The Difference Between Coaching and Mentoring

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

If you are unsure about the difference between coaching and mentoring in the business world, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. And also if you are confident about the difference between coaching and mentoring, if you think you absolutely know what these two words mean, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is also for you. The reason I say that is having been training leaders as coaches now for the past 10 plus years, one of the things that's become really clear to me is that there are huge, huge numbers of brilliant leaders and managers out there who think they are coaching their team when in reality they are mentoring them or even just providing direction. Now the words that we use don't matter as long as we're clear about what we're doing, why and the impact we're trying to have. So in today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, I'm going to help you maybe once and for all understand what these two important words mean. What is the difference between coaching and mentoring in the business setting? A coach is someone who asks questions of the person they are working with or supporting in order to help them solve their problems and challenges for themselves. When we are purely in coaching mode, we are simply listening and asking questions to enable them to come up with their own solutions. It's about holding and creating the space and enabling them to, as I say, think about these challenges from a different perspective or see things differently. So as a coach, we don't need to have any experience or expertise in the problem or challenge the person is faced with. Our expertise and skill is around listening, asking the questions and empowering them to solve their own solutions. A mentor, on the other hand, in the business setting is someone who has the specific experience that you are seeking. Someone has the specific knowledge that you want to acquire. So a mentor is sharing their skills, expertise and experience to somebody who wants to gain that. So typically an example of a mentor or mentoring in the workplace could be a junior finance manager who is aspiring to becoming a finance director. In seven to 10 years time they would likely find a mentor, someone who is currently a finance director and they would be asking them for their advice around particular challenges. What training or courses should they go on? What jobs should they be looking to take on their journey towards being an fd? Because you want to tap into that specific experience now to be effective as a leader. There are times when we want to be in coaching mode and there will be times when we want to be in mentoring mode. When we are really trying to empower somebody, then it's good to step into coach mode. Allow them to solve their challenges by themselves with the support from us. Because in doing so we are giving them freedom, autonomy and choice, which we know from decades of experience around motivation. Autonomy is a massive universal motivator. On the other hand, if we've got someone who is new to the organization, new to role, or working on a brand new project, then some mentoring is going to be more appropriate, giving them that advice and a little more direction. The key though is to flex our style. The key is to not allow ourselves to default to one particular style where we predominantly do exactly the same thing, take exactly the same approach with all of our people, because that does not work. Leadership isn't about a one size fits all blanket approach. It's about flexing our style based on the challenge, the person and what they are trying to achieve. That's it for this episode. Hope it's been useful in terms of clearing up the difference between coaching and mentoring, which incidentally business and sport use these words completely differently. A sports coach in a business setting would be a mentor anyway. Hope it's been useful. As always, look after yourself, look after those who got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, folks, lead on.