What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?

*Some personal thoughts based on completing over 200 hours of coaching in 2016 and reflecting on what I learnt in the process*

I have been incredibly fortunate to have received some incredible coaching and mentorship during my career. The generosity that some people have shown me has helped me make important decisions around which companies to join, which countries to live in and what interests to pursue. Like many people who have benefitted from being coached and mentored, I have developed a desire to coach and mentor others myself.

Today the opportunity to coach and mentor people to become the best version of themselves is my favourite aspect of work. It is something I decided to make a concerted effort to dedicate time to and excel at. In order to improve my ability, I set myself a goal of completing 200 hours of coaching in 2016. I focused my efforts on 2 specific groups of people:

• Group 1 = C-Level executives at pre-IPO companies who need help with scaling operations (international expansion, hiring, leadership, change management)
• Group 2 = Middle managers at public companies who need a plan to change the trajectory of their career (skill building, decision making, validating opportunities)

The coachees came from ~30 different countries and most had never been formally coached before. The vast majority contacted me after a recommendation from someone in their personal network. I took notes during each session so I could track how my personal coaching style evolved over time.

A few interesting observations emerged:

• I have not been a c-level executive at a pre-IPO company and therefore have never been in the position of the Group 1 coachees. I was unable to draw on my own personal experience to help them. The most useful thing I could do for them was to ask probing questions, listen and help add some structure and clarity to their thoughts. I could also hold them accountable for devising a change plan and ensuring they followed through on it. I found I became more effective over time with this group as I developed a sense of what types of questions encourage people to be introspective. Without detailed context on their situation and problems, I was unable to be overly prescriptive. This encouraged the coachees to think more broadly about how to resolve the issues they faced.
• I have been a middle manager at a public company and therefore have been in the position of Group 2 coachees. In most cases I could share an anecdote or story to empathise with their situations. The ideas I shared were generally more directive in nature. I found myself repeating the same examples and anecdotes to the coachees in order to exemplify the thoughts I wanted to convey. At times I found that I would unintentionally lead the coachee to a certain way of thinking about a problem. In hindsight this may have limited their ability to come up with a creative solution to the challenges they faced.

During all these sessions, the same question kept coming up over and over again:

“What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?”

Whenever the question came up, I struggled to differentiate between the two terms and found myself using them interchangeably. After discussing with other people who are passionate about coaching, I came across the following diagram:

With group 1 I found myself “asking” more questions due to my lack of personal context with the situations that the coachees were working on. My role was to ask the types of question that would help the coachees dissect the issues themselves.

With group 2 I found myself “telling” (as per diagram above) due to the fact that I had been in the same situation as the coachee. My role was to share the experiences of myself and others in my network so that the coachee could process and use them as needed.

My behaviour with group 1 resembled that of a coach whereas my behaviour with group 2 resembled that of a mentor. This realisation helped me differentiate between the two tools. If you are interested, you can see some more distinctions between coaching and mentoring below. (Source: Civil Service College, Singapore)

Based on what I learnt in 2016, I am going to do a few things differently in 2017:

• Focus more on Group 1 coaching. My ability to help them is not limited by my own experience and they find my distance from the problem to be advantageous. I can help them drive improvements and gains on specific development issues by asking smart questions.
• Make a decision on whether to pursue a formal coaching qualification later in 2017. I need to understand whether theory/practice/both will help me become more effective.
• Set a goal for the number of hours that I myself will be coached. Receiving regular coaching myself helps me become a better coach to others.
• Work with my management team to figure out when to use coaching and mentoring to drive the personal development of their own team members.

2016 was a year of huge personal change for me. I started a new job and became a father for the first time. I found coaching to be a constant amongst the change and a huge source of personal learning and inspiration. The 200 hours reaffirmed my interest in helping people develop, upskill and realise their entrepreneurial instincts. Later in my career I would like to devote a large part of my time to coaching and helping people launch businesses. I get a huge amount of satisfaction from seeing people overcome challenges and become the best version of themselves!

I would love to hear how your experiences with coaching and mentoring have been? How do you make the distinction between the two?

If you are interested in exploring how career coaching or mentoring might help your personal development, then please feel free to contact me here. Thanks!