Coaching vs. Mentoring – The Differences and Similarities

As the employment landscape changed dramatically in recent years and the emergence of AI, it is becoming ever more important to familiarize with the various methods for personal and professional development at the workplace.

There are several ways that we learn skills, and develop our goals and perspectives:

1. Studying – Learning on our own from courses, books, videos and more.
2. Coaching – Having someone train us to develop a particular skill.
3. Mentoring – Having someone share their insights to inspire our overall direction.

1. What is a Coach?

A Coach helps improve performance in delivering a task such as presentation, sales or leadership skills. Organizations hire coaches on a short-term basis to help improve an employee’s abilities. For example, hiring a Coach to train a CEO on how to communicate with the media.

A Coach is also specialized in asking thought-provoking questions to make the employee explore their mindset, opinions and any reasons that prevent them from getting better at that new skill or set of skills.

Catch more HRTech Insights: HRTech Interview with Jeff Smith, PhD, Chief Product Officer at 15Five

2. What is a Mentor?

While a Coach focuses on improving performance, a Mentor focuses on overall career development. A Mentor is usually more senior and has a lot of relevant expertise, experience and insights to share.

Instead of helping improve a skill, a Mentor will spend much of the time sharing their life experiences, stories from working on projects, dealing with similar situations, and tips and tricks that have helped them in the past. The Mentor takes a holistic view of an employee’s career direction, explaining the various paths that could be taken and what is required to reach them. This can also include explaining how the organization’s departments work together, subtle cultural rules, industry knowledge and the overall strategy of the business.

For example, when an employee considers a transition from production to management – they look for advice on what it is like to be a manager and whether they would be a good fit in that role. Moving to leadership requires exploring various skills, perspectives and learning from a Mentor with many years in management can help make it a smoother transition.

3. The Differences Between Coaching Programs vs. Mentoring Programs

Depending on the current needs of an organization, it may benefit from a coaching or mentoring program or both. For example, if there is a need to train staff quickly a coaching program can help. But if the problem is long-term succession planning, a mentoring program is more suitable to slowly transition middle management into leadership roles.

Here are the main elements of each type of program:

4. The Coaching Program Structure:

* Program length: Short-term, usually a few months up to a year or so.

* Format: Well structured with a set agenda and planned meetings to achieve goals.

* Focus: A specific topic of expertise – to help improve performance.

* Work Plan: The Coach and employee work together to define the program plan based on their unique situation and needs.

* Lead: By asking questions the Coach leads the conversations and helps the employee identify how they should change their behaviour to improve their skills.

* Results: Coaching has set measurable goals to demonstrate performance improvement.

* Cost: Organizations hire professional coaches to quickly upskill employees.

5. The Mentoring Program Structure:

* Program length: Longer-term relationships, often up to a year or longer.

* Format: Less formal meetings that occur as required when requested by the employee.

* Focus: Less specific topics, but rather general inspiration from the Mentor’s breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise in the overall field and role.

* Work Plan: The employee sets the agenda based on what they want to learn. Over time they will have more questions as they progress in their career.

* Lead: Unlike Coaching, in Mentoring the mentee asks many of the questions as they look for insights about various topics.

* Results: Less short-term goals but focus on long-term development which can be measured over years in terms of job promotions, transition to leadership, etc.

* Cost: Mentors usually volunteer and are not paid. It is a way to give back to the company or industry and reflect on the past while helping the next generation. Mentors give back for a variety of reasons such as developing leadership skills, or to gain new perspectives. Attracting mentors to participate is a process of reaching out to senior management, retirees and other industry experts who may be compatible.

6. The Similarities between Coaching and Mentoring

* Professional Development: Both methods offer support beyond the regular work environment, in a customized plan for each individual as per their needs.

* Personal Growth: Whether developing a skill or a greater understanding of the marketplace, both formats help build confidence and improve competence.

* Results-oriented: Both help improve either short or long-term goals.

* Communication: Both methods require listening and providing relevant feedback.

* Relationships: These are important professional relationships that make a difference in the employee’s career and life in both the short and long run.

7. Developing Coaching and Mentoring Programs

Often organizations have a need for specific types of programs that run simultaneously, for example:

1. An employee can participate in both short-term coaching on an immediate challenge and also have a long-term mentor helping them transition to leadership.

2. Some organizations have multiple programs to support employees across every stage of their development:
* Mentoring interns by employees
* Mentoring early stage employees by mid-career staff
* Mentoring mid-career staff by senior leadership
* Programs for specific interest group mentoring programs
* Focus on coaching specific job roles for a few months and later others

3. A “Coffee Chat” program can enable employees to connect with internal experts for a quick meeting just to help them solve a problem or to talk about a specific topic. This internal, volunteer-based program would be a hybrid solution.

4. Volunteer coaching events where employees with a certain skill can run training sessions for anyone in the organization who would like to learn about those topics. For example, coaching a group on how to give and receive constructive feedback effectively or how to deal with conflict resolution.

8. How to Manage Coaching and Mentoring Programs

There are online platforms that help manage Coaching and Mentoring programs. They can include customized registration forms, matching algorithms to suggest the best mentor or coach, goal setting, activity tracking and resource libraries to help clarify what each side should be doing at each step in the process. Auto-reminders also keep participants on top of the next step along the process.

These platforms also include an admin panel where the organization can see on-going progress across every key performance indicator for each program.

9. Summary

Many large organizations today offer Coaching and Mentoring programs, each program is designed specifically for their unique needs. Some programs are open to all employees while others are set for a niche group.

While Coaching programs require a Coach hiring budget for every engagement, Mentoring programs with volunteer mentors can be supported by a mentoring software at a low initial setup cost and low on-going costs for years to come. This helps to grow program size and participation and helps embed mentoring as part of the culture of the organization.

Both Coaching and Mentoring support employees through a transition phase, from learning a new skill or a major career move. They help build confidence, competence and grow stronger relationships across the organization.

Read More on Hrtech : HRTech Interview with Kristin Cabot, Chief People Officer at Astronomer 

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