possibility for knowledge change over time [72,73,74].

3. Results

Between 1987 and 2026, this author participated in fourteen different mentoring relationships. Some were dyads, and some were group mentoring. Some were to solve a particular problem; others were the outcome of programs designed by the author or an institution. Some were short-lived, others lasted for decades. Some were a positive experience for both mentee and mentor, some were positive only for the mentee, and some were positive for neither.

The fourteen types of mentorship relationships have varying levels of success. They are as follows: (1) a president of a graduate student body mentoring a vice president, (2) a graduate studies representative helping a political refugee, (3) a graduate program developer admitting graduate students, (4) a medical program administrator sending medical students to volunteer in a Costa Rican program, (5) a mother facilitating the intentions of her children (6) a concerned older person aiding a fragile younger one, (7) a founder advising students at a school, (8) an alumna in a college career mentorship program, (9) an extended serendipitous mentorship with an undergraduate student (10) the facilitator of an in-person group mentorship program, (11) an alumna in a graduate mentorship program, (12) an alumna in an online meet-up mentorship program, (13) the facilitator of an online group mentorship program, and (14) the facilitator of an online one-on-one mentorship program. These fourteen types of mentorship relationships represent the subsections of the Results section to follow.

Table 1. Years of the mentorship relationship for each of the fourteen types engaged in by the author over 39 years, where the column heading numbers represent the subsection heading numbers of the Results section. 1 = The mentee approached the author to act as a mentor. 2 = The author volunteered to act as a mentor to the mentee. 3 = The mentee was matched to the author based on the criteria of a formalized mentorship program. 4 = The author assumed a mentorship relationship with the mentee as an extension of another important relationship between them. “S” represents the mentorships that were successes. “M” depicts those with mixed success. “F” identifies the failures.

Year	3.1.	3.2.	3.3.	3.4.	3.5.	3.6.	3.7.	3.8.	3.9	3.10	3.11.	3.12.	3.13.	3.14.
1987	1 S
1988	1 S
1989		1 S
1990		1 S	1,2 M
1991			1,2 M
1992			1,2 M
1993			1,2 M	3 M
1994			1,2 M	3 F
1995			1,2 M	3 S
1996			1,2 M		4 S
1997					4 S
1998					4 S
1999					4 S
2000					4 S
2001					4 S
2002					4 S
2003					4 S	2 M
2004					4 S	2 M
2005					4 S	2 M
2006					4 S	2 M
2007					4 S	2 M	1,2 M
2008					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S
2009					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S
2010					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S
2011					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S
2012					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S
2013					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S
2014					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S
2015					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S	3 M
2016					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S	3 M
2017					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S	3 M	3 S
2018					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1.2 S	3 M	3 S	3 S
2019					4 S	2 M	1,2 M	3 S	1,2 S	3 M	3 S	3 S
2020					4 S	2 F	1,2 M	3 F	1,2 S		3 S	3 S	3 M
2021					4 S	2 F	1,2 M	3 F	1,2 S		3 S	3 S	3 M
2022					4 S		1,2 M	3 F	1,2 S		3 M	3 S	3 M	3 M
2023					4 S		1,2 M	3 F	1,2 S		3 M	3 F		3 M
2024					4 S		1,2 M		1,2 S		3 M	3 F		3 M
2025					4 S		1,2 M		1,2 S		3 M			3 S
2026					4 S		1,2 M		1.2 S		3 F			3 M

presents the years that each type of mentorship was in place. As of 2026, only five mentorships remain: those with the author’s children, students at the school the author co-founded, a past student of the author’s undergraduate college, participants of the online mentorship meet-up program, and participants in the author’s online one-on-one mentorship program.

3.1. Student Government Mentorship

In 1987, the then 10,000-person graduate student body of the University of Toronto acclaimed the author as their president for the 1987/1988 academic year. As such, the author inherited the vice president, who had already served two terms as vice president under the leadership of a former president. During the initial years of his vice presidency, the author had been a departmental representative on the Graduate Students’ Union (GSU). Consequently, the author had witnessed his frustration in trying to accomplish things under the former president, who took a laissez-faire attitude regarding the presidency—letting the GSU evolve organically. The author’s leadership method was instead directional. The author instituted decision-making at meetings that required the participation of each departmental representative. Moreover, it was the role of the GSU, in the author’s mind, to respond to all graduate school matters that might affect the lives of graduate students. The vice president observed how the author changed the way the GSU functioned from a reactive body to a proactive force. This change lessened his frustration. It led him to ask the author for help to solve GSU-related problems that had been under his jurisdiction during the previous two years. Together, they accomplished a significant amount that year as a dyad in improving the lives of graduate students. Although they have kept in touch sporadically over the years, with the end of the author’s presidency came the end of the mentoring relationship.

Significant in this successful mentorship were several factors: (1) there was no formal mentorship arrangement, (2) the vice-president selected the author as a mentor because the type of change the author brought to the GSU aligned with what he valued personally, (3) they worked together, and (4) a female was the mentor to a male mentee. In political mentorship, (1) having no formal arrangement, (2) the mentee selecting the mentor based on personal values, (3) the working relationship being direct, and (4) a female mentoring a male mentee, all were irregular in 1987 [75], and are still so today [76].

3.2. Mentoring a Chinese Political Refugee

On 4 October 1989, the author was representing the School of Graduate Studies at the annual U of T Day as the University of Toronto Director of Graduate Alumni Affairs when a very thin, somewhat disheveled Chinese man approached the author to enroll in the Computer Science Department. He let the author know that he had been one of the organizers of the Tiananmen Square protests from 4–5 June earlier that year and, after making his way during the last few months as part of a special program organized with the University of Minnesota, he had to find a graduate program at the University of Toronto willing to enroll him and offer him a full scholarship or he would be required to return to China to face punishment. Additionally, he stated that his wife and son were in custody in his place and, unless he obtained a large enough scholarship, they would remain there. He informed the author that he had been a university faculty member before the pro-democracy demonstrations in China. However, as he was of age to attend graduate school during the Cultural Revolution, when Chinese people were unable to obtain a higher education degree, he explained that this was the reason he did not have a PhD.

Upon hearing his story, the author wanted to help him, but it was now October, and there were no additional spaces available for admission to the Computer Science Department. The author recalled from her days as president of the GSU that the Department of Education had its own computer science program and that it offered scholarships to students with a greater monetary value than those of other departments. The author advised him to approach the Department of Education and explain his story, saying that he wanted to enroll in computer science. The author said he was likely to gain acceptance because of his caliber. Leaving to apply, he returned later that day, saying that he had enrolled and received a full scholarship.

Once he had completed his graduate program in record time, he returned to ask the author if she knew of any place that might hire him immediately. The author happened to be aware of a new company, one created to educate people on how to use personal computers, that needed computer programming support for curriculum design. The author offered him the name and address of the company and phoned the CEO to recommend him as an outstanding computer programmer. Following his meeting with the CEO, the author received a call from the CEO, who said that she had hired him as she had never met a computer programmer with such extensive experience and capability. The Chinese computer science graduate worked for this company until he was able to save enough money to obtain the release of his wife and child in China. By the time he was able to get them to Canada, he was entirely self-sufficient. Nevertheless, for many years after, he regularly kept the author informed of the progress of his employment and family. Ultimately, he moved to Silicon Valley and became the vice-president of a computer programming company.

There were several unique aspects regarding this successful mentorship. One was the age difference. As the mentor, the author was at least 15 years younger than the mentee. A little less unusual was that the author was a woman mentoring a man from a different culture who was only beginning to use English daily. Additionally, the author mentored him, although the author was not a computer scientist. What was most memorable about the mentorship was its initiation under dire conditions for the mentee. As such, the aim of the mentee was not merely to solve problems; it was his perceived need to save himself and his family.

