Within the field of sports coach education, sustaining and improving learning is promoted through informal to formal learning opportunities. Here, a broad consensus amongst literature highlights the importance of informal learning as the most impactful of these. Indeed, many authors state that coaches best develop an understanding of their working knowledge through informal settings, interaction, and reflection. Linked to this, the use of mentoring has gained considerable traction in the last two decades. There is, however, limited evidence pointing towards the possible benefits that the mentors themselves can accrue from engaging in the process of mentoring. This mini-review provides a short overview of the role and applications of mentoring programmes and also outlines the findings of the author’s previous work on the benefits that mentors (not the ‘mentees’) accrued from a collaborative mentoring project. This previous work consisted of a case study that summarised the experiences of six coach mentors over a two-and-a-half-year period. The
results of the study indicated that formalised mentoring programmes and communities of learning facilitated support, problem solving, and even the development of professional profiles.