Friday, May 8, 2009

Mentoring and Advising needs Localisation?

I had experience of mentoring students/trainees of Masters of Business Administration and Bachelors of Business studies while in India.There it was guiding the students through professional and personal counseling and facilitating them to introspect on a routine basis.The students partially knew their strengths and weaknesses and its only when they were down with a lot of options and were not able to take the right decision, that I handholded them to see the right ones.Downunder its different as the students are experienced and have high awareness level and they would come to the mentor or the advisor with pointed queries and want tailormade responses suiting their requirements. Most of the students in Australia knows whats cropping up and why the problem is not getting fixed, its only that they want to validate their own responses from their mentors so that they are doubly sure, before taking the plunge. In the Middle East, its different as the students or the trainees would consider the version of the advsior and mentor as sacrosanct, and therefore it is even more important in the gulf for the mentors/advisors to do a thorough home-work, at the individual mentee/advisee level, so the wrong decisions are avoided.Localization definitely holds the key however, some common good practices are applicable everywhere.

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