Many people often ponder about the difference between Coaching and Mentoring, and often times the two are used interchangeably. The roles of a coach and a mentor are really quite different although we often see coaches doing some mentoring, and mentors doing some coaching.
Let’s look at coaching and mentoring separately:
Mentoring
Mentoring usually entails the mentor helping the protégé succeed by providing guidance. The relationship is often characterised by a more experienced person helping the less-experienced person with advice, information and guidance about a company, an industry or his or her career.
Mentors act as role models and are usually older, more experienced and higher up in the organisation, but outside the protégé’s chain of command. Having a mentor that is outside the chain of command is important to ensure transparency and to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
Mentors, in a workplace context, focus on political skills and encourage self-development. They provide advice on career next steps and can recommend the mentee for visible positions or attractive compensation packages. The mentor-protégé relationship works well when someone is starting out in a career or entering a new role.
One might also have mentors in other context outside of work. For students, a mentor might be an older adult. For others, mentors could be a more senior person within the community, such as from the church.
In most cases, the mentoring relationship is seen as a fairly long-term relationship and can be more relations-oriented rather than performance-oriented.
Coaching
The focus of coaching is often to improve performance and skills. The coach-coachee relationship is collaborative, a relationship of peers and often starts from the coachee’s strengths.
Traditionally, whether a coach is internal or external, the details of a coaching session are confidential. A good coach-coachee relationship is based on trust and collaboration.
In a workplace context, external coaches can be brought in to offer an external strategic perspective; internal coaches have both a company and strategic perspective. Coaching usually supports the coachee in taking steps and actions that move him or her forward to achieve a goal; people are more likely to be engaged and accountable for solutions and goals they have designed.
In a personal context, people may engage coaches to help with some aspect of personal development as well. You will find that there are many niches for coaching and often times coaches specialise in a particular area – Strengths Coaching, Career Coaching, Life Coaching, Health and Wellness Coaching, Business Coaching, Executive Coaching and so on.Rather than giving advice, coaches provide encouragement and urge continuous improvement. Coaches ask open-ended questions to help the coachee strategize solutions and facilitate problem solving. Asking of open-ended questions helps brings out the client’s own solution and generates greater ownership of the solution which leads to higher probability of follow-through.Accountability is also an important part of coaching. Coaches will also hold the coachee accountable for trying new things and the action steps generated during the coaching session. Coaching is often not just about the relationship, there are other better (and cheaper) options for socialising. Rather coaching is often performance oriented.
In some cases, a coaching relationship may be short term, especially when the coach is present to generate some specific outcome or task such as helping a client cope with a career transition. In other cases, a coaching relationship may be longer term such as in the case of life coaching.
How could a coach help you achieve your dreams in the shortest, most efficient manner?
“What are your strengths?” is a commonly asked interview question that most people have problems answering. The reality is that most people are unaware of their own strengths and how to leverage on it. Yet studies show that people who use their strengths are three times more likely to have a high quality of life, and six more more likely to be engaged in their work.
