27th October 2026
I’m pleased to announce that I have been joined in the writing of the 6th edition of Everyone Needs a Mentor by Prof Jenni Jones of Wolverhampton University. Now that I am coming up 80 (with no signs at all of slowing down!!), it makes increasing sense to preserve the legacy of my research and writing by gradually handing over the torch to the next generations.
In the new edition, we’ll be including chapters on grandparenting as mentoring, mentoring the hard to reach, mentoring with AI and more. I’ve been thrilled by the response we have had to a call for new case studies – we may have to create a separate volume to include them all.
I’m also thrilled by the fact that we have finally launched – after several years of piloting and experimenting – the programme that we hope will lead to 5 million school age mentors. The most recent experiments were in South Africa (with 16-year-olds) and Birmingham, UK, with 11-and-12-year-olds mentoring 9-and-10-year-olds. Even at these young ages, the young mentors really get it – and they are acquiring skills that will be invaluable as future leaders. Colleagues from several countries are now setting up local foundations to engage with schools. Ultimately, we want to make this a global phenomenon – any country celebrating National Mentoring Day should also consider how it takes part in this youth initiative. The core resources include an extensive workbook for young mentors and mentees and a teachers’ guide.
Mentoring is gradually becoming the fourth R: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic and now Reflective conversation.
When the new edition appears next year, it will be 42 years since Everyone needs a mentor set the scene for developmental mentoring and clarified the distinction between mentoring and sponsorship. We still see some programmes, largely from the US, that continue to conflate mentoring and sponsorship – two very uncomfortable and incompatible bedfellows – but this is less and less common.
The professional body that is now EMCC Global was established in 1991 as the European Mentoring Council. The extra C was added when the expanded world of professional coaching began to have an impact. For a period, the latter tended to overshadow mentoring, but now we are seeing signs of a trend reversal. The work of the Coach Maturity Research Group shows conclusively that, as coaches mature, they become more like mentors. The rise of AI is also accelerating the trend to view mentoring as “coaching plus experience and wisdom”. Coaches, who want to survive in an AI world, will have to learn to be mentors.
Exciting times indeed!
©️David Clutterbuck, 2026