Jan­ice Lear­mond Criqui

Many peo­ple feel that coach­ing and men­tor­ing are the same thing. When­ev­er you ask a group what makes a good coach, some­one in­evitably says "men­tor" or "men­tor­ing." Like­wise, if you were to ask a group what makes a good men­tor, you would prob­a­bly hear some­one say that a men­tor helps to coach peo­ple. No doubt, coach­ing and men­tor­ing have many sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics. Both coach­es and men­tors are typ­i­cal­ly es­tab­lished to as­sist oth­er peo­ple in per­son­al de­vel­op­ment in life, busi­ness, school, ca­reer de­ci­sions, ath­let­ics, and many oth­er ar­eas. At Cen­ter for Man­age­ment and Or­gan­i­sa­tion Ef­fec­tive­ness, we have found that good men­tors and good coach­es will demon­strate many of the same types of skills and be­hav­iours when work­ing with oth­er peo­ple. One thing we find to be more com­mon than ever be­fore is that em­ploy­ees are look­ing to their im­me­di­ate man­agers to take the role of coach and men­tor. Not on­ly are the em­ploy­ees seek­ing this help, but many man­age­r­i­al job de­scrip­tions are re­quir­ing lead­ers to coach and men­tor as well.

If you re­al­ly want to un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween coach­ing and men­tor­ing, au­thor Nigel MacLen­nan in his book Coach­ing and Men­tor­ing, helps dis­tin­guish the dif­fer­ence be­tween a coach and a men­tor quite well. "The two roles are worlds apart and over­lap­ping, de­pend­ing on which di­men­sion they are com­pared. In terms of vo­li­tion, a men­tor can be un­wit­ting or even un­will­ing, but still a suc­cess­ful men­tor. How? By a per­former choos­ing a role mod­el at a dis­tance. A coach could nev­er be un­wit­ting, and is un­like­ly to en­gage in the process if un­will­ing. The roles over­lap when a per­son per­forms suc­cess­ful­ly as a coach. He or she is like­ly to be adopt­ed as a men­tor of coach­ing skills. The re­verse is not true.

"A men­tor can nev­er be a coach un­less they de­lib­er­ate­ly adopt the skills in­volved in suc­cess­ful coach­ing. The coach con­cen­trates on help­ing the per­former learn how to achieve more. The men­tor's aim is to be avail­able for the per­former to use as a re­source. A men­tor can ful­fill the role quite ad­e­quate­ly with ba­sic man­age­ment, peo­ple and train­ing or teach­ing skills. An ef­fec­tive coach must have the knowl­edge, tech­nique and skill to help the per­former achieve, with­out di­rect­ing." MacLen­nan makes a strong point in that peo­ple with good coach­ing skills help peo­ple to learn and de­vel­op on their own, while men­tors many times just di­rect. An­oth­er im­por­tant thought the au­thor ex­press­es is that a coach can be­come a men­tor more eas­i­ly than a men­tor can be­come a coach.

A men­tor can be dis­en­gaged and dis­tant, but to­day's coach­es are in the front lines with their troops every day. The art of coach­ing de­mands own­er­ship and part­ner­ship, in or­der to build a strong foun­da­tion for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and sup­port with­in the re­la­tion­ship. The Jour­nal of Ap­plied Psy­chol­o­gy said that, "Man­agers spend 57 to 89 per cent of their time in face to face com­mu­ni­ca­tion." Even in to­day's con­stant­ly chang­ing world of tech­nol­o­gy, man­agers are still spend­ing a large por­tion of time in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their team mem­bers. There­fore, it is in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant for man­agers, di­rec­tors, su­per­vi­sors, and se­nior ex­ec­u­tives to be good coach­es. They need prop­er coach­ing skills train­ing in or­der to make a big­ger im­pact with­in their teams and or­gan­i­sa­tion. When a good coach en­gages his team mem­bers in con­tin­u­ous and pos­i­tive in­ter­ac­tions, the de­vel­oped syn­er­gy will pro­duce tremen­dous re­sults. Strong coach­es, prop­er­ly trained in coach­ing skills, know how to max­imise in­ter­ac­tions for pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships and bot­tom-line out­comes.

Ref­er­ence: Cen­ter for Man­age­ment & Or­gan­i­sa­tion Ef­fec­tive­ness

For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, please call 290-8171; email:

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