Mentor vs. Supervisor

Main Difference

The main difference between Mentor and Supervisor is that the Mentor is a guidance relationship and Supervisor is a manager in a business or event

• Mentor

  Mentorship is a relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The mentor may be older or younger than the person being mentored, but he or she must have a certain area of expertise. It is a learning and development partnership between someone with vast experience and someone who wants to learn. Mentorship experience and relationship structure affect the “amount of psychosocial support, career guidance, role modeling, and communication that occurs in the mentoring relationships in which the protégés and mentors engaged.”The person in receipt of mentorship may be referred to as a protégé (male), a protégée (female), an apprentice or, in the 2000s, a mentee. The mentor may be referred to as a godfather/godmother or a rabbi.

  “Mentoring” is a process that always involves communication and is relationship-based, but its precise definition is elusive, with more than 50 definitions currently in use. One definition of the many that have been proposed, is Mentoring is a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital, and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career, or professional development; mentoring entails informal communication, usually face-to-face and during a sustained period of time, between a person who is perceived to have greater relevant knowledge, wisdom, or experience (the mentor) and a person who is perceived to have less (the protégé)”.

  Mentoring in Europe has existed since at least Ancient Greek times. Since the 1970s it has spread in the United States mainly in training contexts, with important historical links to the movement advancing workplace equity for women and minorities, and it has been described as “an innovation in American management”.

• Supervisor

  A supervisor, when the meaning sought is similar to foreman, foreperson, overseer, cell coach, manager, facilitator, monitor, or area coordinator, is the job title of a low level management position that is primarily based on authority over a worker or charge of a workplace. A Supervisor can also be one of the most senior in the staff at the place of work, such as a Professor who oversees a PhD dissertation. Supervision, on the other hand, can be performed by people without this formal title, for example by parents. The term Supervisor itself can be used to refer to any personnel who have this task as part of their job description.

  An employee is a supervisor if he/she has the power and authority to do the following actions (according to the Ontario Ministry of Labour):

  Give instructions and/or orders to subordinates.

  Be held responsible for the work and actions of other employees.

  If an employee cannot do the above, legally, he or she is probably not a supervisor, but in some other category, such as a work group leader or lead hand.

  A supervisor is first and foremost an overseer whose main responsibility is to ensure that a group of subordinates get out the assigned amount of production, when they are supposed to do it and within acceptable levels of quality, costs and safety.

  A supervisor is responsible for the productivity and actions of a small group of employees. The supervisor has several manager-like roles, responsibilities, and powers. Two of the key differences between a supervisor and a manager are (1) the supervisor does not typically have “hire and fire” authority, and (2) the supervisor does not have budget authority.

  Lacking “hire and fire” authority means that a supervisor may not recruit the employees working in the supervisor’s group nor does the supervisor have the authority to terminate an employee. The supervisor may participate in the hiring process as part of interviewing and assessing candidates, but the actual hiring authority rests in the hands of a Human Resource Manager. The supervisor may recommend to management that a particular employee be terminated and the supervisor may be the one who documents the behaviors leading to the recommendation but the actual firing authority rests in the hands of a manager.

  Lacking budget authority means that a supervisor is provided a budget developed by management within which constraints the supervisor is expected to provide a productive environment for the employees of the supervisor’s work group. A supervisor will usually have the authority to make purchases within specified limits. A supervisor is also given the power to approve work hours and other payroll issues. Normally, budget affecting requests such as travel will require not only the supervisor’s approval but the approval of one or more layers of management.

  As a member of management, a supervisor’s main job is more concerned with orchestrating and controlling work rather than performing it directly.

• Supervisor (noun)

  a person who supervises a person or an activity.

• Supervisor (noun)

  a person who directs and oversees the work of a postgraduate research student.