There are a few publications on age differences between mentors and mentees. Of those that exist, the focus is on older mentors working with younger mentees [77,78,79]. There is one 2025 study on younger mentors mentoring older mentees [80]. It is also regarding women mentoring men. Its emphasis is on removing barriers for women in promoting sexual equality. In planning for social change, this type of mentoring by younger women to older men is very different than the mentorship relationship the author had with this older Chinese man. All that was relevant to our mentoring was that the author had information that was valuable to the mentee. The author was his mentor for no additional reason. There is also a lack of research on mentorships that span different disciplines. Instead, the focus is on mentorship programs applicable within various disciplines [81]. Yet, it was because of the disparate information the author had gained both as president of the GSU and in the author’s role as Director of Graduate Alumni Affairs that the author was able to identify a workable solution regarding enrollment in a relevant graduate program for the author’s mentee. When mentoring mentees in difficult circumstances, studies have shown that mentors become overwhelmed [82,83]. This outcome was not the case for the author regarding the Chinese computer scientist. The difference was that, unlike the mentees in these studies, he was determined to apply all the resources available to him to find a way out of his situation. He was self-aware, understood the problems he encountered, knew what a solution should resemble, and believed that the author was the solution as a mentor in providing him with the information he lacked to proceed on his own. The consideration is that self-awareness in mentees is complementary to the nature of mentoring [84], such that a negative impact on mentoring relationships can result when self-awareness is lacking [85].

3.3. Graduate Student Mentorship

As the Program Coordinator of the University of Toronto Centre for Bioethics from 1989 to 1996, one of the author’s roles was to create the graduate program associated with the Centre and to admit students to that program. In determining the appropriateness of applicants for association with the Centre, the author would meet individually with each, asking them to tell her what brought them to the Centre that day. From the narratives they provided, the author would learn whether they were a good fit with the Centre. If so, the author would find out what they wanted to accomplish in bioethics. Learning this, she would compare their goals with the faculty members associated with the Centre to match them with an appropriate faculty advisor for their graduate program.

In this regard, the author’s role as a mentor was comparable to that of a matchmaker. Some sought the author out in this regard. In other cases, the author volunteered to help. Applicants usually followed the author’s advice. They considered the author to be someone able to solve the problem of appropriate supervision when suggesting a match between a student and a particular faculty member. Some neglected the author’s advice, choosing their own supervisor. The results were neither satisfying for the student nor for their supervisor. In these cases, students either switched supervisors after further consultation with the author or left the bioethics program. What is unknown is whether the result differed for those students who approached the author to mentor them compared with those whom the author volunteered to mentor. It may be that those who did not follow the author’s advice were the ones the author had volunteered to help, rather than them being the ones to approach her.

Although students might come to the author for program-related information once admitted to the Centre, the mentorship relationship was limited to finding a good fit between supervisor and student during the initial intake process. To this extent, the author fulfilled some of the roles that researchers consider relevant to a mentorship relationship with graduate students—reflecting on their goals by increasing their self-efficacy [86]. However, in other regards, this limited mentoring relationship with graduate students is unusual in the literature, which focuses on mentorships to facilitate graduate student networking in their chosen discipline [87].

3.4. Mentorship to Support a Costa Rican Medical Program

In 1993, as part of a program between the University of Toronto and the University of Costa Rica in cardiovascular risk factors and diabetes mellitus that the author had initiated beginning in 1989, the author was charged with formalizing a method of sending medical students from the University of Toronto to Costa Rica to research the outcome of the two-university program. For the first two years of the program, the author would meet with all the newly enrolled medical students together to inform them about the program and ask if any wanted to participate. The first year eleven students took the opportunity to be part of the program. The author met with them, both as a group and individually, to determine what they hoped to achieve with their participation. Although all of them were clear that they wanted to engage in research that would complement their medical studies, in the end, only two of the students wrote a paper together that was published several years later. This publication remains regularly cited in the field, in English, Spanish, and French [88,89,90]. Of the remaining students, some wanted to write up their research; however, these desires did not produce the intended results. In the second year, only two medical students chose to participate in the program. However, it was clear from the beginning that one of these students considered herself exceptionally entitled and wanted to go to Costa Rica, not to conduct research, but, it seemed, for a vacation. When the author informed her that she was not a good match for the program, she told the author she would go to the Dean of Medicine to have this program stopped if she couldn’t go. Reluctantly, the author permitted her participation, only to learn later from the author’s Costa Rican colleagues that she had provided no help to the program, although demanding attention of their hospitality. Her behavior also affected the other medical student participating in the program, making collaborative research impossible. From the author’s perspective as a mentor, this year was a failed mentorship. Consequently, for the following year, the author made a change and did not send any medical students to Costa Rica. Instead, the author mentored a practicing nurse who was a bioethics student with an interest in contributing to the program in Costa Rica. Unlike most medical students from the previous years, the nurse was able to make a substantial contribution to the program.

Although there were aspects of this mentorship program that the author created that achieved their intended purpose of matching mentees who wanted to conduct research in an international context, in other respects, the mentorship program failed. Those mentees who were successful (1) had an idea of the type of research they wanted to conduct before heading to Costa Rica, (2) were willing and able to see their research to fruition, (3) had a desire to help the program succeed, both in Canada and Costa Rica, and (4) were willing to work with others participating in the program to achieve their goal. Those mentorships that were frustrated had mentees who had at least one of the following qualities. They were (1) unclear on what they wanted to research, (2) unable to carry through with their research intentions, or (3) wanted to use the program for self-interest unrelated to conducting research.

Since 2009, there has been recognition that success in medical student mentorship programs requires the mentee to take responsibility for their aspect of the collaboration [91]. Nevertheless, by 2016, two medical publications regarding the role of mentees had stressed that the mentee must remember their self-interest [92], and recognize that mentorship is “a key for promoting the success of a mentee” [93]. Thus, this advice to medical mentees would not entice mentees of the author’s program to question their level or type of participation. Nevertheless, a 2021 search of the current state of research on mentorship recognized that this advice to mentees was lacking [11]. The solution offered in that 2022 publication relevant to these failed mentoring relationships was the need for mentorship training. However, by 2025, an editorial on the state of medical mentorship recognized that, rather than training, the primary requirement for mentees is their ability to self-reflect on whether they are ready for mentorship. This self-reflection includes trust in the relationship and gratitude for the opportunity to participate [94]. These were the qualities of the successful mentorship relationships in this program—success that was possible without mentorship training.

3.5. Children’s Mentorship

With the birth of the author’s son in 1996 and then the author’s daughter in 1998, two mentorship relationships began beyond the author’s role as a mother. The author’s son was diagnosed early with autism (ASD), and the author’s daughter, similarly, was identified expeditiously to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Both demonstrated intellectual and emotional strengths; however, their inability to meet social norms as expected meant that they often approached the author with problems that they believed the author’s experience would permit them to solve. Their continuing success, both professionally and personally, has encouraged the author to think that sustaining their mentorship has remained fruitful.

The literature discusses two perspectives on the idea of mentoring children with developmental disorders. The first is the mentorship of parents of such children by other parents in similar circumstances—an idea initially suggested in 1995 when mentees were viewed exclusively as protégés [95]. A 2024 scoping review on the topic of parent mentorship of children with developmental disorders focuses on the positive impact that such mentorships between parents have on the emotional well-being of parents [96]. A 2025 publication then offers practical advice on parent-to-parent mentorship of children with chronic conditions, including developmental disorders [97]. The second type of mentorship discussed in the literature regarding children with developmental disorders is peer-to-peer mentoring. A 2020 systematic review of this topic identified these programs as having a positive influence on the children [98]. Two later publications concern peer-to-peer mentorship of university-aged children. One article regards ADHD [99], and the other is on ASD [100].

