Coaching or Mentoring?
We (as an approved CMI centre) are currently developing our content for the Level 5 and 3 coaching and mentoring qualifications and I would really appreciate your help!
I would like to give examples of well known coaches and mentors to help distinguish between the two activities. For example Sir Clive Woodward may be a good example of a coach, how about Lord Sugar or Gordon Ramsay as a mentor? I would like to use the famous examples to stimulate a discussion around what is the difference between coaching and mentoring, your thoughts on this would also be appreciated!
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, happy to share the final list of examples if you would find it interesting!
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Hi
I am a performance coach for the civil service and in answer to your question, 'what is the difference between a coach and a mentor’ is quite simple.
A mentor; is someone with a wealth of experience in whatever field, a wise old owl or possibly someone senior who is ready to give advice to subordinate.
A coach on the other hand is someone who may not be fully conversant with the field in which they may be coaching, particularly if they are external coaches. Although it is always helpful to have an understanding of the issues a particular coachee may be facing; an in depth knowledge is not necessary. Having too much knowledge on a particular subject may be in actual fact a disadvantage to a coach, the coach may be tempted to use his/her own experiences to guide the coachee in the direction the coach wishes to go. That direction may not be the best path for the coachee in the circumstances; the coachee must decide that.
The coachee must find their own path to walk with the coach, where as a mentor will have walked that path before and will be able to warn of any pit falls as the mentor sees them.
I hope you find my comments helpfull
regards
John Hardaker MCMI
The important thing about a coach is that they help the coachee to work out the right answer for themselves. I received some training in coaching. I was amazed when I did a role play about my personal problem. Afterwards the professional coach showed me how she had used a standard approach to helping me work through the problem. Good coaching is an immensly powerful tool because it helps the individual to help themselves.
Mentoring is much more about sharing experience with a willing person on how to approach specific business problems that they have successfully dealt with in the past.
You post a very interesting question. I'm not sure it is as clear-cut as coach versus mentor as a coach can also be a mentor (Sir Alex Ferguson for example) but a mentor is rarely a coach also. I view a coach as someone in a management role and a mentor as someone in an advisor role. To take your Gordon Ramsay example, he could be a coach (and mentor) if you work under him but your mentor if you do not (like on his US TV show where he helps turn businesses back into the black).
Some great comments so far - thanks for your thoughts and experiences on this - looking forward to more ...
Margaret
Margaret I am currently a mentor in a cross agency senior mentoring scheme (Police/NHS/Fire and Rescue/Local Authority) Among other things, for me, the role of mentor is to be a 'critical friend', provide supportive challenge around assumptions that mentees may make about themselves, their capabilities and how they see their relationships with others. While there are distinctions between the roles of coaches and mentors for me the commonality is also crucial; in short a genuine commitment to helping others improve their performance with the hugely beneficial by products of personal growth and development for the coach/mentor from each interaction.
Hello MCI
I can't agree that an effective coach "may not be fully conversant with the field". I agree that sometimes having too much knowledge can be a disadvantage, for example, the "coach" takes over, gives too much information, fails to see the problem from the other persons perspective, etc. Effective coaching requires other skills - knowledge is not enough but it is "necessary". For example, if you want to improve your golf and you arrange lessons with a golf coach would you expect them to be "fully conversant" with the field!
Wes Haydock
ACMI
Hi Margaret,
I would agree with John Hardaker's definition above. However, I've just been reading Parsloe and Leedham's new book "Coaching and Mentoring - Practical Conversations to Improve Learning" (2009).
Whilst they would agree with the definition that John makes, they also make a powerful argument that the distinction between the two is somewhat academic and irrelevant, and that actually both approaches share so many common skills and a common knowledge base that to differentiate is actually missing the point.
Well worth a read in my opinion, for all coaches, mentors and learners.
Based on John and Wes's comments, I thought I'd share my views on the debate around whether a coach needs some background knowledge of the subject.
It's important to draw the distinction between training and coaching. In the former, you could argue that some degree of knowledge or experience would be useful (see the golf example). Although it is possible to coach someone to improve their golf swing without ever having played (I've seen it done), there's usually an expectation of ability in the golf pro, who will then train the other person.
A golf pro will TRAIN a new starter in the basic skills, and then COACH them on particular aspects of their game later - asking questions to find out which aspect they want to improve, and exploring possible solutions or improvements with them.
The distinction between training and coaching becomes hazier when you consider behavioural coaching. It's very hard to train someone into a new way of behaving, and skilled behavioural coaches will help the coachee to explore the reasons behind a particular situation and to identify an alternative approach.
In summary, and in going back to Margaret's original post, I would characterise the difference as follows:
TRAINING - "This is how you should do it."
COACHING - "What other ways do you think you could use?"
MENTORING - "This is how I would have done it."
Hope this helps...
Hi Everyone
I would like to propose a question.
With coaching continually evolving how do we prove value to a coaching session?
Is it acceptable to observe a coach going about a session (as their line manager) and recording as a third party how the session develops, to be discussed after the session with the coach.
Or
Would it be more beneficial to have supervision in the way of discussing the session beforehand with the coach, then immediately after the session have a de brief to discuss what went on during the session and how the coach coachee moved forward.
Your views would be of great interest.
Hi Everyone
I would like to propose a question.
With coaching continually evolving how do we prove value to a coaching session?
Is it acceptable to observe a coach going about a session (as their line manager) and recording as a third party how the session develops, to be discussed after the session with the coach.
Or
Would it be more beneficial to have supervision in the way of discussing the session beforehand with the coach, then immediately after the session have a de brief to discuss what went on during the session and how the coach coachee moved forward.
Your views would be of great interest.
