Introduction

About this content of this module

The substance of this module has been based on the work of Ruth Moody, a Principal at Farscape Development in the UK. Ruth is an internationally qualified leadership and life skills coach who has been acclaimed for her discussion papers about coaching and mentoring in the business context. See https://farscapedevelopment.co.uk.

Activity

Imagine a work landscape where the management is supportive, non-judgemental and encouraging of employees. A culture that is based on coaching. Now open your eyes and look at the reality. Does it match up?

Despite good intentions and a will to help, what usually emerges is a culture of mentoring, not coaching.

Coach vs mentor

• A coach doesn’t require any knowledge of a particular job or knowledge of the business. The coach is an expert in not knowing. Their role is to ask questions to help the coachee find the answer.
• A mentor usually comes from a similar professional lineage as the mentee. They have hands-on experience that is directly relevant to the person that they are working with. A mentor’s role is to offer wisdom, to guide and advise the individual.

Coaches often slip into being mentors

When coaching happens with colleagues from the same organisation, politics, hierarchies, hidden agendas and the desire to do good all come to the fore.

Instead of helping individuals to develop, ‘coaches’ inadvertently give advice. That’s fine for a mentoring relationship, though it means that the coaching culture you hope to develop won’t emerge and certainly won’t change anything.

A coaching culture is redundant unless there’s organisation-wide understanding of what that means.