7

Entrepreneurial mentoring is the support of novice entrepreneurs by experienced business professionals that is quickly gaining popularity with governmental and non-governmental organizations supporting and developing entrepreneurship. However, a question remains: is it necessary for these organizations to train mentors in order to maximize the novice’s learning or is the mentor’s experience sufficient? To answer this question, we analyzed (via mentor-mentee dyads) the effect of the mentor’s training, entrepreneurship, and mentoring experience on his style of intervention and mentor functions, as well as the effect on the mentee’s degree of satisfaction and learning. Our results show that the more a mentor is trained, the more he or she develops relational competencies, thereby creating a favorable (trusting) environment and developing an appropriate style (maieutic), which allows the mentee to learn and become more autonomous in his or her entrepreneurship practice. However, the mentor’s experience in entrepreneurship does not have an impact on the quality of the mentoring relationship nor does it impact the novice’s learning. Our results also show that, contrary to our expectations, mentoring experience has a negative impact on most of the psychological functions of the mentor. We found that this effect can be neutralized by the continuous training of mentors, which suggests that entrepreneurship support organizations should implement specific training sessions for senior mentors.