Today’s scenario is very different and fast changing. People get offended too soon and wish to have everything sugar coated while being delivered to them. The people I have come across at least have shown these signs and research is confirming this concern globally where the intolerance has risen in several dimensions. This is pretty much the response to those that took advantage of others being in position of authority or responsibility but this lead to the troubles for those that genuinely worked towards ensuring their best.
The chances are high that when you are coaching/mentoring/teaching something to somebody and your mentee has learnt the lessons he/she still might under consider the importance of that lesson in their life and then probably realise that the lesson was learnt on their own with their own journey and challenges and not something the metnor was responsible for at a later point in time. This leads to the very fact that the teachers have to be trained to cope with this, for, the greatest satisfaction of the teacher lies in the credit of the mentee’s lessons and of course the eventual success of their mentee irrespective of the credit and without that due credit a lot of mentors/teachers are losing out on their motivation and zeal to coach and teach to their best.

While it’s easy to coach the coaches that you need to let go the credit you expect(sub-consciously sometimes) from your students/mentees, it’s always put under the “easy said than done” category. This means that the things can be set right on both sides with mentees and the mentors. While the expectations can be reduced on the mentors’ ends, the attitudes can be set right in the mentees too, to ensure this wonderful relationship of mentors/mentees or coaches/students doesn’t really lose balance and neither in taken for granted beyond the levels of tolerance that finally puts an end to this wonderful relationship.

You can always find ways to learn lessons that come easy as well. The ones that truly move you far and help travel long distances are likely to come hard at times. This simply means that a true mentor doesn’t care about being liked or loved, instead does what is right and not what would be liked. Most people in today’s generation are expecting to like their mentors and even mentors expect to be liked which truly is reducing the quality of growth the relationship is able to bring in the mentees. This is eventually producing under grown highly mentored people and hence we have greater pools of under capable highly educated people unlike before, where capabilities of even people with less education were quite high.

I meet several teachers who say that the students are finding role models in people who look cool or feel inspiring to them and not in their teachers/mentors who were acutally responsible for the growth, who would eventually take them places, be with them and groom them ahead for battles that lie ahead. Partly this is due to the glorification of the results achieved by some and most of those achievers claim that they haven’t had anyone support them or stand by them and all of their success has purely been the result of their efforts and smartness. I’m unsure in how many cases this is true but I sure know one thing that no truly successful hero would claim all credits to their successes and instead they would be busy distributing that to their teams, facilities they had, friends, well-wishers, mentors and even their role models.

It’s important that we understand that our mentors don’t have to be greater heroes than our aspirations or our levels of successes or successes we already have seen around us. They need to be able to direct us right, put us on the path to that level of growth and enough acumen that we become the snow balls of success that keep gathering mass on the journey despite all hurdles that try to stop us. I have had several amazing mentors/role models in my life and I’m grateful to all of them. Whether it was public speaking, business leadership, managing human resources, reading books or for writing that matter, I have had inspiration and mentoring from small to large extents. Even to this day I look for mentors/coaches to guide me to the dreams and aspirations I keep and feel delighted to get mentored.
I recently took to chess to play as well as I can in the next few years to come to be able to at least do a FIDE rating of 1500+. I got lucky that on the renowned chess.com platform I found Bjarki Freyr from Iceland who consistently plays with me and coaches me through every game, challenges me with his amazing play and helps me find myself better each time. It all started with me winning the first game against him and there on, it was a journey of learning from him and of course losing several games to him until here. I’m sure one day I would challenge him well enough to find myself in better position than his game and win games too but never would the credit of these lessons learnt from him go away.

Sometimes our relationship due to several reasons doesn’t go as expected with our mentors and we part ways to never meet again. It’s what life is meant to be at times isn't it? Every person graces our life for a certain amount of time. Our lessons are permanently with us and the best spirit to keep is to ensure we always look back with pride at our lessons from the mentors irrespective of what it turns out to be. I met mentors recently who shared with me the hardest part of their journey was to let go their best students for the betterment of their lives, to ensure the students grow and perform even better because there were certain lesson they could never learn being with the mentor. This can be the hardest part of a mentor and the mentees journey and this might end up leaving a lot of gaps to be filled in their relationship. In my sense and understanding time would be the only solution for these gaps.

The lessons never die and instead only evolve. This is my greatest belief. The credit is always with the universe irrespective of the attitude of the mentees. The mentors must never take advantage of the fact that their mentees trust them but when intuition is the only guide at times for decisions, even mentors go wrong, and for all the mentors out there, learn and learn real fast (you are luckiest if you still have a mentor but life is the greatest mentor you could get after certain level of the game of life has already been completed). For mentees, it's important that over the journey of getting mentored they must not forget the mentor is a human and not super-human to never go wrong.
If you have a mentor(s) do thank them right after you read the last line here. If you are a mentor yourself it's time you look at your relationship with your mentees again and give your best to see them flourish (including letting them go if the lessons lie outside your reach). It would be a delight to see many more people being able to build great relationships of this sort, it's after all, the need of the hour. The education system alone isn't able to power the growth for all, this shall be way the forward and I think getting the basics of this relationship right can help the world certainly become a better place. Do share your views in the comments below and don't forget to tag your other half [mentor/mentee] :)

I wish every mentor and mentee out there the best of journey ahead of growth and greatness. May you find the successes to this relationship the way you have desired, if not, may you learn for the next set of things to come in your life. For more artilces on mentors and mentees follow the title "Mentoring Chronicles" via https://iuemag.com/search.php, Sandhya Nagaraj, Insprodigian at iU eMagazine, seems to have done a terrific job on this aspect here