Mowgli Foundation » Glossary

What does the word Mentor Mean?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:21:54 +0000

A mentor is a person who is committed to helping another person with a particular problem in their life. This may be a personal problem, a work problem or a development issue. He or she commits to a regular amount of time at regular intervals and to share their knowledge, experience and skills (in some cases) with their Mentee. A mentor may have many roles during the course of a single mentoring relationship, roles that may encompass such areas as teacher, guide and coach.

What does the word Mentee mean?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:08:23 +0000

According to the dictionary definition a Mentee is the opposite of the Mentor. This person, whether new or inexperienced in the field, would benefit from the advice and guidance of a mentor. A mentee benefits from the guidance in one or more areas that are usually specialisms of the Mentor. A mentee’s role is to learn from the mentor’s example, experience and knowledge.

What are skill sets?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:01:31 +0000

Knowing what your skill set is can save a whole load of time, trouble and frustration. Put simply, a skill is an ability to perform a particular task in a competent manner, they are often considered as single elements that may be related to a specific job or activity. Therefore, a skill set is the combination of skills that you, in particular, have.

There are three main skill sets: transferable skills, knowledge based skills and personal attitude or aptitude based skills. Being able to identify your skill set and then relate them to a specific requirement, makes it easy on both entrepreneurs and mentors as they won’t then struggle with something that is alien to them, instead they can work with their skills rather than against them.

Transferable skills are those that can be ‘applied’ in many different scenarios, for instance the ability to organise or analyse something isn’t only used in one particular job.

Knowledge-based skills relate to the knowledge and understanding needed to perform a particular task, such as how to complete a VAT return or how to use a social network. These types of skills are the ones that are often obtained as a result of training.

Personal Attitudes and Aptitudes are those that are innate in a person, they often relate to things that can’t be quantified, such as honesty, judgement and time keeping.

Mentoring – the meaning

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 16:44:01 +0000

According to various dictionary definitions, mentoring is the action of acting as a ‘mentor’ to somebody else. It refers to the activity rather than the person performing the action – who would be the ‘mentor’. Mentoring is a relationship between one or more people, usually between two. One of whom is the Mentor and one of who is the Mentee (the person being mentored).

What is an Entrepreneur?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:11:33 +0000

According to the dictionary definition, an entrepreneur is a someone who organises and manages any enterprise, particularly a business, and who (as a result) usually needs considerable initiative and is not risk averse. However, that is not the whole story, because in most cases entrepreneurs don’t just organise and manage, they usually own or lead the business in question.

There are many different types of entrepreneur:

Social entrepreneur – these are the people that want to change the world for the better
Life-style entrepreneur – these are people who start a business to fit in with a lifestyle
Solopreneur – these are often the consultants, trainers who are happy working for themselves
Serial entrepreneur – these people love starting up and then moving on
High growth entrepreneur – these people are in it for the long haul and want to create an empire.

What sort of entrepreneur are YOU?

What is a Protege?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:13:22 +0000

A protege is a person who is protected or trained or whose career is furthered and guided by someone who has more experience, prominence, or influence.

What is a Trending Topic on Twitter?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:12:31 +0000

According to Twitter, trending topics are those that the most tweeted about topics on Twitter at any given time. It is a quick snapshot of what’s ‘hot’. This is because Twitter is about what is happening in the present, rather than what is happening in the past – although you could search for hashtags and subjects to give you an overview of what people have talked about in the past.

Trending topics then are the new and/or newsworthy subjects that are getting the most attention from people from Twitter. It’s no surprise then that last week, a major topic was the #worldcup and Twitter even graced it with it’s own icon (a small football too). On the left, you can see an image of the current trending topics on our Twitter account at MowgliTweets.

You can change the view that you get to a limited number of countries and cities too – just click change to do so.

See that one right at the bottom – Old Spice which has the promoted sign to it? That doesn’t mean it’s just been promoted into the top trending topics, it means it’s paid some money to Twitter to appear there. This is the first step that Twitter is taking to becoming financially viable …! If you click on it you will get the same result at for any other – a list of the most current tweets about that subject.

What is a Twitter hashtag?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:00:47 +0000

If you have been using Twitter at all recently, you may well have noticed Tweets going out that may look something like #socent ….. but what on earth does that actually mean, and just what is the hashtag used for?Well they allow you to add a way of providing keywords and metadata to your Tweets. In other words they help to specify exactly the particular subject or context of a Tweet. This it means that they can be grouped in a search, so everything to do with a specific subject can be searched for and all the most recent Tweets will be displayed. In the case above, #socent, is anything to do with ‘social enterprise’.

Whilst you can create your own hashtags, it’s probably better to do a little research first to find out if there are any commonly used ones already in the community. You can find out more about the lists of tags used and what they mean at http://tagdef.com. If you want to find out more about the hashtags you are using then why not register for a service such as http://www.hashtags.org/.

There are a couple of things you might want to consider before using them:

you can track the subjects you are interested in by finding out the commonly used tags
use them sparingly and appropriately – a tweet full of hashtags is just spam ….!

Where does the word MENTOR come from?

Linda Parkinson-Hardman — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:07:40 +0000

The word MENTOR comes from Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus, king of Ithaca, goes to fight in the Trojan War and while he is away he leaves the care of his household, especially his son Telemachus to Mentor, who already serves as a teacher and overseer. After the war, Odysseus is condemned to wander for ten years as he tries to return to his home.

Telemachus grows up and goes off in search of his father and he is accompanied by the Goddes of War, Athena, who assumes the guise of Mentor Eventually Odysseus and Telemachus are reunited and are able to remove the threat to his Kingdom.

Over time, the name Mentor has evolved into the concept of a wise and trusted advisor/teacher that we have today.