The importance of mentoring has increased rapidly in educational systems throughout Europe and in most of these systems high quality mentoring is seen as the key element during the induction phase of new teachers. This study brings together national and international perspectives. Based upon a study in Czech Republic we developed via grounded theory research design (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) a complex causal theoretical mentoring model and an original typology of the mentor-mentee relationship (Duschinská, 2011). The personal dimension was identified as the core category of mentoring within the given context. This inductive research approach was then followed by a comparative inquiry of data, gathered within the INNOTE project, on mentoring in six European countries. Analyzing the data through the lens of the developed theory lead us into extrapolating our mentoring model and incorporating the institutional dimension, referring to the policy on both national and school levels. This resulted into a two-dimensional matrix model, where both the institutional and the personal dimensions determinate the nature of a mentoring process. Finally, we aimed to verify our approach within an international community of practitioners and judge critically, if such a mentoring model promotes understanding the nature of mentoring practices.