About your Coaching and Mentoring Journey

Our definition of Coaching and Mentoring differentiation is taken from the Australian Institute of Company Directors Coaches and Mentor CONNECT Programs

Coaching is focussed on addressing specific development needs. Often these are oriented around skill-sets.  Coaching can also include the development of coaching as a leadership style. 

Let’s demystify the difference between the two so that you can decide what’s best for your business.

So, what is the difference between mentoring and coaching?

A simple analogy for business coaching can be taken from any sport. Every successful high-performing athlete or sporting team has a coach, so why not a business owner or business manager?

The coach watches, provides feedback, instructs on whatever skill set needs work and generally provides powerful motivation to the subject. Like an athlete no matter how expert they are at their skill or craft, successful business operators can utilise someone who is engaged externally to be an objective observer, advisor, and confidante to provide external and dispassionate insight on the performance of the business.

A coach is someone who can assist the athlete to fine-tune their skills and tap into their highest levels of performance. The same principle applies to business operators who want to improve some area of their individual or team’s operational performance.

The coach observes patterns of behaviour and assists the business (team) in fine tuning their skills, processes and cultural behaviours to improve performance.

Mentoring on the other hand explores and shares know-how and life experience (tacit knowledge) in an immediately useful way. A good mentor shares by asking questions that guide the subject towards conclusions, reasoning and thinking that enables them to learn, assimilate and use experiential expertise. A business mentor relates business matters using narrative (stories and examples), posing challenges that require good thinking, scenarios for choices to be considered, and acts as a sounding board for ideas and undeveloped thoughts.

 However, mentoring and coaching are also frequently referred to interchangeably.  We believe that mentoring and coaching overlap in the following areas while also have some distinction in each:

• Both require trust and commitment in the process and substantial interpersonal skills from coach and mentor

• Both aim for the individual to increase his or her effectiveness and apply it to the tasks at hand in a positive manner

• Both encourage, stretch and provide support, and challenge in pursuit of this

• Both involve an exchange of life and career experiences.

• Both are collaborative alliances between client and mentor or coach.

Although there is overlap, there are some distinct differences in the process and required outcomes. Given this, we offer you these definitions for your information. This diagram will further assist and reinforce the illustration of the distinctions between coaching and mentoring.