Mentoring is a highly regarded art form right across the business, sporting, music and political communities. Even the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, acknowledges the help he got from many mentors. In this respect, the normally sombre Ferguson goes so far as to describe Celtic legend Jock Stein as: "A one-man university", who was ideal "for any young manager seeking to further his education in football".

Former athletics world champion, Eamonn Coghlan, has long acknowledged the benefit of having someone "to get him up off his backside". While former Kerry football supremo, Jack O'Shea, points to RTE broadcaster Micheal O'Muircheartaigh, as having helped him enormously in his career. Mr O'Shea tells us that while Mr O'Muircheartaigh developed him as a player, he also helped him to "keep his feet on the ground", while "his advice on any social or personal matter was always worth listening to".

Despite his phenomenal achievements, cycling hero Sean Kelly still bemoans that the yellow jersey would have been his for much longer, had he been given the right care and attention at the right time. This is where the art of mentoring kicks in.

According to First Active's training manager, Karl O'Connor, mentoring entails giving advice and guidance on career planning, providing a role model and helping newcomers to settle into an organisation. This process of passing on knowledge and understanding, or of "showing people the ropes", has many benefits. For example, from the employee's perspective it can help to:

Get to know the culture and political ropes in an organisation.

Develop skills, so that employees fully realise their potential.

Receive feedback on their performance - in a non-threatening manner, without implications for the pay bonus or promotion prospects.

Increase clarity and focus in respect of one's goals and ambitions.

From the mentor's perspective the key benefits are that the process enables them to:

Gain some credit and personal satisfaction from seeing the person mentored develop.

Regenerate their enthusiasm for staff development.

Avail of the opportunity to question their own values.

Listen to the person being mentored, thus sharpening their critical thinking about, and insights into into, the organisation.

Improve their networking opportunities.

From the employer's point of view, mentoring can also help to:

Improve succession planning, especially in those environments where staff turnover or retention is emerging as a real headache.

Facilitate the more effective induction of new employees, while developing the potential of existing staff.

Improve communications, reduce training costs and increase productivity.

In 1993 Aer Rianta launched a formal mentoring programme to help women break the glass ceiling into senior management. The project was formally reviewed by the European Mentoring Centre.

One interesting benefit of the initiative was that the women acknowledged that they had learnt political skills faster than would have been possible outside of the mentoring process.

Following a positive review of the programme, the participants agreed that a successful mentoring relationship required: commitment and encouragement; trust and confidentiality; openness, questioning and feedback; clear objectives; time (for meetings, follow-up and for the mentoring process to develop); development of a career path; and sharing of experience.

Of course, there are also a host of obstacles to any mentoring initiative. As with any new idea, there are going to be opponents. Obstacles, from the obstructive line manager to the intimidated person mentored, to the difficulty of getting people to give up their time, take on extra responsibility and commit to the practice, will always surface.

Even in Aer Rianta, not alone was the time commitment demanding, but some participants found the whole process to be very slow getting off the ground, as it took time to establish relationships of trust and openness.

These factors may well explain why researchers at the University of Limerick have found mechanisms such as coaching and mentoring to be low on the priority list of the Republic's human resource practitioners. Nevertheless, this low take-up didn't stop the researchers from emphasising the critical contribution that such activities can make to strategic employee development.

The potential has also been acknowledged by both the Irish Management Institute and the Institute of Public Administration. They have now launched programmes that focus on the means of unlocking people's potential, such as coaching and mentoring.

Even UCD's MBA course has a personal development programme which includes mentoring. This enables course participants to interact with prominent business leaders.

Recalling his student days, Oliver Tatton - the former An Bord Trachtala and VHI chief executive - points out that this was a very useful exercise. In fact, Mr Tattan acknowledges: "I still carry many of the insights gained then with me."

At the end of the day mentoring schemes stand or fall on whether participants build successful relationships.

The British experience with the practice, in organisations like Cadburys, BP, ICI, Reuters, the Civil Service, Prudential and Price Waterhouse, informs us that the following steps help ensure that the best can be got out of mentoring:

Match the mentor and the person mentored carefully - it is crucial that they trust each other and "gel" accordingly.

Ensure that both parties understand their roles and objectives.

Get the balance right - too much bureaucracy can inhibit discussion, but schemes need some ground rules.

Let the participants know the boundaries of discussion and the limits of confidentiality.

Explain how mentoring works to the person being mentored's line manager and where lines of authority are drawn.

Provide a forum for feedback - evaluation can identify those aspects of, or locations where, the system is not delivering.

The investment in mentoring may well be justified by the return. Karl O'Connor agrees: "Mentoring is a developmental practice that produces concrete results."

It may not be flavour of the month just yet, but mentoring may well prove to be flavour of the millennium.

Dr Gerard McMahon is a lecturer in Human Resource Management at the Faculty of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology. E-mail: ppl1@indigo.ie