What is missing from the publications on the mentorship of children with developmental disorders is studies on parents mentoring their children. Rather than considering that parents might be valuable mentors for their children, the focus of publications regarding mentoring and parents is the presumed inability of parents of such children to be effective in parenting [101,102]. The purpose of the mentoring the parents receive is to improve their ability as parents, not as mentors. Similarly, the literature on peer-mentoring of university-age children with developmental disabilities is from the perspective that their children’s experiences are necessarily outside the range of help that parents might provide as mentors [103]. This neglect of research on the ability of parents to mentor their children with developmental disorders has meant that what could be a worthwhile mentoring relationship for these families has been ignored.

3.6. Mentorship Arising from Concern

In 2003, a highly intelligent and aware young woman, the author had known since her birth, one who was personally close to the author’s family, suffered an experience that left her with symptoms of fibromyalgia. For an extended period, she was bedridden, unable to further her education or to work. Seeing that she was unable to regain her health using the standard and alternative medical means she tried, the author began a process of mentorship with her. Although the author was able to help her reenter society, the cost was her constant dependence on the author for help in making any decision. Given the closeness of this young woman to the author’s family, terminating the mentorship did not seem to be an option. Yet, the mentorship evolved into hours-long calls that were intended not to improve her possibilities but, by taking up an inordinate amount of time, lessen the author’s. The problems in this mentorship persisted until 2021, when the mentee decided that the author must erase all joint messages and emails and delete her phone number. After doing as she asked and our daily contact ended, the author noticed the immense amount of time gained to pursue other activities than devoting to this mentorship. This mentee has now regressed to being unable to leave her home, with newly developed reasons for her confinement.

This mentorship, intended to aid her progress, required time and energy. The difficulty appeared to be that she wanted to take advantage of the author’s time. The conclusion is that she did not want to improve. In summary, this mentorship was ineffective for several reasons: (1) the mentee did not initiate it, (2) the mentee did not have an objective problem to solve, (3) the mentee did not recognize the author’s experience as being relevant to making a positive change in her life, and (4) the reason the mentee participated was for the author to devote time to her. Thus, although the author began this mentorship hopefully, there were no points that supported its success.

When mentees were still referred to as protégés in 2000, a created taxonomy provided the mentee’s perspective of a negative mentoring relationship [104]. In 2022, tips for avoiding abusive mentors who use mentees as a source of labor were offered [11]. One 2024 publication refers to some mentors as anti-mentors with the intention of harming their mentees [105]. By 2025, more than half of mentees reported their mentorship relationships as failures [106]. What lacks consideration in any of these publications regarding an unsuccessful mentorship is the inappropriate treatment by a mentee of the mentor. The question is why the author persisted in this personally harmful mentoring relationship. A 2024 publication that asked what drives mentors answers that benevolence is the primary mentoring motive, stating that the latest studies suggest the motives are prosocial [26]. The mentoring relationship the author had with this long-time mentee is one that this 2024 paper would characterize as “mismatch”. The summary of the themes associated with a mismatch for the mentor is: disappointment, doubts about capabilities, and worrying about the mentee. These are themes relevant to the author regarding this mentoring relationship.

3.7. A School Designed for Mentorship

In the 2006/2007 academic year, the author worked with eight other parents of ALPHA Alternative School and the Toronto District School Board to create Alpha II Alternative School—a grades 7–12 school for self-directed learners who make school-wide decisions by a form of consensus where the point of view of each person is combined to produce the outcome [107]. Its operation has been continuous since September 2007. The relationship adults have with the young people is not teacher-student, it is mentor-mentee. Based on their interests, mentees are assigned a mentor at the beginning of the year. However, a mentee can opt to switch their mentor if they choose. Both of the author’s children attended Alpha II from 7th to 12th grade. Throughout Alpha II’s history, as a co-founder, the author has mentored young people, their parents, and the teachers. Concerning the creation of policies and procedures, the author’s focus has been on developing the school’s infrastructure. Mentees have chosen to work with the author—as a continuing and regular participant in school activities—when their interests correspond with problems related to these aspects of the school. The mentorships end when the mentees consider that their difficulties are solved. Similarly, the author has mentored teachers and several parents over the years regarding these same interests. Additionally, as a school co-founder, teachers and parents contact the author for mentorship regarding their understanding of self-directed learning and the particular form of consensus decision-making that supports the school community.

As a continuously 100% publicly funded self-directed school, Alpha II is unique in the world. For this reason, how the school operates is not self-evident, and upholding its founding principles requires commitment by all those involved with the school. The understanding of what is foundational regarding the school has been maintained throughout its almost twenty-year history, resulting, in part, from the author’s willingness to continue mentoring regarding fundamental aspects of the school. Mentorship on the basic principles of founding an institution is not the norm, as mentees focus on seeking information for their self-defined problems [108], rather than the problem of institutional consistency. Those students, parents, and teachers who looked to the author for mentorships regarding institutional consistency considered the result a success. In its mentorship focus on preserving an institution, a 2024 publication is alone [109]. However, the difference is that the mentorship program of this publication is to help students feel a sense of belonging. At Alpha II, young people enroll in the school because they already have a sense of belonging with the school’s philosophy of education. Mentorships with the author, had by them, their parents, or their teachers, support the continuation of the school’s fundamental values, intended to sustain their sense of belonging. It appears from the history of emails to the author that when any of these mentees are unclear on these values, the mentorship does not succeed.

3.8. A College Career Mentorship Program

From October 2008 to April 2023, the author participated yearly as an alumna mentor in the Career Mentorship Program of the author’s undergraduate college. During its first few years, mentees received emails about the various mentors who had joined the program, and they then selected their top three choices online. Once selected, college staff would match the mentees with the mentors. This type is a method of mentee-mentor matching supported by the literature [110,111]. Most often, students received their first choice. However, not always. What was found by staff in comparing the year-end results was that those students who had not received their first choice were generally unhappy with their match because it was not their first choice. The staff concluded that the problem lay in ranking the mentors. The solution was that staff would make the selections. Then, mentors and mentees would meet at an initial opening event.

Before meeting with their mentees, the staff met with mentors as a group to advise them to focus on what they might contribute to the mentorship, corresponding with the reason the mentees had joined the program. Once this matching program began, until the start of the pandemic, the mentorships the author had with mentees were very productive. This, in contrast to years when the author was not the first choice of the author’s mentees, and their reason for participating in the program that they shared was to add the mentorship to their CV. Although there are publications that mention mentors using mentorships to pad their CVs [112,113]—as there is “a fine line between being comprehensive and padding” [114]—the literature does not cover mentees joining organized career mentorship programs for this reason. The closest that a publication comes to suggesting this possibility is one that instead focuses on the extent to which mentors sometimes participate in mentorships to the detriment of mentees [11].

With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person meetings were no longer an option. Then, staff matched mentees and mentors, and their initial communication was by email. Although the author remained with the program throughout the pandemic, the commitment of the mentees in contacting the author to begin the mentorship over these years was negligible. It was clear that, during the pandemic, when the consideration was that the need for mentorship was greater than in pre-pandemic times to counteract loneliness [115,116,117,118], this means of initiating mentorships was ineffective. Yet, even after the pandemic ended, the method of introduction remained the same. The lack of need for her service as a mentor in this mentorship program became evident with the disinterest that mentees demonstrated in making initial email contact, making 2023 the last year of the author’s participation.

