How can you determine whether you need a coach or a mentor for your professional development?

1?? Purpose and Focus: A coach is focused on helping individuals improve specific skills, overcome challenges, and achieve specific goals. 2?? Expertise: Coaches may or may not have direct experience or expertise in the specific area the individual is seeking help with. 3?? Relationship Dynamics: Coaches maintain objectivity, focusing on helping clients discover their own solutions, providing accountability, and offering constructive feedback. 4?? Timeframe: Coaching relationships are often time-bound and specific to achieving predetermined goals or targets. 5?? Approach: Coaches employ active listening, powerful questioning, and other techniques to facilitate self-discovery, self-reflection, and personal growth in their clients.

A coach is someone who helps leaders discover their blind spots, said another way, a coach expands a leader's self-awareness. In seeing 'newly' a situation or bias at play, the leader will have choices they couldn't see before and new actions to take aligned with their desired future and intended outcome.

Coaching helps someone unlock their own potential. It brings about increased self-confidence, self-belief and a reduction of the imposter syndrome. All of this is done with the client being in their own driving seat and they have handed the map of 'where they want to get to' to the coach. The professional coach asks open-ended questions to help the client plot the route to their goal.

Coaching is a partnership, a conversation where the coach works collaboratively to create a space where you can uncover insights about your practice or goals. A coach is there to listen and help you think, to help facilitate you finding your way.

1?? Purpose and Focus: A mentor is more focused on providing guidance, sharing knowledge, and offering advice based on their own experiences. 2?? Expertise: Mentors usually possess significant experience and expertise in the area of interest. 3?? Relationship Dynamics: The mentor-mentee relationship often involves a more informal and personal connection. 4?? Timeframe: Mentorship is usually an ongoing, long-term relationship that extends beyond achieving immediate goals. 5?? Approach: Mentors often take a more advisory role, sharing knowledge, offering insights, and providing guidance based on their own experiences.

When we mentor it is usually because we have some particular experiences that we can bring to a mentoring relationship. A mentor is a good listener, provides helpful stories, metaphors and examples to help someone to understand a situation with some new insight based on the mentor's experiences.

A mentor is there for you, they are someone who you can go to, to ask for guidance or support. They are there when you need them and they can offer pointers from their experience to help you along the way.

Biggest challenge seem to be about expectations on either the coach/mentor's side or the client's perspective. Having a good first meeting to discuss this is so important to set the right parameters at the very beginning. Sometimes if you coaching/mentoring someone for a longer period of time it is really good to reassess those perspectives as they can change as the client gets the results and goals they want.

It helps when leaders have an appetite to discover their gaps. Being open-minded is a deliberate and purposeful action as our brains function from a place of 'knowing' - this is a barrier to learning and being open.

A professional coach or mentor will always offer a 'chemistry session' at the very beginning so that a potential client can decide if this is the right coach or mentor for them. That first session is complimentary so there is no pressure on the client or the coach/mentor either way. Have a 'WOW' first official session in which you both discuss 'ways of working' together. What are the expectations on both sides, how the client could measure success etc. It's important to be both be open and honest so you don't set unrealistic expectations of the process or each other.

The only way to benefit from coaching or mentoring is to accept you need help/guidance and be prepared to embark on an association that will help you reach your next level in your personal or professional goals. The more you invest in the more you get out of this association. Once you have accepted this the next step is to ask around from people who have achieved what you want and look in the network where you want to go.