On top of the myriad programs already in place in the Navy, it appears we are about to embrace yet another: a new mentorship program that mandates everyone to have a mentor, and everyone to be a mentor. I have trouble buying into another this-is-here-to-stay leadership program. In a Utopian society, programmed mentorship might reap great rewards. In an environment of warfare, however, it is profoundly naive to think that something so intensely personal as the mentor-protégé relationship can occur merely by making it a requirement. Perhaps just as improbable is any expectation that all leaders will privately accept it.