3.9. An Extended Serendipitous Mentorship

In 2011, the author attended the opening reception of the Career Mentorship Program, the focus of the previous section. The intent of the reception was for the matched mentee and mentor to meet up. The author’s assigned mentee did not attend the evening. As she was leaving, near the end of the event, the author saw a young woman who looked distraught. Asking her what was wrong, she told the author that her mentor was not in attendance. After asking her about her background, the author sensed she wanted the author as her mentor—an observation confirmed when she willingly agreed to a mentorship.

Since that initial meeting, the author has given career advice to this woman for over fifteen years. She messages the author with a problem she is having trouble solving, and, over a series of texts, she determines when she thinks she has sufficient information to solve her problem. Meetings are rarely in person. Approximately 90% of communication is by the Messenger App. Yet, even with only sporadic online communication, this woman has evolved from someone who viewed herself as unable to complete her undergraduate program, to graduating, then following several different career paths—each one closer to her ideal career.

According to this mentee, the mentorship has been life-saving for her. The author has had the satisfaction of seeing a mentee successfully manage her career through self-awareness of her goals, the problems she encounters, and understanding how the author’s advice might help her solve her problems. This mentorship has been successful.

Given that this mentorship has been an extended career mentorship, the consideration might be that, rather than a mentee, this woman was the author’s protégée. However, this is not correct. Although a 2025 publication insists that a protégé(e) and mentee are the same [119], it does not distinguish between those in a mentoring relationship who intend to follow the lead of the mentor in an organization (a protégé(e)) and those who are part of a mentorship to solve a self-identified problem (a mentee). Nevertheless, there are no publications that clarify this distinction.

One article defines the issue differently. This paper considers mentees and protégés as the same; however, it differentiates mentorship from sponsorship: mentorships offer advice, answer questions, and help strategize professional development while sponsorships promote the protégé/mentee to others for the career advancement of the protégé/mentee [120]. In contrast, if the focus is on distinguishing the ideal protégé, a 2000 publication notes that there are two types: (1) those who have ability and potential, and (2) those looking for help. In this paper, the advice is to choose the first type as a protégé [28]. It is evident that even when a distinction between a protégé and a mentee is lacking, a description of an ideal protégé differs from an ideal mentee—a person who begins with a self-defined problem to solve. With these various perspectives, it is clear that the role of the mentee has not been well-defined, and confusion regarding this role presents a reason for misunderstandings in mentorships [121].

3.10. A Group Mentorship Program

From 2015 to 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, the author facilitated a weekly in-person narrative research group that the author designed to utilize a uniquely structured meeting to help reduce self-identified researcher burnout, held through the Department of Psychiatry at the Toronto Mount Sinai Hospital. Those who participated were researchers who had contacted the author for a mentorship to help reduce their burnout. All of these prospective mentees were eager to join the structured Health Narratives Research Group (HeNReG). Regarding this period, a 2020 publication on the group concerns helping participants reduce their burnout [122]. What lacks discussion regarding this group is its impact on the mentor/mentee relationship.

Unlike the ideal form of mentorship, where the mentee demonstrates self-awareness by having a well-defined problem that they recognize is solvable by incorporating mentor experience, these mentees each self-identified as burned out. In a 2024 scoping review of mentorship interventions in postgraduate medical and STEM settings, the mention of burnout is fleeting, although group mentorship of researchers is examined in detail [123]. As such, the relationship between burnout and the success of researchers engaged in group mentorship is lacking in the literature. During the HeNReG meetings, the experience of burnout by mentees compromised their self-awareness and ability to recognize possible problem solutions. As a corollary, a 2025 publication found that researchers with self-awareness are better able to solve their problems and less likely to experience burnout [124]. As such, the result of the HeNReG was that the mentorship boundary was blurred, with the type of help equating to therapy [125]. A 2024 publication on a group mentoring method referred to as executive coaching identifies the possibility of this blurring [126]. This paper concludes that mentors in these programs are ill-equipped to help mentees once they cross this boundary.

The aim of the HeNReG was not mentorship but burnout reduction. In this regard, the HeNReG was able to meet its goal of reducing burnout with each participant. However, as a mentorship program, there was a lack of longitudinal results. Participants often joined more than once over several years, expressing that their burnout, although reduced by the HeNReG meetings of the previous year, returned after the meetings ceased during the summer months. This type of problem was unrecognized in another burnout-reduction group mentorship program for clinical researchers, as the 2024 report of the program covered only the one nine-month program [127]. The returning nature of burnout in HeNReG participants pointed to additional psychiatric obstacles affecting them that mentees openly acknowledged, such as clinical depression [128,129]. Consequently, the in-person meetings of the HeNReG had limited lasting value as mentorship programs.

3.11. Online Matching of Mentorship Between Alumni

In 2017, the author became involved with a new online mentorship program called Ten Thousand Coffees offered in association with the University of Toronto. Initially, participants would write their biography in the online system and indicate if they were looking for mentors or mentees. Then, those looking for mentors would identify a potential mentor through the biographies and message them to organize a meeting. Articles written on collecting mentor biographies are for research about mentors; they do not concern examination by mentees [130,131]. As such, this method for forming mentorships was, and remains, novel in the literature. From 2017 until the start of the pandemic, this mentorship program regularly provided the author with new mentees. Upon meeting with each of them in person, the author would tell them about the HeNReG and ask if they were interested in continuing the mentorship through that structured program. All of them preferred to join, and did so, completing the program until the end of the academic year—some of them joining again in the years that followed.

Once the pandemic no longer permitted in-person meetings, the organizers decided that the mentorship would take place online in the Ten Thousand Coffees messaging platform. During this period of the mentoring program, an additional structural change meant that mentors were no longer selected by mentees based on the biography submitted by the mentor. Instead, the program administrators would match potential dyads. Creating dyads is a well-researched method and is found to be successful [110,132,133]. Each month, a new potential mentee was matched with me, providing more opportunities to work with mentees than in the past. However, now that the selection was made by the system, rather than the mentee taking the initiative to contact me, the percentage of mentees who responded to the author’s initial messages was reduced.

Once the pandemic was over, mentors and mentees were again able to meet up for coffee. However, the matching method remained the same as during the pandemic. The result was that mentees became even less likely to respond to the messages the system sent out to contact the mentor. Monthly, the author wrote to the potential mentee matched with her and suggested to them a basis on which a mentorship relationship might be formed, given their submitted biography. Yet, now, fewer than 10% of those mentees that the system matches with the author ever respond to the author’s messages. The mentees do not take the initiative to initiate the matching. Other ways of setting up in-person mentorships apart from Ten Thousand Coffees have been available since the end of the pandemic. Therefore, it is not surprising that mentees have generally lost interest in this form of mentorship. This type of disconnection from these organized mentorship programs regards a general disengagement from higher education post-pandemic [134]. Moreover, with virtual mentoring post-pandemic, mentees are found to expect less from the match. Although these matches are convenient, they produce “a general field of tension” [135]. The author continues with this mentorship program, although the percentage of potential mentees responding to the author’s initial contact continues to dwindle.

3.12. Mentorship Between Graduate Students and Alumni

In September 2018, the graduate program the author had attended for her graduate work invited the author to participate in the first year of their graduate student mentorship program. Backed by research indicating that mentors receive insufficient organizational recognition for their mentorship contribution [136,137,138], this program began with a lauding of mentors in speeches at the opening reception, and games to play where mentors might win valuable prizes. The opening event was exciting, well-supported financially, and fun, ending with party favors for all mentors. Additionally, it provided the opportunity for mentors to meet the mentees selected for them by the program.