Hi Everyone
I would like to propose a question.
With coaching continually evolving how do we prove value to a coaching session?
Is it acceptable to observe a coach going about a session (as their line manager) and recording as a third party how the session develops, to be discussed after the session with the coach.
Or
Would it be more beneficial to have supervision in the way of discussing the session beforehand with the coach, then immediately after the session have a de brief to discuss what went on during the session and how the coach coachee moved forward.
Your views would be of great interest.
Hi All.
The approach I use regarding measuring value or ROI is about the quality (i.e. SMARTness) of the objectives in the coaching contract identified and agreed at the beginning of the sesion(s) between the coach and the learner. This should be reviewed rigorously as the sessions proceed.
If the objectives are properly SMART then the value or ROI is relatively easy to define at the end of the learning session(s).
I don't think observing the sessions works - it changes the dynamics and the relationship such that the objectives could be affected negatively. A review of the session at the end between coach and learner should always be part of the process in my opinion.
Hi Margret,
I think having given your question due thought I think I'm going to have to say I'm playing devils advocate. I dont believe that two of the people you mention really achieve either. Someone who does come to mind as a competent communicator however is Jamie Oliver and is probably the closest on tv to a bona fide coach with his what, why, how, when and subsequent evaluation approach and as I believe as mentoring is often the natural development of coaching I 'm sure he will make an outstanding mentor one day [if he isn't already].
I would steer away from using case studies from sports as coaching exemplars. From what little I know of Clive Woodward his success comes from all round management of the whole environment / structure surrounding the team rather than 'coaching' individuals within the team. I suspect the coaching - helping individuals to find their own way to solutions / improve performance is a task largely delegated to sports psychologists.
Ramsay and Sugar both have elements of mentoring in their styles though I'm not sure either ones on screen style has anything much to recommend as a best practice example.
I suspect that the best coaches lie quite hidden - if you've got to leave your ego at the door to do it well, it's likely that there to be found in the engine rooms rather than the limelight.
There's an interesting article here on mentoring.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016920463719744.html?mod=wsj_india_main
you could use del boy and Rodney from only fools and horses as you would have media to show and then open to questions, this would be a good example of both so you could select the seen to as people what it coaching or mentoring and then explain their reasoning. Others may be cherly cole on the x faxtor, again you have media to use and its a good example of both.
What i found useful when studing was the use of actors to role play a coaching and mentoring role, good and bad so we could debate what was good and bad and then asked what the key points were. I have been coaching and mentoring for the last 20 years and its about the person not skills or knowledge, a good coach and mentor has 2 ears and one mouth so that should give an indication to what your role is when coaching and mentoring.
Thanks everyone for keeping the discussion going, recommending books and generally contributing thought-provoking comments!
Adi, I have read the WSJ article and whilst it has some great advice for how to set up mentoring properly, the pitfalls are directly related to the American approach to mentoring. The European approach (sometimes referred to as classical mentoring) is where the mentor is not the line manager - often completely outside your professional 'line' and maybe several levels above in seniority terms but usually quite remote from your day-to-day work, Mentoring is often used in North America as a direct career enhancing tool! This means that your mentor may be your line manager and you almost grab hold of his or her 'coat tails' and follow them in their career, if they change companies - you change with them and continue to work 'for' them. The mentor becomes more of a 'sponsor'. The pitfalls identified in the article describe things that go wrong when the mentor is also your boss.
The really important bit of the article, and relevant to this forum, is the importance of training - just because a potential mentor is an experienced manager or technical guru it does not mean they will make a great mentor! In fact in my mentor training experience, the more experienced (and often senior) the mentors are the harder they find it to adapt to asking questions more than telling people what to do!
I am a passionate believer in the power of mentoring and in fact spent the day yesterday with a group of volunteer mentors for a charity - great to see such enthusiasm for helping others!
Hi Margaret,
I had to address this distinction very recently in developing an organisation-wide CPD orientated coaching program for a secondary school.
After a fair amount of research I came to the conclusion that the distinction lies in transfer of repertoire as applied in an individual's development through reflective practice.
Put very simply: The Coach assists the 'coachee' in development of their repertoire through the joint analysis of the coachee's experience.
The Mentor 'lends' their own repertoire to the protege in order that it be used in the protege's reflection and consequent development.
There are clearly grey areas, but the definitions worked for me!
The project was succesful in that the coaching process effectively allowed for real, internalised professional development.
The full project is written up here:
http://educationassignments.moonfruit.com/#/coaching-and-mentoring/4555226878
There's an outline of our initial research, strategic development, implementation and evaluation.
We also developed a 'tool' that coaches found very useful in discussing lesson observations for development - may be of interest - here:
http://educationassignments.moonfruit.com/#/3-coaching-support-tool/4555254413
Hoping this provides a useful perspective.
The simpliest distinction I have used in the context of an organisational programme is to think of the coaches role being to develop an individuals performance within a job role and the mentor role is to develop an individuals career.
This would tend to suggest that a coaches knowledge based tends to be more specific and not necessarlity underpinned with experience whereas the mentors knowledge based should be broader and almost certainly underpinned with experience.
Hope this helps
I think one of the big problems is that there are a lot of 'coaches' out there with very limited business experience, and a lot of 'mentors' with limited personal development skills!
My own take on this is that coaches focus on drawing out the coachees options from within the coachees experience and helping them make a decision, while a mentor will add in their own experience to help the mentee make a more informed decision. Neither of them should dictate the decision. Which is best will depend on the needs of the person being coached/mentored.They are both on a spectrum with 'counsellor' at one end and 'consultant' at the other.
(Speaking as a business and management mentor for 9 years, and manager of a UK wide women in SET mentoring programme.)