Coaching and Mentoring: Explained

Coaching and Mentoring

In the world of corporate training, we are forever bombarded with new training schemes that promise to provide a framework that can be applied to restructure the organisational capacities of a company. With names like ‘Japanese 5 steps approach’, ‘Train to Gain’ & ‘Achievement Training’ which all claim to offer differentiated services, it is hard to see through the grey areas and overlap that each service purports to provide. For an individual or company looking to obtain advice tailored to their needs there are a range of methods out there from Training experts to Consultancy’s, which provide group based support.

However a one size fits all approach when attempting to maximise individual, group and company potential provides a limited framework that can not achieve maximum results, and so Mentoring and Coaching (both praised for their flexibility, broad ranging scope and adaptability) are being turned to time and again.

Ideally a service needs to be able to mutate and tailor itself to the individual needs of the employee or company. But more than this it needs to provide a model which can grow and adapt with each individual whilst at the same time resting on core principles, like a genetic blue print.

So, what do they offer and how do they differ?

Coaching offers a flexible, target oriented service that enables the client to maximise their performance. Unlike mentoring the coach neither has nor needs to have any experience of the client’s professional field. The coach relies on objectively measurable techniques which will identify the client’s individual strengths, and more significantly, certain thought processes that have and are continuing to have a negative impact on goal attainment. The objective of coaching is to foster a spirit of independence as opposed to dependence, through short but frequent sessions consisting of constructive questions and prompts which target the root of the problem redirecting thought processes. The client and coach have a mutual accountability but it is ultimately the client who can take the credit for his short term achievements, and longer term achievements at the end of the day as it is the client who has change aspects of his approach to life, work and achievement, while the coach has…well…coached!

Whilst mentoring descends from and utilises coaching techniques it involves a more peer orientated relationship where the mentor assumes an advisory role to a protégé within a shared professional capacity or company. Although mentoring sessions are generally shorter and less frequent than coaching sessions they are directed to achieving a very specific goal that is less about internal or psychological barriers and thought processes than social, physical and experiential barriers. Companies using mentoring schemes might utilise senior staff to act as mentors to employees with less experience as it is essential that the mentor has a sound knowledge of the expectations and foreseeable demands of the client’s long term career path. Mentoring takes place at work in a live environment, and has a more directive approach than coaching. This is because a big part of the mentor’s job is to act as a role model, consultant, confidant, advocate and broker to the client. Often acting as a PR spokesperson for their protégé, the approach also offers confidentiality and support in over coming related psychological barriers.