Each year of the author’s participation in this mentorship program, the author gained at least one mentee, sometimes two, even during the pandemic years when there was no opening reception. Every one of them opted to join the author’s HeNReG for a structured mentoring experience. Yet, in the first year of an in-person opening reception after the pandemic, the author’s two assigned mentees both let the Alumni Office know that they would not be attending the opening event of the mentorship program for that year—a common occurrence post-pandemic [134]. The Alumni Office still urged the author to attend the event. The author did attend. The organizers recognized the author’s continued commitment to the program in a speech. The author happened to win two of the games and gain high-priced prizes. All of this attention was to make the author know that the Alumni Office appreciated her participation. However, the author also learned that her contribution was unwanted by the author’s assigned graduate students. The author became aware of this when, over the next few weeks, the author’s assigned mentees did not respond to her emails.

The result: the author felt the process was disingenuous. The main point seemed to be maintaining contact with dedicated graduates, in the hope that they would continue their involvement with the Alumni Office. Clearly, by 2023, post-pandemic, satisfying the needs of mentees was not the outcome. As the author felt that other mentors should have a chance to gain acclaim, receive party favors, and win prizes participating in this Mentorship Program, the 2023/2024 academic year was the author’s final year of participation in the program. Ultimately, the author felt embarrassed by all the recognition she received. This type of embarrassment from organizational recognition of mentors has only recently been recognized in the literature [139].

3.13. Online Group Mentorship

As a result of the cancellation of all in-person meetings on 12 March 2020 [140] in response to the COVID-19 pandemic declared on 11 March 2020 [141], the final month and a half of the 2020/2021 HeNReG meetings were held online rather than in person. This practice continued until the final meeting of the 2021/2022 academic year. There are publications on the effect (1) of moving the in-person HeNReG online to a private Facebook group regarding how the meeting changed [142], (2) on one aspect [143,144], and (3) regarding challenges to its ability to meet its aim of reducing burnout in researchers [145]. Unreported is the effect on the mentorship of the participants. These results are divisible into three different types of mentees of those who joined as a result of fulfilling mentorship assignments: (1) the Career Mentorship Programs organized by the author’s undergraduate college, (2) Ten Thousand Coffees, and (3) the Mentorship Program of the department where the author did her graduate work.

Each of the years during the pandemic when the HeNReG was online-only, a mentee from the Career Mentorship Program participated, equaling three mentees (the first of these was regarding the last month of the 2019/2020 year). Additionally, past mentees from other years of the same program rejoined the HeNReG to continue their participation. They continued because, as reported in their feedback forms, they enjoyed the group participation. The number of these additional past mentees as participants from this Career Mentorship Program equals seven. For those mentees who joined during the pandemic, their online participation was irregular, rather than weekly. Yet, their feedback forms indicated that they still felt the mentorship was valuable. The mentee from 2019/2020 stated in her feedback form that she appreciated the online aspect for these reasons: (1) she did not have to travel, and (2) it kept her in touch with other researchers; nevertheless, she considered that some features of the program were hard to accomplish online. The 2020/2021 mentee stated on her feedback form that she found the meetings “relieving” because they got her engaged during the pandemic. However, she also did not participate in all aspects of the program. That not all characteristics of research groups meeting online during the pandemic were transferable from previous in-person meetings is also the result of a 2021 investigation of the topic [146]. For the 2021/2022 mentee, she wrote on her feedback form that it was “incredibly helpful” to have several researchers asking her questions. This question-asking helped her to understand herself as a researcher better. Additionally, she also wrote in her feedback form, “Having a community of researchers who believe the person researching is important.” A 2020 discussion paper on the value of this type of online interprofessional collaboration during the pandemic offers a similar conclusion to this mentee [147].

Regarding Ten Thousand Coffees, three mentees joined the online HeNReG during the pandemic years—two during the first partial year, one for the second year, and none in the final year. Additionally, one 2017/2018 mentee from this program continued his participation throughout the pandemic. For those who were mentees of Ten Thousand Coffees for that academic year, their responses in their feedback forms included the following statements. After a month of online meetings, one mentee responded, “One of my favourite parts of HeNReG is the amazing people that it brings together, I really enjoyed hearing about people’s stories and learning about all the different ways that others go about conducting their research. Thank you Carol!”—a quotation stressing the peer-mentorship aspect of the mentoring and the author’s facilitation of that opportunity. This response was unlike that of the other mentee from that year, who was introspective, “I still feel very far from what it means to ‘do research’ or to be a ‘researcher’. Maybe that is why I wanted to join this group, because there should be a starting place for all these ideas to grow and slowly connect with one another”, a comment indicating that the mentee did not start the mentorship with a problem in mind. Rather, the reason for joining was to discover a problem to research. In the second year, when the group was online the entire academic year, the new mentee from Ten Thousand Coffees made these observations when asked why she joined the HeNReG for her mentorship. The answer was similar to the second mentee participant from the previous year, “The reason why I want to participate in this group is that I want to meet new people and listen to others’ stories during this process of my job search. I hope doing so will keep me motivated somehow.” It is perhaps because the mentees from Ten Thousand Coffees were looking to make new relationships in joining the mentorship program that their focus was on interacting with new people to gain ideas exclusively. This reason for participating in mentorship programs was not well-studied until 2025 [148].

The graduate program mentorship participants had a greater focus on their research programs compared with those of Ten Thousand Coffees. For each of the three years of the online HeNReG, there was at least one participant from that mentorship program—in 2021/2022, there were two. When asked why she was interested in a mentorship regarding the HeNReG, the mentee from 2019/2020 responded on her feedback form, “Specifically, I am interested in curriculum integration and innovation; that is, studying the effectiveness of this form of learning that elicits an interactive and collaborative approach to post-secondary education.” Yet, this response came only a month after online meetings. By the first year of meeting entirely online following COVID-19 restrictions, even students focused on their research for their mentorship commented as part of their feedback form that what was most important was keeping people together. “I think having the knowledge of what other people are working on and having a means of connection through the group is really helpful to know who I can ask for support in my research.” 2021/2022 was the second full year of online meetings of the HeNReG resulting from the pandemic restrictions. The first of the mentees that year shared, “My academic research interest is in the technology and knowledge building and the impact of excessive use of technology in our learning capabilities.” He stated on his feedback form that the HeNReG will continue to be of help to him “In being open.” The second mentee from this program for this year provided this assessment of her research interest on her feedback form, “I have always been drawn to qualitative methods, specifically methodologies that are critical of academic structures and who owns knowledge and how knowledge is created…, so I was fascinated with wanting to learn how to elicit stories with (not from) participants that have social justice outcomes and be able to promote change, especially with people who have been historically marginalized and purposely left out of research and academia.” Her assessment of the online HeNReG was as follows: “It’s helpful to carve out time to write regularly. It’s also helpful to read other participants’ responses to see similarities and differences in writing. From what I read, many of us go through many of the same challenges, so it’s nice to know you’re not alone… It was nice to be a part of a group that’s all working on research.” A 2021 publication made this discovery for other online mentorship programs during the pandemic, that a feeling of not being alone in challenges was a predominant reason for participating in these mentorships [149].

3.14. Online Individual Mentorship

In reviewing the responses of mentees from the three organized mentorship programs who participated in the HeNReG during the pandemic, it is relevant that their view of the group for their mentorship as part of the HeNReG was positive. This positive view contrasts with the author’s own view that the online group did not meet its intended aim—to have the participants interact with each other in asking questions regarding their online written comments. Such interaction was the foundation of the HeNReG when it was in-person, before the pandemic. However, when the HeNReG moved online, the participants chose to answer only those questions that the author put to them as the facilitator, leaving the questions of other group members unanswered. Consequently, by the end of the 2021/2022 group meetings, with pandemic limitations still in place, the author decided to end the online HeNReG and change it to a one-on-one process. Doing so produced a form of mentorship with the author alone. One that used the HeNReG question-asking structure. It was called the Health Narratives Research Process (HeNReP). The details of the HeNReP are in [150].

