Coaching vs Consulting vs Mentoring
Business mentoring is often confused with business coaching or consulting.
Coaching focuses on harnessing the innate skills of the client. It assumes a capability and seeks to help the coachee find and develop their own abilities.
Consulting uses the expertise, skills, knowledge and experiences of the consultant to educate. You can think of it as similar to the relationship between a teacher and a student. The expert teaches; the client learns.
Mentoring is about the personal development of the client. An individual may have a great understanding of one skillset, but require assistance in developing others.
Furthermore, mentoring is more of an ongoing process. The mentor adopts a supportive role, becoming a source of advice and knowledge for the client. Often, they will seek opportunities for development of the mentee, such as networking events, or introductions to relevant people. While coaching aids an individual develop their skills for their current role, a mentor helps to develop the individual for their next role.
Friend and Confidante
Because of the personal nature of mentoring, it is often the case that a mentor will become a friend and confidante. The mentor will help the client navigate the murky roads of office and corporate politics. They will establish frequent communication with the mentee, listen to what they want to achieve and guide them on the right path. A mentor will have vital skills, experiences, and a desire to see the mentee achieve them. The best mentors share in both the joys and disappointments of their clients.
The mentor also acts as an unbiased third party to approach with ideas. Because they invest in a person’s success, they will not simply try and massage egos. If an idea seems unworkable, a mentor will not just dismiss it but attempt to guide the mentee towards considering whether they can make the idea more workable. The mentor will be experienced, and have a perspective that the client may not. They will bring that perspective into their work with the mentee, to help them look at problems differently, and find solutions more effectively.
A Vital Sounding Board
Perhaps the often unspoken benefit of a mentor is that they can act as a sounding board. Business is rife with stress, and much of it could be avoided if people were more mindful of others. In business, we cannot vent to our colleagues, our customers or our business partners. Most prefer not to vent to our spouses because we do not want to take negativity into our home life. A mentor can be invaluable in providing a safe release for the day-to-day headaches that emerge, but more importantly, can help the mentee devise coping strategies to come out on top.
A business mentor will not simply mould a client in their own image. Although the mentor will have their own experiences, methods and strategies to call upon, they will encourage the mentee to develop their own. You can think of some meetings with mentors as a brainstorming whiteboard session. The mentor will ask questions; they will give the client the opportunity to think and consider for themselves. Through this, the client will grow as a person, and they will become their own person.
Introducing Mentoring Into Organisations
If you’re considering introducing mentoring into your organisation, you should ask yourself some questions. For example, what are the organisational goals? When, where and how often will the mentoring take place? Who do you think will benefit? Do you have appropriate potential mentors in the organisation or will you outsource?
With regards to that last question, it is often useful to bring in an outside mentor. Mentoring is often most successful when a client feels they can open up to their mentor. Depending on the office culture, a mentee may be reluctant to fully utilise the range of mentoring services if they have to see their mentor every day.
Keeping People on the Bus
Introducing mentoring into an organisation can be invaluable. I’ve written before about getting the right people on the bus and putting them in the right seats. Once you have the right people on the bus, you want to keep them on the bus. Mentoring develops people for a career. By giving them the opportunities for a career within your organisation, you encourage them not to get off at the next stop. You give them a purpose, and you make them feel valued. Furthermore, the mentees of today could be your mentors of tomorrow. They could very well be the ones guiding the next generation to success as your business grows.
