Coaching and mentoring are both forms of one-to-one paired support relationships aimed at facilitating personal development, the distinction between which is often confusing.
At one time coaching was thought to be the more job and task orientated of the two whilst mentoring was thought to take a broader view, aiming to support individuals in their long-term personal and career development. Life coaching could arguably be described in a similar way. Nowadays they do substantially the same things. Coaching and mentoring should be seen as methods of development that complement, rather than replace, traditional training.
Benefits
Advocates of coaching and mentoring cite a wide range of benefits for organisation and individuals alike. Some suggested benefits of coaching/mentoring for the organisation include the recruitment, retention and development of key employees, increased productivity, provision of a stabilising factor when change occurs, bottom-line benefits, help with succession planning and encouragement of knowledge sharing and transfer of skills across the organisation.
For the client, the alleged benefits are endless, but include improved individual performance, increased motivation and morale, provision of an unthreatening environment for discussion, encouragement to tackle tasks that they have been avoiding, help with the transition from one level to another, learning for themselves rather than being taught, stress management and the opportunity to develop their personal networks.
The more commonly discussed benefits for the coach/mentor include greater visibility and respect within their organisation, opportunity to practice their personal skills and share valuable tacit knowledge/skills and experience, satisfaction in seeing their client develop and insight into the needs of the organisation.
Characteristics of the effective coach/mentor
A report published by The Coaching & Mentoring Network, came up with the following list of skills, knowledge and qualities required of the effective coach: patience; detached; supportive; interested; good listener; perceptive; aware; self aware; attentive; retentive; technical expertise; knowledge; experience; credibility; authoritative. Research has shown that in general terms, the sex of the mentor has no bearing on the mentor/client relationship, although it has been noted that senior women mentors are hard to come by.
Telementoring/E-Coaching
Many organisations, like Hewlett Packard and Shell are using email mentoring or telementoring to maintain relationships between mentors and clients.
Despite the success of such schemes, an argument exists which dispels this concept as contradictory to the fundamental benefits of coaching and mentoring. If the aim of these is to transfer tacit knowledge to the client, then doing so by email, is near impossible. Many subtle elements of the relationship are lost, such as the way their mentor dresses, acts, body language, presence etc. One article sums this up by suggesting that it is ‘too lean’ a medium to support the deep exchanges necessary for developmental relationships’. In addition to the above, conversation will potentially be more stilted with time gaps, and there will therefore be less spontaneity and diversion to other topics.
The main advantages of telementoring over conventional mentoring appear to be that telementoring allows mentoring relationships to exist at the mentor’s and the client’s convenience, irrespective of time and geographical boundaries.
Cultural and gender issues
Mentoring can be used as a means of increasing diversity in organisations, creating greater accessibility to higher levels of management for underrepresented groups e.g. female employees and those from ethnic minorities. In fact, Christopher Conway states that ‘mentoring is a key tool in the creation of the diverse organisation’.
A major study conducted in the US by Ragins has shown that many women are taking advantage of these benefits of mentoring to advance their careers: 91% of female executives reported having a mentor, and many saw this as the ‘single most critical piece to women advancing career-wise’.
Conclusion
Coaching and mentoring both promote self-reliance, self-confidence, self-awareness and learning for individuals. They are effective methods of development, as learners learn more than 60% of skills from ‘direct association with peers and colleagues’. Person-to-person learning such as coaching and mentoring has been quoted as having the highest transfer of knowledge. So long as the correct coach/mentor is chosen, multiple alleged benefits exist for the client and at the same time, the coach/mentor often benefits as much from the relationship as the individuals they support, as does the organisation.
The advance of technology has led to a technological slant being placed on traditional approaches, with debate over whether these are a true substitute for face-to-face coaching and mentoring or not, but there is no debate over the fact that they can help to break through cultural barriers, creating a diverse organisation where those with potential can progress to their full potential.
Reference:
Christopher Conway, Mentoring Managers in Organisations: A Study of Mentoring and its Application Organisations with Case Studies
Anna Britnor Guest, ‘Organisational Mentoring’ (The Coaching & Mentoring Network, 2001) at: www.coachingnetwork.org.uk
Matt Somers, ‘Coaching in call centres: Summary report’ (The Coaching & Mentoring Network, 2001) at: www.coachingnetwork.org.uk
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