2025/2026 represents the fourth year of the author’s offering the HeNReP to researchers who self-identify as burned out. Over the four years of the program, those who have participated in it originated from four sources, (1) the Career Mentorship Program of the author’s undergraduate college, (2) Ten Thousand Coffees, (3) the Mentorship Program of the author’s graduate school department, and (4) professionals contacting the author directly to be part of the program with no ties to any mentorship program.

The mentees from the Career Mentorship Program were two, both during 2022/2023. For the first of these mentees, the author suggested she join the HeNReP as she was unsure of her career direction. Although she was eager to participate at the start, lacking any specific problem to solve regarding the mentorship, she left the process before its completion. In contrast to other mentees, she has maintained a personal connection with the author. The second mentee from that program for this academic year similarly did not begin with a research question. She joined, interested in enrolling in medical school. This mentee almost completed the entire process. However, she did not finish it. In both these cases, the mentorship process was unsuccessful because the mentee felt uncomfortable with its one-on-one nature. Although there are publications regarding online mentoring during the pandemic for both group and individual mentorship, they do not consider the difference in the level of comfort mentees have between group mentorship and one-on-one [19,151].

Regarding the Ten Thousand Coffees mentorship program, the author’s mentees who joined a HeNReP were two in 2022/2023 and one in 2023/2024—a person who carried over her mentorship from the preceding academic year. In the one-on-one HeNReP, a mentorship spanning more than one academic year was now possible. A unique feature of this program was that the mentees could determine their own schedule for participation [102]. Both of these mentees completed the process. Each had joined with a specific problem related to their mentorship. For the mentee of 2022/2023, her problem was understanding the job market. Concerning how the HeNReP helped in this regard, she said in her feedback, “It was helpful to have to set time aside and really reflect on why I was interested in health research. As someone who is only beginning to enter into the job market, it’s nice to have a better sense of myself and the type of work I like to do.” For the second mentee whose mentorship spanned two academic years, she commented, “my goal is not so much understanding ‘why I am conducting the research I am doing’, but more so, I would like a job that keeps my ‘hands dirty/working the bench’ but also gives me a sense of purpose, requires me to be creative and can provide me a work-life balance.” That they joined with a specific problem that differed from the previous years that mentees had been part of the HeNReG from Ten Thousand Coffees, demonstrating that this form of online mentorship was able to attract mentees who had awareness of what problem they wanted solved with the mentorship. There is no published research on the types of mentees attracted to the Ten Thousand Coffees mentorship program, with only one peer-reviewed publication that mentions the program [152].

There was one mentee in the 2022/2023 academic year from the Mentorship Program associated with the author’s graduate department who participated in the HeNReP. Similar to those mentees from Ten Thousand Coffees, she chose to participate in the process because she had a particular problem to solve and had the self-awareness to understand how the HeNReP might be helpful to her. In considering where she should go with her research, this mentee commented on her feedback form, “I think I have constantly changed research areas…, all research has primarily revolved around psychology related topic areas but I started from focusing on university students, then focused on subfertility, then emotion regulation and now my research is more focused on immigrants and learning difficulties related experiences and parental involvement. I think I changed my research areas more or less to meet the expectations of the research context.” However, a mentee from this Mentorship Program during the following academic year lacked this self-awareness and, after joining the HeNReP, spent her short time participating by sending the author apologies for not responding to the writing prompt of the process.

Several other researchers joined the HeNReP with no connection to an organized mentorship program. These were professionals working in their fields, looking to solve particular problems related to their jobs. One was a physician from 2022/2023. Her goal was to improve her self-awareness in assessing goals when she joined a research project. Regarding the role of the HeNReP, she stated, “Reflective writing project has taught me self-awareness and the improvement I made in research over the years.” Another from that year was an ordained minister conducting research in theological education. The problem she encountered was a lack of opportunity for self-reflection. In this regard, she considered the structured process of the HeNReP helpful, as written in her feedback, “I appreciated the opportunity for self-reflection based on the nuances of the prompt. I felt that there was a real dialogue and that I learned something from the exchange of ideas and personal research practices shared and explained… This process allowed me to understand how the landscape of research and the scope of topics to be studied has changed as a result of the pandemic as well as to take stock of past experiences as a researcher and grow confidence for future projects or areas of exploration. I learned a lot about myself and my values around research topics, process, and design.”

These two mentees completed the process. Four others did not. One was a dentist with a faculty appointment. It is unclear why the dentist did not complete the process, as he was perceptive regarding why he wanted to participate: “I am interested in understanding what it means to be an exceptional dentist as it relates to adaptability and communication using the theoretical framework of adaptive expertise. I am also interested in health system innovation in the dental domain as it relates to optimizing administrative processes, in a way that promotes better care and access, using program evaluation as a framework.” Although the reason the dentist left the program is unknown, an engineering educator solved his problem independently and subsequently founded an international program to bring water to African countries lacking safe access to it. Another professional who participated in the HeNReP was a physician who explained this reason for having an interest in joining the HeNReP in her written account of why she joined: “I previously assumed and kept these two research environments separate, however over the last decade, the inseparability and interdependence of the arts and health have become one of the main foci of my research.” This mentee left the program because she identified a way to merge her two research interests. This result differed from an emotive therapist who joined the HeNReP because of her continued confusion regarding where her research should take her. Living in a country where she was personally affected by war (the HeNReP is an internationally available program), she was unable to complete the process. All of these mentees were from the 2023/2024 academic year.

Beginning in the 2024/2025 academic year, the author no longer advertised the HeNReP. Nevertheless, one mentee asked for a HeNReP on four separate occasions since then, including 2026, which she has yet to complete. She is a social worker affected by adult ADHD. She uses the process to help her bring clarity to her thought processes. In her words, “Structure, nudging/shifting supporting me on moving forward helps me pace myself regarding how much time I spend on a question is helpful… Allowed me to spend time exploring my research related to health, to reflect and think about older ideas in new ways.” Research specific to mentoring professionals online during the pandemic is one publication regarding physicians [117]. The advice offered is: (1) address emotions, (2) adjust priorities, (3) change formats, (4) acknowledge technology fatigue, (5) recognize inequalities, and (6) remember to demonstrate active engagement. There was a following of this advice in the evolution of the HeNReG to the HeNReP in response to the pandemic.

4. Discussion

There are two major claims of this article regarding mentorship: (1) forms of mentorship have evolved from an idea to a culture of mentorship, and (2) there is a difference between protégés and mentees. An examination of both claims is in the following discussion.

4.1. Idea to Culture

“Mentorship” has evolved from two people defining it as such to several institutionalized practices that developed during the author’s 39 years of mentoring. As such, the term has changed from an idea [1] to a culture [2]. The arrangement of some of the fourteen different types of mentorship in which the author has participated as a mentor since 1987 was individual associations between a mentee and a mentor. Others have been the product of an organized mentorship program. Evaluating these different types of mentorships together, those in which both the mentee and the mentor considered the mentorship a success, resulted from the instigator of the association being the mentee regarding a problem they had that they considered the author would be able to help solve, apart from any pre-designed program. The first two mentorships are the best example of this. The mentees approached the author with solvable problems they were unable to resolve on their own, and considered that the author could facilitate their solution, which she was able to do. The least successful were those mentorships that the author initiated or those arranged through an institution’s organized program. The reason is that the mentee lacked an understanding of the mentorship’s purpose. In these cases, the author attempted to make contact with mentees who actively avoided responding because they were unsure what they wanted from the mentorship.

