Leaders with the power to influence and teach can skillfully improve performance.
Everyone has probably heard the expression, “She (or he) knows how to bring out the best in people.”
Business leaders involved in coaching and mentoring ideally should have that objective as their primary goal. After talking with hundreds of clients, I understand that performance improvement is a major concern among employers.
If you read my previous Insight titled, “Everyone Wins! Coach and Mentor Employees to Higher Performances,” you learned why leadership training is recommended and how it significantly enhances both coaching and mentoring skills.
That said, it’s important to understand that, technically speaking, coaching and mentoring are not the same. Later, I’ll explain the downside of mixing up these two roles and how doing so ultimately ends up sending mixed messages.
OK, let’s review the components of both—coaching and mentoring—so you can compare and contrast, as a way to help you assess your needs and make your planning decisions.
Mentoring
- Builds upon a one-on-one relationship
- Tends to take on much more of a personal involvement
- Takes on a very positive and no-pressure tone
- Seeks to advance the mentee forward personally
- Serves as a knowledge source
- Engages in a neutral way, usually with no work or professionally related agenda
Coaching
- Builds upon a professional relationship
- Lasers in on tasks and performance (task-driven and task-oriented)
- Works in concert with company or organizational goals
- Implies an authoritative role and involves work-related expectations
- Engages the coached in supporting the team or unit direction and vision
Words of caution: It is very important that when developing mentoring and coaching relationships that you not mix up these components or objectives into one bucket, so to speak.
For example, if you are mentoring someone about their career, you don’t want to get into a position where you are throwing in some coaching-performance issues. For a mentoring relationship to work, and to be effective for both people, it’s critical that it is an open and honest, 360-degree type dialogue. Otherwise, you end up with a heap of mixed messages all over the place, and the goals get intertwined.
Basically, mentoring is more about influence and is power-free; whereas, coaching is more about job performance and is normally based on someone having authority in the relationship.
Since your coaching and mentoring missions and objectives are completely different, you will need to make a clear distinction between the two types of relationships. So your strategies for carrying out each type of program will be completely different.
Coaching and mentoring have great potential for improving performance in the workplace. It’s important to recognize the distinct differences and objectives of each, however, in order to avoid canceling out any advantages you’re striving to gain. Again, you will want to keep in mind that both coaching and mentoring carry great responsibilities, requiring high levels of leadership skills and abilities, so training is always advisable.