" Kaye (2002) makes an important point about mentoring: with the push to make businesses and government leaner, often there simply are not enough executives to go around to mentor all the candidates. A group approach can be one solution. She suggests that those who will mentor people in groups need certain personal attributes, such as being comfortable working in groups, being able to get to the core issues of a problem quickly, and the kind of openness that always makes a good mentor -- the ability to connect with people on a personal as well as professional or intellectual level.

One difficulty with this approach is that it may be startling to employees who have experienced mentoring elsewhere and have a different perception of what mentoring should be (Perrewe & Young, 2004). However, establishing this group approach could be part of the mentoring and training process itself. While even in government it is important to have ties outside one's department, in complex contract work, a manager must rely on his or her employees to be able to work together as a team within that department.

Implementing such a mentoring problem has one advantage in that it does not have to be complicated. There is no need to search out mentors from other departments and find a way to identify appropriate mentor-mentee pairs. In addition, intra-departmental mentoring can help build a team approach to working on complex problems. Mentoring helps a person recognize that his or her contributions are important (Heimann & Pittenger, 2000), so mentoring, which broadens what would otherwise just be simple training...

In a bureauracy as large as the Department of Defense, mentoring may be particularly important so that valued employees do not feel like only a small cog in a large machine. When employees know that the work they do is important and valued by those around them and above them, job satisfaction is likely to increase (Heimann & Pittenger, 2000). Mentoring several people at once can be one way to diminish the depersonalizing aspects of working within a large bureaucracy and result in increased efficiency as well as more job satisfaction for both mentor and mentees.
SOURCES

Heimann, Beverly a., and Pittenger, Khushwant K.S. 2000. "Building Effective Mentoring Relationships." Review of Business 21:1, p. 38.

Kaye, Beverly. 2002. "Reinventing the Mentoring Process." Human Resource Planning 22:1, pp. 23+.

Perrewe, Pamela L., and Young, Angela M. 2004. "The Role of Expectations in the Mentoring Exchange: An Analysis of Mentor and Protege Expectations in Relation to Perceived Support." Journal of Managerial Issues 16:1, PP. 103+. (Perrewe & Young, 2004)

Pielstick, C. Dean. 2002. "Formal vs. Informal Leading: A Comparative Analysis." Journal of Leadership Studies7:3, p. 99.

Smith, Wanda J.; Howard, Jerusalem T.; and Harrington, K. Vernard. 2005. "Essential Formal Mentor Characteristics and Functions in Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations from the Program Administrator's and the Mentor's…