The role of mentoring in youth development

There is an opinion that natural youth mentoring has a favourable impact on psychosocial development and that it is correlated with better success later on life. This research purports to reveal which personality features of mentors and protégés figure as necessary conditions for development of youth mentoring process, which leads towards positive developmental outcomes. The questionnaire created specifically for the purposes of this study was administered to the convenient sample of primary and secondary school students (77) and university students from Belgrade (109). Respondents assessed the features of a significant person from their life through 17 sentences, the changes occurring due to experience with a significant person through 18 sentences, and one’s own features through 16 sentences. Factor analysis extracted two features of significant persons (labelled M-basic support and M-expert), two kinds of outcomes of experience with significant persons (P-self-improvement and P-self-distance) and two types of features in respondents (Openness towards learning and Relying on others). Analyses indicate that establishment of a relationship of truth and exchange, providing the feeling of basic support to protégés, is a conditio sine qua non in mentoring, while competence and professionalism of the mentor figure as differentia specifica in mentoring. In order for such a relationship to be established, it is necessary for mentors to have personality features that are a precondition for establishing the basic support for protégés, and for protégés to be open towards learning and ready to find a support in mentors. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 47017: Bezbednost i za tita organizovanja i funkcionisanja vaspitno-obrazovnog sistema u Republici Srbiji (osnovna na ela, principi, protokoli, procedure i sredstva) i br. 47028: Unapre enje konkurentnosti Srbije u procesu pristupanja Evropskoj uniji]