Table 2. Years of the mentorship relationship for each of the fourteen types engaged in by the author over 39 years, where the column heading numbers represent the subsection heading numbers of the Results section, and “I” represents that the mentorship was an idea, and “C” means it was part of a culture.

Year	3.1.	3.2.	3.3.	3.4.	3.5.	3.6.	3.7.	3.8.	3.9	3.10	3.11.	3.12.	3.13.	3.14.
1987	I
1988	I
1989		I
1990		I	I
1991			I
1992			I
1993			I	C
1994			I	C
1995			I	C
1996			I		I
1997					I
1998					I
1999					I
2000					I
2001					I
2002					I
2003					I	I
2004					I	I
2005					I	I
2006					I	I
2007					I	I	I
2008					I	I	I	C
2009					I	I	I	C
2010					I	I	I	C
2011					I	I	I	C	C
2012					I	I	I	C	I
2013					I	I	I	C	I
2014					I	I	I	C	I
2015					I	I	I	C	I	C
2016					I	I	I	C	I	C
2017					I	I	I	C	I	C	C
2018					I	I	I	C	I	C	C	C
2019					I	I	I	C	I	C	C	C
2020					I	I	I	C	C		C	C	C
2021					I	I	I	C	I		C	C	C
2022					I		I	C	I		C	C	C	C
2023					I		I	C	I		C	C		C
2024					I		I		I		C	C		C
2025					I		I		I		C			C
2026					I		I		I		C			C

presents the years in which a mentorship relationship was either an idea between the mentee and mentor or part of a mentorship program that the author designed, or an institution in which both the mentee and the author had affiliation that created it. What is evident is that in the early years of the author’s mentoring, the relationship was predominantly an idea. Beginning in 1993 with the Costa Rican program, the author developed a mentorship culture for the first time—a period when the idea of a mentee was predominantly that of a “protégé”. “Mentee” had only been introduced in the literature in 1990 [10]. The formal institutional mentorship programs in which the author participated began in 2008. The extended serendipitous mentorship began with both the author’s mentee and the author intending to gain a mentorship by participating in that program. A mentorship was initiated between them when neither of their assigned partners attended the matching event. For most of this mentorship, it has been an idea between the two. During the 2020/2021 academic year, this mentee participated in the formal group mentorship program because it was online during COVID-19. However, the structure was not appealing to her. Mentorship as an idea was the structure resumed. Yet, from 2015 onwards, the author’s involvement with new mentorship programs has been with only those part of a mentorship culture. The author’s own mentorship history illustrates the evolution of the term from an idea to a culture.

What the author has identified in the years of participating in mentorship relationships is that the aim of a mentorship must be a match between a mentee who has the self-awareness to recognize what they seek from a mentorship and the knowledge to understand that the mentorship ends with the solution to problems. In this regard, the author provides the following advice. For cultures of organized mentorship to be successful, they should offer opportunities for mentees to select their own mentors [153] and for mentors to make the knowledge they are willing to provide evident [32]. The author has found that the formation of these types of matches not only answers mentees’ questions, but it also provides the recognition most appreciated by mentors, rather than extrinsic rewards unrelated to the mentorship [154]. As such, creating a mentorship culture alone is unable to produce the productive results of the mentor/mentee relationship [155].

Few publications discuss the evolution of mentorship since the 1980s. One, published in 2024 [156], also recognizes that the evolution has been towards structured mentorship arrangements, with structured mentoring initiatives intended to support interchange. Matching programs have become evident, with mentors given specific instructions on how to mentor, according to these authors. Similar to the author’s experience, there can be a mismatch between mentees and mentors. In a 2022 paper [11], mismatches are a focus when discussing the evolution of mentorship, stressing that the problem arises from both the mentor and the mentee. They state, “mentees with negative qualities tend to be described as lacking motivation, skill, and experience, and exhibiting a sense of entitlement”. From the author’s experiences, the author agrees with this point. Other negative qualities that they highlight in mentees are racism or sexism towards mentors. Throughout the author’s 39 years as a mentor, these negative qualities have not been her experience. Investigating the increase in peer mentorship regarding professional identity formation is the point of another 2024 publication [157]. In agreement, the author’s years of facilitating the HeNReG as an in-person group have shown that peer mentorship is effective in professional identity formation.

4.2. Protégés and Mentees

Although the use of the term “mentee” has become more common, “protégé” is associated with a mentor in many recent publications on mentorship, rather than “mentee”. Some examples are [24,27,120,158]. Yet, it is because the use of these terms remains interchangeable that misunderstandings can arise between mentors and mentees. In contrast to the mentee who intends to solve a particular problem [159], the protégé is a student or a younger colleague engaging a mentor for psychosocial and career-related support [160,161].

Comparing the fourteen types of mentorships the author has experienced over the years, the evolution of mentorship from an idea to a culture lacking a focus on differentiating mentee and protégé as two distinct terms is likely the basis of the problems the author has encountered. The most taxing mentorship the author experienced was with the woman whom the author volunteered to mentor after she experienced a health crisis that left her unable to work. Although the author had hoped for her to be able to work, as she did not come to the author with a problem and instead appeared to use the interactions for psychosocial support, the author was unsatisfied with this mentorship. It now appears clear that her interpretation of the relationship was that the author was volunteering to make her a protégé rather than the author’s actual intention, which was for her to become a mentee.

Although the author never intended the mentorship program the author designed for medical students regarding Costa Rica to be for protégés, perhaps this was the interpretation of the one medical student who was a poor match for the program. A very intelligent young Chinese woman, she may have read the literature then current on protégés regarding the potential for abusive relationships with mentors [162,163], such that she was merely protecting herself against the possibility of such abuse with her assertive and unhelpful behavior.

Some students who signed up for the undergraduate college Career Mentorship Program, Ten Thousand Coffees, or those who participated in the mentorship program of the author’s graduate department, wanted to be associated with these programs only for career-related support. As this was not the author’s offering, many of these mentees, hoping to be protégés, left the programs because, by expecting mentees, the author was unable and unwilling to provide them with this type of career navigation.

Reflecting on the author’s fourteen types of mentorships, if the author had made the distinction between being a “mentee” and a “protégé” clear, all the matches might have been successful. The reason is that recognition from the beginning would have been as a poor match with the author’s interest in them as mentees of those people who were looking to be protégés regarding the author’s mentorship. The encouragement they would have received from the author would have been to seek a mentor elsewhere.

Unlike the evolution of mentorship from an idea to a culture with some relevant publications, the literature regarding protégés and mentees fails to recognize a difference between the two terms. As evidenced in two 2023 papers [164,165] and one from 2025 [166], these terms are interchangeable when mentioned in the same publication.

4.3. Limitations

The types of bias that researchers must mitigate in publishing data are several. An individual researcher, such as this author, must demonstrate extra concern to avoid these biases, as there is no research team to counteract them. An inability to overcome any one of them then represents the limitations of an article. The range of biases relevant to this particular study is (1) selection bias where participant self-selection lacks population representation, (2) researcher bias where the researcher influences the participant responses, (3) information bias when the data are incorrectly recorded, either from inaccurate participant memory or researcher error, (4) confirmation bias where the focus is on evidence that supports a theory, ignoring contradictory data (5) reporting bias when there is a reporting of positive results while ignoring negative ones, (6) procedural bias where data are analyzed to produce a specific outcome, and (7) recall bias where data are reported inaccurately because of the confidence level in them.

Consideration of the meaning of selection bias in social science research was relatively obvious initially [167]. However, a recent finding is that selection bias involves several aspects related to the type of participants who choose to complete surveys [168]. Regarding this research study, the work includes only those participants in mentorships who continued with the match until the mentorship culmination. As such, the author has not reported on how many potential mentees ignored the initial introduction to the author in Ten Thousand Coffees. Why they did not choose to respond is unknown. Therefore, including all potential mentees in this assessment, the results may have differed.

