The anonymous authors over at the Stay SaaSy blog have this saying about mentorship that I like: “a mentor is just someone who answers questions more than once.”
I like this framing. I’ve had a few mentoring relationships that, in hindsight, were just social relationships with people more senior or junior than me. We were more focused on the “identity” quality of mentorship than on the practical utility of it.
(I find this to be in management as well: many people are “managers” who do not necessarily “manage”)