Traditional mentoring relationships are generally defined as having two participants, a Mentor and a Protégé. Open-System Mentoring™ identifies five categories of participants and mentoring relationship resources principally from a Protégé/Leader’s perspective. They are:
 
Protégé  /   Mentege™ /    Mentor   /    Mentorage™ /  Mentorsphere™

Protégé - The identified Leader of a Mentorsphere™.  A Mentorsphere™ is either a personal enterprise or a venture enterprise.

Protégé/Leader - A Protégé/Leader or Leader/Protégé is merely an emphasis on the responsibility of the Protégé as the Leader of their mentoring enterprise.  A Protégé/Leader is responsible for creating each Mentorsphere™, forming their Dreams and cultivating necessary mentoring resources. They are also responsible for engaging the mentoring resources they need in the pursuit of their Dreams. 

Mentege™ - An Individual Participant in an identified Mentorsphere™ who may function simultaneously in more than one capacity in the same Mentorage™. This can be understood as a Protégé, coach, advisor, Mentor or other participant.

Mentor - An individual participant in an identified Mentorsphere™ who is available and willing to be active as a mentoring resource for a Protégé/Leader in support of their pursuit of their Dream.

Mentorage™ - All of the individual Mentors and Menteges™ that are participants in an identified Mentorsphere™ organized by the Protégé/Leader and are available as mentoring resources to support the pursuit of their Dream.

Mentorsphere™ - The operational infrastructure and mentoring enterprise of the Protégé/Leader’s consisting of all types of mentoring resources that are available to the Leader. This includes the enterprise Mentorage™ and, it also includes books, inspirational quotes, etc. that the Protégé/Leader decides are important in the pursuit of their Dream. A successfully functioning Mentorsphere™ can also be understood as a mentoring culture. A Mentorsphere™ is also a supportive environment where open and far-reaching conversations for understanding, possibilities, relationships and decisions can occur.  It can also assist the Protégé/Leader in focusing their dream and facilitating their life journey. One essential benefit of a Mentorsphere™ is to educate the Protégé/Leader and remind Mentors that obstacles, detours and interim failures always exist along the path of everyone’s life journey. However, Mentorspheres™ principally exist to support its Protégé/Leader in forming and focusing their Dreams, in empowering themselves with the passion to pursue them and in navigating their life journey in search of their self-determined success and in pursuit of their individual happiness.