Skills Management

1Skills Development at the Heart of the Mentoring Relationship

Given the natural character of change, the development and transfer of skills is proving to be a recurring challenge for organizations. Maintaining and controlling these resources is a competitive advantage and contributes to ensuring flexibility in order to adapt to market developments (Cazal & Dietrich, 2003). Individuals’ support and the enhancement of their skills become, consequently, a crucial need. Our research is in line with this framework of ideas. This chapter focuses on the issues of support practices – in particular mentoring – in the development and dissemination of skills.

Mentoring is classically defined as: “A relationship based on mutual respect between an experienced, recognized and credible person (mentor) and a younger person (mentee)” (Guay, 2002). It allows the mentees to consolidate their professional identity and to benefit from support in order to develop their career. This assistance and learning relationship is at the heart of our question. In this sense, the main objective of our research is to study mentoring through the prism of competence. A literature review will allow us to better apprehend competence, beyond its polysemic notion. The idea is to establish the distinction between the three levels of analysis (individual, collective and organizational) that are linked to it.

Then, we will present the characteristics and challenges related to mentoring practice that constitutes an ...