Coaching and Mentoring

Having glimpsed the complexity and diversity of the professional disciplines, methodologies and theories that have helped shape coaching, it should come as no surprise that there is no one single definition of coaching (Renton 2009).

Quotations below (Hawkins 2006) illustrate the variety of definitions put forward by some of the leading practitioners in the field.

From this, Hawkins concludes that the key outcomes that distinguish executive coaching seem to be the facilitation of

• performance improvement – so therefore it is goal-focused, results oriented and practical;
• adult learning;
• personal development/support/unlocking potential.

The activities that deliver these outcomes arise from a working relationship with an individual that

• generates a collaborative partnership;
• allows clear, unvarnished feedback;
• has a short term and practical focus.

Hawkins (2006) goes on to describe a useful continuum of coaching that distinguishes four types of coaching by their main focus. These are:

Definitions of mentoring proliferate as well. Clutterbuck is the leading authority on mentoring, and he has written extensively about mentoring in the UK today. He points to its origins in the concept of apprenticeship, “when a more experienced individual passed down his knowledge of how the task was done and how to operate in the commercial world” (Clutterbuck, 2004).

 Clutterbuck (2004 p. 53) describes the mentor’s role as:

Manage - the relationship

Encourage -  recognise the mentee’s ability

Nurture - create an open, candid environment

Teach - create a stimulating environment that challenges the mentor

Offer - mutual respect

Respond - to mentee’s needs

Rogers (2004) says that typically a mentor is a colleague in the same or a parallel organisation who is not in a line management relationship with the mentee. A mentor has sometimes been described as “a ‘career friend.’ Someone who knows the ropes in the organisation and can act as a sponsor or patron. … In practice mentoring does have the overtones of implying that the older and wiser mentors will be passing on their advice and that they may be able to act as a patron.”

Mentors are generally seen as able to give political advice, open doors and offer opportunities, such as introductions to key stakeholders, which enhance the mentee’s career prospects. They are often role models. Rivera (2014) emphasises mentoring’s role in helping the mentee realise his or her special gifts, and teaching both mentor and mentee new things. 

Echoing Rivera, Starr (2014) sums up mentoring as follows:

"Mentoring isn’t about changing someone, or getting someone to do something differently, it’s about waking someone up to who they really are. The mentor’s challenge is to distil their own experience into bite-sized chunks of wisdom, help or guidance that ultimately helps them to discover that."

First of all, it is important to clarify about what kind of coaching we are referring to here. There are a growing number of types of coaching (such as life coaching, career coaching, executive coaching, leadership coaching, maternity coaching). Here we are talking about coaching which aims to enhance your performance at work and your leadership capability.

Let’s start by looking at the broad differences between coaching, mentoring and counselling.  Table 2 gives a succinct overview of the different aims of coaching, mentoring and counselling as expressed by the ODLL (2019) and Mike the Mentor, a coach and mentor with a long-established web-site devoted to mentoring. 

Regarding the difference between coaching and counselling, Hawkins (2006) makes two useful points. Firstly, both might explore the same area, but they have a different frame of reference. Coaching begins with a current work issue. In exploring this, the coach may have to explore some of the coachee’s personal issues and patterns of behaviour which have a bearing on the current challenge. But the coaching should always return to its prime focus - how the coachee can handle the problem in the workplace. 

The second main difference is well expressed by Hall and Duval (2005). Hawkins cites their argument that the assumption in coaching is that coaches work with people who are healthy and embrace change, whereas therapists work with people who “come from a place of deficit”, and expect change to be hard and painful.  As Rogers (2004) makes clear, if someone has persistent issues of self-esteem, unresolved grief, anxiety, depression, or severely dysfunctional behaviour and beliefs, then counselling, not coaching, is appropriate.

Table 3, based on CIPD (2004), sums up the different emphases of coaching and counselling.

It is less easy to be clear cut about the differences between coaching and mentoring. Mentoring has been described by Clutterbuck and Megginson (1997), authorities in the field, as:

“Off-line help by one person to another in making significant transitions in knowledge, work or thinking”.

You can expect both coaches and mentors to listen to you attentively, ask you incisive questions, clarify and reframe what you are saying so that you see things in a different way, plan what to do, reflect and review.

The CIPD (2004) veered away from trying to find a definition of mentoring, and instead looked at differences between mentoring and coaching by comparing their characteristic focus and activities, as shown in Table 4.

From this, Hawkins (2006) concludes that mentoring is less about creating precise and focused behaviour change, and more about helping mentees build an appropriate larger picture that will animate their future career choices.

As Table 4 shows, there is clear water between coaching and mentoring activities when we look at their different processes and outcomes. For example, the directive/non-directive difference has traditionally been seen as an important distinction, although this has become more muddied recently.

Perhaps a useful way of looking at this directive/non-directive distinction is to start with the two different styles of influencing others to get things done - the push and the pull styles. Pushing means being assertive and telling people what to do.  Pulling means drawing people towards you, making a link with them, for example by creating a vision they can relate to, or by empowering them. Both styles have their place, depending on the situation.  Traditionally, mentoring has been seen as a push style, whereas coaching has been seen as a pull style. If we use this as a framework, the activities predominantly used in coaching and mentoring fall roughly into this sort of continuum (Downey, 2003).

Although mentors will undoubtedly listen and question, the traditional picture of a mentor is of someone who gives advice based on his or her own experience.  The speaking ratio between client and coach or mentor reflects this in that the mentor typically talks more than the coach.  The traditional picture of coaches was that they did not give advice, but asked questions to enable the coachees to find their own solutions.  Where things get muddy is in the middle of the continuum. As coaching has developed and different methods have proliferated, coaches do, on occasions, make suggestions or give information. Anne Scoular, managing director of the coaching firm, Meyer Campbell (in Renton, 2009), sees it this way:

"Mentoring and traditional ‘teaching style’ coaching put in advice, guidance, information, suggestions, contacts etc – while non-directive coaching pulls out the capacities people have within. In practice, good mentors can coach as well as mentor. Good coaches will, unquestionably, put in some information, tools or data, where they believe it is in the best interests of the client, but judiciously."

Feedback is an interesting area. On the surface, it might look like a ‘pull’ style. But in so far as it is a form of telling, it is a ‘push’ style. Mentors might give mentees feedback about their performance, or colleague’s comments about them. And coaches can use it too, to give feedback about how they experience the coachee impacting on them during the session. This can increase coachees’ self-awareness and may trigger behavioural change.