Coaching and mentoring are not the same thing. Those coaches already trained in mentoring programs know that these two disciplines share common principles and processes, but that they are used to achieve different goals and are based on different types of relationships.
Coaching focuses on goals and development, and can only help when a person recognizes the need for change. A coach helps, challenges and encourages, not guides, advises or teaches.
If you don’t see where you are going, ask someone who has been there before. The mentor’s role is to build capacity. A developmental mentor helps a mentee gain their own wisdom, encourages them to work toward career goals or develop self-confidence. Mentors can employ a directive style of communication and give specific advice where appropriate. Mentoring is a relationship between two colleagues in which the more experienced colleague uses his or her knowledge and understanding of the job to support the development of the less experienced colleague.
How the mentoring role affects the coachee’s development
Because coaching and mentoring are close in some respects, there is a direct impact of mentoring as an additional specialty on the coachee’s work. Even during the mentoring stage of training, coaches improve their mastery of coaching competencies. This is a chance for coaches to look at their coaching practice in a different way, to learn to hear their clients in a new way, to increase their usefulness and to get more satisfaction from the results of their work.
In addition, coaches change internally. If you remember the tremendous personal growth you experienced while learning basic coaching skills, get ready for an even more powerful transformation both as a professional and as a person through mentoring training and practice. Descriptions will be superfluous. Just come to the program and experience it for yourself.
With mentoring skills, you expand your client network. If coaching is your primary specialty, you can also be a mentor to fellow coaches and practice developmental coaching in companies. If you’re an internal coach, however, employees who get to know you as a mentor may want to try a different kind of relationship with you – coaching. This is what really happens – one direction leads to the development of another, and vice versa. And here it is important not to confuse the roles. When to be only a mentor for your colleagues, and when to be a coach.
When to be a mentor and when to be a coach?
Regardless of the specific reasons for using either coaching or mentoring (or both), the goal of organizations should be to create a more skilled and satisfied workforce through knowledge sharing and professional support. The key word is “professional!” It is professional training in mentoring that allows the coach to not confuse roles.
What Happens. Training in modern coaching (mentoring) strengthens coaches in demonstrating competencies, deepens listening skills, and helps them feel more confident as a professional in coaching. At the same time, the coach, having mastered the new role model of mentoring, feels the difference between the manifestation of coaching competencies and mentor competencies and clearly separates the roles.
Mentoring in coaching:
- Supporting the aspiring coach at the beginning of his or her career;
- Professional growth through the analysis of 8 competencies;
- Mastering the underlying structure of the client process;
- Expansion of the behavioral repertoire;
- Developing one’s own style.
In the corporate environment:
- Employee onboarding adaptation;
- Developing new habits in employees while upgrading the company;
- To improve or create a positive atmosphere;
- Development of new skills, talents and abilities of the employee;
- Adapting to a new position;
- Increasing motivation and productivity;
- Reducing employee turnover.
Areas of Responsibility.
The mentor is responsible for creating and maintaining boundaries of the mentee relationship. He creates a safe and trusting space based on respect and non-judgmental attitude. In the process, the mentor focuses on the development of professional competencies. He notes their manifestation in the sessions, marks growth areas, and together with the coach creates a plan of specific actions to improve mastery.
The coach (mentee) is fully responsible for the result of the work. He formulates goals, asks for feedback and is ready to look at his competences in a new way, to form new habits.
Mentoring and mentoring: the differences
Teaching, mentoring, and mentoring are all forms of training, and the differences between them lie precisely in the issue of the relationship. Who am I and who is my mentee? What is our relationship? What do I expect from my mentee and what does he expect from me? What is my ultimate goal?
The teacher imparts knowledge and evaluates. The mentor imparts knowledge and waits for instructions to be followed. A mentor does not give precise advice or solve problems for the mentee. He creates an environment in which the mentee develops and finds solutions independently. It is important to keep and maintain these boundaries throughout the interaction.
Mentoring
Objective: To support the budding specialist through the development of independence, creativity, and critical thinking.
Role interaction: Horizontal: partner-partner. Both participants learn.
Style of interaction: Peer-to-peer. Mentor shows possibilities and encourages the mentee to find his or her own option. “Let’s see together what’s best.”
- Purpose: To provide support through the transfer of own knowledge and skills, to equip the newcomer with good start-up baggage.
- Relationship format: Vertical: mentor-mentee. One teaches, the other learns.
Style of interaction: Directive. Mentor tells what and how, expecting the mentee to follow all instructions. “See it through.”
In coaching, a space is created in which the client receives 100% of his or her own experience. In mentoring, the mentee gets his own experience, but the mentor’s experience is invisible or visible in the space: it influences the questions and, if necessary, is brought in in the form of advice.
First, a real mentor always gives psychological support to his mentee. But a mentor can be a very good specialist, but psychological support is not always present in his function. “In the case of the Russian venture capital market, the venture capital market is not a sign of a strong tie between the franchisee and the franchisor.
The second is that mentoring can be a one-time thing, while mentoring is a long-term process.
The mentor is a person who has the ability to do business with the company, but not with the company. The mentor, on the other hand, may not have any theoretical knowledge, but he does have a lot of practical experience. He says, “I did it when I did this. Do as I did.” So even though he’s not a mentor, he’s a mentor because he’s just sharing his personal experience. In coaching, it’s important that the mentor’s professionalism and experience are complemented by personal qualities such as: speaking, listening, willingness to interact, tact, and proper goal-setting. In many ways this is about the coaching approach. Fourth, the mentor and mentee have different goals.
A mentor aims to impart knowledge and help solve problems in specific areas and topics. And a mentor – on how the mentee learns to apply this or that knowledge, how to instill these or that values.
Parents, relatives, teachers, guardians, teachers, sports coaches, business coaches, executives, and spiritual mentors can be mentors and coaches at the same time. What do coaching, mentoring, and mentoring have in common?
First, these are all processes as well as forms of communication whose goal is to develop the client (a person or an entire team). Second, the customer of these processes, i.e. the one who sets the task, can be either the client of the coach (mentor or mentor) or his company in the person of the manager. What are the differences?
In my opinion, the differences lie in who asks the questions and whether there is advice.
In coaching, the coachee has the questions and the client has the answers. Coaching doesn’t give advice.
In mentoring and coaching: both have questions, lots of advice. The difference also lies in whether the coach, mentor or mentor has personal experience in the area the client is working on. Whereas in mentoring it is usually present, in mentoring it may or may not be, in coaching it is not required. Mentors or mentors sometimes have a “mentor’s tone,” i.e., an instructive tone with a sense of superiority, an exalted tone, an admonitory tone, a preaching tone.
In a coachee, this is out of the question. In addition, the questions asked by the coach, mentor, and mentor have different purposes. The coach’s questions are open, clarifying and revealing; they help the client look at the situation in a new way, find resources and start moving toward the goal. And the coach dives into the picture of the client’s world.
The mentor asks diagnostic questions that help HIMSELF understand what gaps in the client’s knowledge are.
The mentor can ask all kinds of questions. Can these forms of communication be combined? Sure. Many managers do it unknowingly, talking to their team members, clarifying situations, and identifying each person’s strengths.