Well, both my mother and father have been and continue to be great mentors, but since you are asking for a non family example, one good mentor comes to mind for me. I'll try to describe that in detail so you get an idea of what a non family mentorship can look like in real life, outside of imagination or maybe some preconceptions
In one of my very first jobs straight out of University, I had a much older manager who I became very good friends with and really grew to respect.
He was an exceptionally calm and very pleasant type of personality, very rational, competent, experienced and well balanced, very approachable and a hilarious person who was always very easy to talk to.
Now how mentorship like this works, is much less through direct advice, although that is certainly an element, but it is mostly through leadership by example. It's much more watching how they do something, reflecting on what it is achieving for them and others around them and even reflecting on what they do in relation to how it affects you and your own personal reactions or views of them. It's not so much a situation of "Skyless get on my knee here young man and let me homoerotically show you how the world works, haha."
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He taught me a tremendous amount of lessons that I still value to this day and I'm sure many where things he didn't even realize he was teaching.
He showed how to actually lead people not through authoritarianism or fear, but by inspiring confidence and functional energy so people won't just be doing what they are doing because the have to, but rather because they feel valued and their competence is rewarded and recognized and feel invested in the projects and work. This was really something fantastic to see the mechanics behind, because I saw very few bosses ever able to do that in all the jobs I had before. He showed how part of that is actually having to defend the people working for you from upper management and issues that would affect their quality of life. No matter if it has to cost you sleepless nights. How going to bat for just one person under you, so they don't get completely run over, has a knock on affect that lets you maintain the kind of atmosphere and people investment to get anything else done.
He did a great deal in showing how to pick and create effective project or research teams, how to identify natural leaders within them, how to balance the strengths and weakness of people, how to resolve conflicts and how fun and light hearted serious negotiations can be, with a certain approach and attitude. He showed how and when it's necessary to just be in a raw bare knuckle brawl with management or the board over something important and when to cut your losses and even better; how to turn a fight you can't win into a valuable and useful concession that could help you get something else you where fighting for that was even more important through that leverage.
Some lessons where even more important at a personal level like: how to stay calm and make rational measured decisions even when everyone else in the lab was just freaking about haha. I mean the lessons are kind of endless in a relationship like this. Overall, his great personal style was really great so see in action, his marriage was really joyful and he had a ton of really good relationship advice. His wife is probably the most fun and entertaining woman I have ever met hehe. It's always great to meet up with them from time to time. All the lessons from him certainly helped tremendously when he left and I applied for his job, and he was definitely a very influential person in my life in general
If you are trying to find or foster a mentorship in your life, just be aware it's a two way street. It takes a willingness from them to play that kind of role and it takes a certain kind of attitude from you.
You have to show a willingness to learn, an open mind, an ability to genuinely self reflect and most importantly you have to like each other. I don't think a mentorship really works without that, it would be tough to get enough genuine investment from either side without it.
I'm not going to sugar coat the fact that this kind of relationship is somewhat rare outside a family, even without other social issues. But it's certainly well worth keeping your eyes open and seeing if someone you respect is willing to share some of their knowledge with you, because it is certainly a very fruitful kind of friendship and there are more people who are willing to do it than you might think
