Mentoring vs Coaching
I’m still in touch with many of my mentors, from the different stages of my life, even having shifted my career journey around the country, across sectors and roles. Their preparedness to listen to me, and their unconditional support of me, is what stands out and I am grateful for. I’m also grateful for the home truths I received, which were necessary for my growth but they could have shied away from giving – one of which was to listen more carefully to what people were really saying to me and not take it at face value in the desire to get things done. I hope to continue to be a mentor for others too along the way.
Everyone needs a coach, and everyone needs a mentor – or indeed several mentors at different stages and with different outlooks to challenge and support our thinking and development in different ways. I’m often asked to coach or mentor senior leaders, and the two things are very different. I recently worked with Notting Hill and Ealing High School GDST who are putting in place a mentoring scheme for aspiring senior leaders. These leaders work on a whole school project, to give them the breadth of exposure necessary at a more senior level, and are mentored along the way.
What is the difference you might wonder? Mentoring and coaching sound very similar, and many people switch from one to the other without being intentional about it. I think it’s important for everyone to be clear about what is happening in the moment.
For me, the key difference is that sharing of expertise and opinion on a subject, when asked for or necessary, which challenges the mentee to think and see things differently and so empowers them to forge their own way. It’s not impossible, but it’s hard for a line manager to mentor well because there’s always an element of performance management in there, needing to address issues, to change or direct actions at times. A line manager needs more ‘control’ over their report as they are ultimately responsible for the outcomes. A true mentor stands alongside their mentee and lets them make their own choices, mistakes and judgements without fear or favour, and is there to work things through together and provide insight and objectivity when they don’t go to plan. What happens is firmly ‘out of their control’ though. Perhaps they share what went wrong for them in the past and how they overcame it – ‘our imperfections make us more accessible’ as Julie Starr says in The Mentoring Manual.
While they may take a ‘coaching approach’ to mentoring, a mentor won’t be coaching either – letting the coachee find the solutions for themselves – they may make suggestions of what has worked for them in the past and what they have seen work or fail in their experience. This isn’t a one-way relationship either, it’s a relationship of mutual respect and learning, of sharing personal and professional experiences and of growth.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) accreditation I’m working towards makes it very clear that coaching comes from the individual and as a coach we empower through helping the coachee find their own solutions by listening, reflecting back and providing insight into their thoughts.
Of course, developing our listening skills will help us whatever we do – mentor, line-manage or coach. Listening is key and, as a ‘do-er’ in the hurly-burly of life ‘happening’, something I’ve had to really work on. But perhaps sharing those imperfections, and the work I’ve been doing to address and overcome them makes me more accessible? I hope so!
Reflection:
Who are your mentors and what specifically are you grateful to them for? Why not tell them!
Who are you mentoring, and who else can you support?
How good a listener are you? What can you do to become even better?
What other skills do we need to develop to be even more effective mentors, coaches or line-managers?
Why not contact me and let me support you to develop those skills?