Coaching leads to learning that lasts

Difference between coaching and mentoring

There are fundamental differences between coaching and mentoring. In a coach-coachee relationship, the coachee does the legwork. Though the coach might prompt and question the coachee, the onus is on the person being coached to come up with the answer. It’s not necessarily easy, the work can be a challenging process.

The advantage is that by encouraging the individual to problem solve, they can find the answer themselves and the learning is much more likely to stick, as it is they who has gone through the discovery process.

When coaching and mentoring are confused, the impact of either is negligible. And when confusion abounds and results don’t emerge then frustration begins to show.

This turns opinions against coaching and mentoring respectively. If your senior team believe they have a coaching culture, when in practice it’s more like mentorship, and coachees don’t develop self-awareness, resilience, and problem-solving skills, it appears that coaching doesn’t work. Likewise, if an individual has been coached and develops a keen sense of self-awareness yet their knowledge of systems and processes stagnates, it appears that mentoring doesn’t work.

There are drawbacks to coaching

Firstly, it may not always be the correct tool for the job.

Secondly, and most importantly, coaching can fall short when it is carried out by someone else in the business. The temptation to slip into mentoring can be immense; in fact, many internal coaches do slip into a mentoring role because they are not aware of the fundamental differences between coaching and mentoring. It’s understandable – if you have knowledge or insight that someone else in your team doesn’t have, then the desire to help can take over and instead of guiding someone to find the answer themselves, the ‘coach’ dons a mentoring cloak and begins to advise.

By offering answers, the learning is diminished as the individual is doing much less independent work.