Since the age of 10, one of my passions has been RC aircraft. About 30 years ago a man walked onto our flying field with his son and asked if anyone could help. The boy was like I was at 10. He wanted to fly, but he and his dad didn't know where to start.
I put the trainer cord between my transmitter and his, flew the takeoff, and handed him the controls once we had altitude. That was his first flight and the first day of a long career in aviation.
What followed was a year of Saturdays. Some of it was flying. Some of it was at the workbench, getting his plane trimmed or repaired, because a beginner cannot learn on a plane that flies badly.
He went off to high school, then college, and we lost track of each other. About 20 years later I saw the father again at the flying field, with his son, who was now a tall man with a crew cut. The boy I taught to fly had gone to the Air Force Academy and then become a test pilot in the F-22 program. They came out to the field to thank me for those Saturdays.
I gave him a year of Saturdays and he built the career for himself. It took me years to become a good pilot and even longer to become a good teacher. I had that year to give because someone at that same field had given it to me first.
That is the part the word mentorship skips over. In our industry the new person gets paired with whoever has time, and that is the wrong approach. You want the person who has done the thing enough times to watch a beginner do it wrong and tell them which mistake it is before the airplane hits the ground. That person also has to want to teach, not just know how.
The fair objection is that waiting for the ideal teacher means nobody gets taught. The fix is to choose the teacher deliberately instead of waiting for one to appear. I led PM training for Ford AV for 5 years, and the pairings that worked were never the ones decided by who had time that week. Enthusiasm gets a new person started but it takes somebody next to them who knows what right looks like to set them on the road to success.
I still fly, I still build, and I still teach. Before my son was born it was a couple of times a week. Now it is a couple of times a month. The Saturdays cost more than they used to.