UIF’s Open-System Mentoring™ will assist you in optimizing the benefits of mentoring in its most dynamic form.  In Homer’s The Odyssey, mentoring occurred because Odysseus’ son, Telemachus, formed his dream and developed a burning desire to resolve his father’s where about.  His passion to pursue his dream enabled him to seek and benefit from the various forms of mentoring resources available to him from Athena, the goddess of wisdom. This first story of mentoring is the conceptual basis of UIF’s Open-System Mentoring™. This includes the realization that mentoring resources are engaged and activated by the Protégé, who forms a Dream and functions as the Leader of their effort to passionately pursue it. In this process, the Protégé/Leader seeks the mentoring resources they want, often indiscriminately, from whoever and wherever they can obtain them.

Open-System Mentoring™ is designed to simulate the real functionality of Telemachus’ mentoring relationship. This mentoring dynamic allows each of us to understand the importance of forming dreams and developing our passion to pursue them. It also allows us to develop the courage to help us circumvent the obstacles each of us will certainly encounter along the way. We ultimately realize that we form and pursue our dreams to navigate our life journey in search of our self-determined success and in the pursuit of our individual happiness.

In actuality, mentoring occurs in many forms depending upon many factors, which are often beyond the control of the Protégé. The following graphic depicts mentoring as a spectrum from Closed-System Mentoring at one extreme and an Open-System Mentoring™ at the other.

The closed system portrays mentoring as a rigid one-to-one relationship between an identified Mentor and Protégé.  Often the Mentor is assumed as the principal focal point and the Protégé as a subservient and somewhat passive individual in need of help.   Such closed systems are found in contemporary, institutionally planned mentoring programs that attempt to legislate mentoring by assigning Mentors to Protégés.  Frequently, these assigned relationships lack the understanding and operational substance of natural mentoring. Most often, Protégés lack a clear personal dream or vision. They also lack the enthusiasm and passion of its pursuit.  In implementing planned mentoring programs, both Protégés and Mentors seem to lack an understanding of and ignore both the objective and purpose of naturally occurring mentoring. UIF refers to this example of mentoring as Closed-System Mentoring.  

In an open system, the Protégé is clearly the Leader, focal point and the driving force of the mentoring relationship.  A Protégé often cultivates several potential individuals as available mentoring resources. We define these focused individuals as a Mentorage™. The Protégé also identifies other types of mentoring resources they may find useful, such as books, inspirational quotes, etc. These resources together with the focused Mentorage™ become the Protégés’ identified Mentorsphere™. This Mentorsphere™ is the loosely defined yet focused, mentoring culture and functional environment in which the Protégé operates. Here the Protégé forms and focuses their Dream, empowers themselves with the passion to pursue it and navigates their life journey in search of their self-determined success and in pursuit of their individual happiness. UIF refers to this example of mentoring as Open-System Mentoring™