Business Mentoring
Mentoring or Coaching - What's the Difference?
Mentoring and Coaching are terms often used interchangeably. There is a significant difference between these two processes, however, unfortunately many professionals, use these words interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing.
In Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership model, the 4-quadrants of leadership styles (Directing, Coaching, Supporting, Delegating) have been labeled as such to match the level of development of the employee, who may be a D1 (enthusiastic beginner), D2 (disillusioned learner), D3 (reluctant contributor), or D4 (peak performer) – all indicators of a measure of two factors; level of competence and commitment in relation to goals or tasks. The employee can demonstrate all of these levels across different projects, where they have had extensive experience, or no experience at all, or they can move from a D4 in a current job, to a D2/D3 in a new job.
The purpose of this model is to help the leader become more aware of which leadership styles they are more familiar with and habitually use, and to expand their repertoire of styles, depending on the level of development and motivation of their employees.
The coaching style of leadership, according to this model, is most suitable for employees or managers who are D2s: they have low to some competence and low commitment due to their frustration with unmet expectations. It requires the leader to involve the employee in identifying problems and in setting goals; provide support, reassurance and praise; listen to their concerns and ideas; make final decisions about action plans after listening to the employee; provide direction and coaching to continue building and refining skills; explain why a particular approach is being taken; give frequent feedback on how projects are tracking and what is expected; define what a good job will look like and how performance will be tracked with the employee.
Although it is not one of the four labels used for leadership styles in the Ken Blanchard model, mentoring is referred to in the Delegating style of leadership – suitable for D4 employees who want variety and challenge, a leader who is more of a mentor and colleague than a boss, they want to be acknowledged for their contributions, they prefer autonomy and authority, and they want trust in the relationship.
This model indicates that mentoring is a process that is suitable with an employee or client that is fairly well developed in their existing job or experience, and coaching is suitable for talent that requires a few more experiences in their job to get to peak performance levels.
There are probably many different views on coaching and mentoring, from a manager-employee or consultant-client perspective. Some definitions are more broad and all encompassing, others more specific and contextual. Whilst there may be some similarities between the two processes i.e. the use of an independent party whose interest is in motivating and developing the candidate’s skills, there are also likely to be differences.
Further Distinctions
A colleague in New Zealand described the difference between coaching and mentoring as PUSH and PULL. I could relate this to my experience in consumer brand marketing, whereby a brand gains leverage in the market in two ways:
- PUSH strategies – driven by brand marketing and sales at the retail (consumer contact) level, with the aim to increase brand awareness and induce trial or repeat purchases. This is achieved by:
- Gaining prominent shelf space in the major supermarkets and retail stores – a process driven by planograms, where relays are negotiated with category buyers.
- Running promotional offers e.g. ‘win a holiday’, ‘2 pack and free cup and saucer’.
- Running sampling sessions
- Scheduling price promotions. All of these activities are aimed at ‘pushing’ the product in front of the consumer.
- PULL strategies – where the result of all the media advertising, publicity events, and lifestyle trends culminate to generate a proactive consumer response (called demand). The momentum of this demand can be strong enough to drive changes to the stocked items on the retail shelf and force retailers to re-organise a product category. The consumer pulls the product through.
You may have noticed in recent years the growth of the ground and roast coffee range and decline of instant coffee popularity. The increasing café society trends in Australia, especially Melbourne have driven the shift on supermarket shelves, placing pressure on previous market leaders in the instant range to re-develop their coffee strategies in order to arrest their market share decline. The consumer PULL, driven by lifestyle changes, has placed Vittoria and Lavazza in a very good position. Now there’s a wider range of top coffee blends with flavours that are made with the convenience of instant but taste like great coffee.
The iPOD is another example of a great PULL strategy by Apple.
So, in relation to coaching and mentoring, using the metaphor above, the following differences may apply:
COACHING is a process that is driven by the manager or consultant, not the employee/client. The coach will lead (PUSH) the candidate through stages of assessing, problem solving, decision making and communicating in relation to their goals, tasks and projects. The coach will provide scenarios on how to do “X”, and encourage the candidate to articulate their thoughts/suggestions, and then provide feedback for incorporation next time.
The value of having a coach, whether your own boss or an external consultant is that you can constantly test drive your thoughts and action plans and check (via feedback) whether you are on track or if you’ve missed some steps because they’re sitting in your blind spot. Coaching support can also fast track a high potential to high levels of achievement, thus faster promotion. Coaching discussions usually require disclosure of the content of the project or task at hand. Business coaching applying neuro linguistic programming principles, does not require content as the consultant is working at a process level to help the candidate improve their performance. However, some content is usually brought up – this is more useful for the candidate.
However, this is not mentoring.
MENTORING is a process that is employee/client driven (PULL).
The candidate may raise any topic or issue of choice during their mentoring session. The mentor’s role is not to advise the candidate on what to do, but to draw some parallel experiences from their life/business, and offer some scenarios which worked or didn’t work for them in the past. The candidate draws their own links to these stories and utilizes what they think will work for them. Executive Mentoring tends to be a more favoured aproach for senior managers and CEO's.
The value of having one or more mentor is you can bounce thoughts/concerns/ideas off your mentor and trust that they are not biased in any way, and have no vested interest in your affairs apart from helping you attain your outcomes over time. They do not judge you or your capabilities, so you can tell them things that you wouldn’t necessarily tell your colleagues, boss, or family in case they see this as a weakness. A great mentor will provide the setting where you develop yourself by exploring things differently, even extreme ideas at times, to see how far you can go.
Can the processes of coaching and mentoring be applied at once? Can either process be successfully applied with employees/clients of varied levels of experience, competence and motivation? From my experience, the answer is yes – as long as the leader or consultant is aware of which process they are using when, and for what purpose. In the domain of neuro linguistic programming it is like a continuous dance that takes place between the conscious and unconscious mind.
To find out more about business mentoring by Holon Business Group, please contact our office at info@holonbusinessgroup.com.au or phone
