In preparing for mentor program leader training and talks to corporate stakeholders about mentoring, I would punctuate my comments with examples of mentoring relationships between people whom I thought my audience would recognize.
This goal had three outcomes. One, I discovered how much more popular informal mentoring has been over the ages than I had realized; two, audience members were often inspired to take action towards mentoring based on their admiration for the people, heroes, or role models they saw in the examples; and third, over time I compiled a list of thousands of mentoring relationships.
What follows are examples from four of the ten categories:
- Actors, Comedians, Producers and Directors (Stage, Screen, and TV)
- Mentoring relationships depicted in motion pictures and television
- Musicians, Songwriters, and Singers
- Classical and Broadway Musicians, Composers, Conductors, Ballet, and Modern Dancers
- Fashion, Media, and Celebrities
- Artists, Writers, Photographers, Publishers, Novelists, Poets
- Mentoring relationships depicted in print (novels stories, fiction)
- Sports Figures, Athletes, and Coaches
- Historical, Political, Spiritual and Civic Leaders
- Business, Industry, Education, Science, and Medical Leaders
The full list of mentoring pairs is available at http://www.mentors.ca/mentorpairs.html
