Business Bites: Career mentoring or coaching?

“A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could,” Zig Ziglar

Having a mentor or coach is one of the most important things a person can do to enhance their career and professional life, but which one is right for you and what is the difference?

While the skills required to be a coach or a mentor are similar, and both are used as professional development tools, the structure and the outcome are quite different.

When deciding whether to use a coach or a mentor, consider the goal you wish to achieve. The coach and the mentor will help professionals in different ways to accomplish their goals. In fact, some professionals use multiple coaches or multiple mentors throughout their careers, depending on their desired goals.

In both coaching and mentoring, trust, respect and confidentiality are at the forefront of the relationship. But it is important to understand the difference between having a coach and having a mentor.

In very simple terms we could say the following:

Coaching

• A coach will provide guidance to a client to help them reach their goals
• Coaches generally receive training to guide people to achieve success
• Coaches are trained to help clients to find their own solution through challenge, assistance, and encouragement and not to provide the answers, advice, or opinions
• Coaching is usually performance driven with the goal of overcoming a particular issue or achieving a particular skill

Mentoring

• A mentor will pass on their skills and experience to help a mentee to develop
• Mentors generally do not have formal training and rely on passing on their experience
• Mentors also help mentees find their own solution but may be more directing and advisory
• Mentoring usually involves someone with years of experience in a particular area guiding someone with less experience in that field

According to the Association for Project Management, some of the most important differences between coaching and mentoring are shown in the table below.

The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) takes things a stage further by also introducing the concept of a sponsor. Taking mentorship to the next level, a sponsor is more personally involved in the mentee’s next career steps. Choosing to sponsor someone means becoming their advocate, both in public and behind closed doors. This could be anything from championing an individual for promotion to getting them on the books for conference presentations.

Whether you decide that you need a coach or a mentor to help you in your career management, you will first need to carry out a gap analysis of where in your career you currently are, where you wish to be, and the skills that you will need to develop to get there.

Read more on this in the Business Bites article, Mind the gap.

Interested in mentoring or finding a mentor? Use the ABDO Peer-to-Peer Mentoring Platform here.