Researcher bias is particularly evident when the research has a strong affinity towards the population being investigated [169]. However, recent research has recognized that the problem with researcher bias concerns the researcher’s potential self-interest regarding their position or role [170]. In comparing the fourteen different types of mentoring experiences over 39 years, the author has had varying positions, from being a representative of several institutions, to being a support for those for whom the author feels responsible, to being a founder of various programs, to being a participant in three mentorship programs designed by different organizations. The situations that included self-interest were (1) when the author acted as a responsible support person, and (2) as a founder of programs—the author did have a personal stake in the success of these mentorships. Yet, when mentoring as a representative of several institutions, the author’s superiors were unaware of the mentorships the author took on. These mentorships were mentioned only in the author’s CV and the correspondence between the author’s mentees and me. Regarding the author’s involvement in the three institutionally organized mentorship programs, the author had received more acclaim for participation than she wanted. In no case did the author use the recognition for personal advancement.

When the author was a representative of different institutions, the possibility of information bias would be most likely, as these initial mentorships occurred before the commercial use of the World Wide Web for email communication in 1995 [171]. For the mentorships preceding then, the author must rely on her memory of the interactions and the subsequent emails over the years, keeping in contact with the people whom the author mentored. Nevertheless, since there are no documents confirming what happened in the mentorships during this period, this is a limitation. Distortion of reality is a problem arising from information bias—one most often evident in questionnaire design [172]. It is controllable with the use of a standardized questionnaire design [173]. Recognizing the possibility of this type of bias when the author first created the feedback forms completed by members of the HeNReG (also used later for the HeNReP), these forms were standardized based on those used by other offerings associated with the Health Arts and Humanities Program of the Department of Psychiatry [174].

The value of presenting the results of fourteen different types of mentorships in which the author engaged over 39 years is that the various kinds of confirmation bias initially identified in 1995 are reduced [175]. Yet, confirmation bias may have been a feature of the HeNReG as a group activity, as the group enthusiasm that was evident when the HeNReG was in person, and the reduction in peer participation once the group was online, may reflect a type of confirmation bias. A 2024 publication on confirmation bias in groups has noted that “confirmation bias benefits group learning across a wide range of resource-scarcity conditions” [176]. Although it is possible that the feedback received from the HeNReG in mentoring participants reflected confirmation bias, this bias may have influenced the success in reducing burnout in health researchers.

Reporting bias decreases the value of a research study, and was, in 2010, an under-reported problem [177]. In recent research, reporting only favorable results makes it evident [178]. The author has endeavored to provide a transparent account of not only the successes of her mentorships but also their failures. Some of these failures the author has attributed to organizational decisions, ones apart from the author’s influence. However, others resulted from the author’s own failure to understand the role of a mentorship as distinct from psychosocial therapy—most notably the concern the author showed in initiating a mentorship (described in Section 3.6). Similarly, although the author believes that the change to the Ten Thousand Coffee mentorship program has generally reduced the success in matching mentors and mentees, the author acknowledges (in Section 3.14) that this program remained capable of attracting mentees who can benefit from a mentorship program.

Procedural bias was recognized initially as a primary concern in health research with bioethical implications [179]. Its control can range from sufficient and standardized approaches to data accumulation and storage [180]. Since the accumulation and storage of data for this study were in various ways, a lack of standardization is a limitation of this work. Particularly since one researcher accomplished all aspects. Nevertheless, the 39-year history of the author’s involvement with fourteen disparate mentorships was not a research study. Until writing this paper, these mentorships had no connection other than all being part of the author’s history. As such, although this work does have procedural bias, it does not arise from intended manipulation of the data. Instead, it is a result of the lack of a research study guiding the original gathering and storage of the data.

According to a well-cited publication on the topic published the year the author began mentorships [181], recall bias is not reporting data incorrectly. Instead, it is reporting it in relation to a level of confidence regarding its correctness. As such, recall bias results from reporting data within the context of a perspective, regarding how to accurately account for the data, and ignores information that is considered irrelevant. It is not a memory failure. It is found less likely to affect reporting when there is more than one explanation considered intuitively plausible by the reporter. There was an association between general confidence and reporting confidence in more recent publications. Thus, for example, overconfident people have an overconfidence in what they recall [182]. Moreover, data that support desired effects are more likely to be remembered [183]. The question is, did the author demonstrate recall bias in remembering the mentorships over the 39 years? Writing this paper was the first time the author had considered the history of the author’s mentorship activities. Over that period, the author was unsure about the result of the years of mentorship. Although the author had a particular view on what made a good mentorship and tried to incorporate this view into how she structured her participation in the relationship, the result was that the author was often incorrect. It did not confirm the author’s expectations. Thus, because the author had experience with both success and failure in mentorships, the author knew that there was more than one possible explanation. Making it less likely that the author had recall bias. However, the author approached each mentorship confidently. This approach might have led to overconfidence in the author’s reporting. From the author’s perspective, the high level of confidence affected the time the author engaged in a mentoring relationship. In hindsight, the author often continued with a mentorship beyond when she knew it might be ineffective. Therefore, although the author may have recall bias, the author believes that the type of data produced does not coincide with a result that would indicate recall bias.

Another limitation is that there has been no consultation with the mentees in these fourteen mentorships for this research. Interviewing the mentees would have enhanced this work by providing additional perspective.

4.4. Future Research Directions

Future research comparing “mentor”, “mentee”, and “mentorship” should be a dedicated research endeavor—preferably one conducted by a research team—to reduce the possibility of procedural, researcher, and recall bias. To mitigate information bias, data should be stored in an open research platform, such as Zenodo or OSF [184], as each provides a timestamp, a registry, and preservation [184].

Additionally, different types of mentorships require systematic comparison for their success. The various mentorship matching programs, where the institution decides on the match, need comparison. Then compare them with programs where the mentees select their mentors. Also in need of comparison are instances where mentors select mentees versus mentees initiating the mentorship. The aim here would be to determine the level of success for each.

The author has mentored men, women, teenagers, and children over the 39 years of participation. The mentorships have been with mentees from various countries, both online and in person, who are younger than the author and older. However, there is no systematic demographic comparison of these mentees. Future research on mentorship should collect demographic information and also compare those who consider themselves mentees with those who join programs as protégés.

5. Conclusions

The research questions of this study investigated the following: (1) What were the various mentorships? (2) How did they differ regarding the relationship between the author’s mentee and me? (3) How successful were they? Revealed by this historical chrononarratological study of the fourteen types of mentorships in which the author engaged over 39 years is that all of them differed in how the mentorship began, their level of success, and whether the experience was as an idea between two people or as part of a culture of mentorship. In the most successful mentorships, the mentee approached the mentorship process with self-awareness regarding a particular solvable problem—one they considered that the author might be helpful to solve. Those mentees who lacked such self-awareness, a solvable problem, or the understanding that the author might be able to help them with the solution considered the mentorship deficient. In most cases, this result appeared to originate from a lack of differentiation between “mentee” and “protégé”. In other words, they joined the mentorship for career or psychosocial support rather than to solve a problem. It was when they sought the author for support as a protégé(e) that the mentorship floundered. When a mentee, rather than a protégé(e), initiated a mentorship, the results demonstrate that their gender, age, nationality, race, family relationship, and communication method were irrelevant to the success of the mentorship. In contrast, when the matching of mentees to mentors was through an organized program, these variables influenced the success of the mentorship. This information is relevant and potentially valuable for developing the mentorship culture of such programs.