Coaching and Mentoring

What is coaching?

There is some confusion about what exactly coaching is, and how it differs from other ‘helping behaviours’ such as counselling and mentoring. Broadly speaking, the CIPD defines coaching as developing a person’s skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, hopefully leading to the achievement of organisational objectives. It targets high performance and improvement at work, although it may also have an impact on an individual’s private life. It usually lasts for a short period and focuses on specific skills and goals.

Although there is a lack of agreement among coaching professionals about precise definitions, these are some generally agreed characteristics of coaching in organisations:

It is essentially a non-directive form of development.

It focuses on improving performance and developing individuals’ skills.

Personal issues may be discussed but the emphasis is on performance at work.

Coaching activities have both organisational and individual goals.

It assumes that the individual is psychologically well and does not require a clinical intervention.

It provides people with feedback on both their strengths and their weaknesses.

It is a skilled activity which should be delivered by trained people.

What is mentoring?

Mentoring is a technique for allowing the transmission of knowledge, skills and experience in a supportive and challenging environment much like coaching. The same skills of questioning, listening, clarifying, reframing and many of the same models are used. However, mentoring relationships can be much more long term, for example in a succession planning scenario a regional finance director might be mentored by a group level counterpart where they might learn the basics of dealing with the boardroom, presenting to analysts, challenging departmental budgets, etc all in a supportive environment. Mentoring relationships work best when they move beyond the directive approach of a senior colleague telling it how it is, to one where both learn from each other. This is particularly productive when there is a gender or ethnic dimension to the relationship. An effective mentoring relationship is a learning opportunity for both parties.

Mentoring can also work as a way of inducting employees, as a form of staff development across departments and as a means of simple skills transfer.

The differences between coaching, mentoring and counselling

It can be difficult to distinguish between coaching, mentoring and counselling. In practice, ‘mentoring’ for example is sometimes used interchangeably with ‘coaching’. Traditionally, however, mentoring in the workplace has tended to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague used their greater knowledge and understanding of the work or workplace to support the development of a more junior or inexperienced member of staff.

Similarly, it can be hard to draw a clear distinction between coaching and counselling, not least because many of the theoretical underpinnings of coaching are drawn from the worlds of counselling and therapy. For the purpose of managing coaching services the key distinction to be drawn is that coaching is for those who are psychologically well; a coach should be able to recognise where an individual is so distressed by personal or social issues that he or she needs to be referred to specialist counselling or other support.

Source: CIPD website