Coaching or Mentoring?

By Charlie Lang, Managing Partner & CXO Coach at Progress-U Asia

“What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?”

This is a question I am frequently asked which reminds me of the questions, “What is the difference between management and leadership?” or “What is the difference between vision and mission?”

Go online and use any search engine to answer these questions and I promise you, your confusion will be heightened, not reduced. Check dictionaries or ask several ‘experts’ and you won’t be enlightened either.

While I have my own definitions and differentiations of the terms coaching and mentoring, which make most sense to me, I would never claim that mine are the ‘correct’ ones. They just make sense to me, that’s all.

Ultimately, it’s really up to you how you define and distinguish these terms.

Why does it matter anyway?

Well, it does matter. Let me give you an example. About a year ago, one of our clients asked us to assist them in setting up a mentoring system in their organization. My first thoughts were: ‘OK, let’s first check the ability of their leaders to take on a mentoring role. Are they able to know when a coaching approach is more useful (and are they actually able to coach), when sharing is more appropriate, and when they simply need to teach the mentee?’

When I met the COO, I held back with my thoughts and wanted to clarify first the purpose of setting up a mentoring system. While it seemed obvious to me, I learned that even though such assumptions may 90% of the time be correct, sometimes they are plain wrong. And this was the case here, as I was about to find out. I assumed that they wanted to set up a mentoring system for taking care of their top talents and ensure their proper development and advancement in the organization.

It was a good thing that I first checked if this assumption was correct because I was in for a surprise. The COO’s understanding of mentoring was to appoint subject matter experts who could be consulted if anyone needed specific advice in the area of the mentor’s expertise. The purpose was to provide to any employee access to the needed expertise.

You see, had I not checked, I would have approached this case with my own assumptions and preconceived thoughts how to establish a mentoring system there. I would have been totally off track.

It isimportant that an organization develops a common understanding of what certain terms mean for them, so that they minimize misunderstanding and ensure aligned communication and action.

I recently followed a thread on the definition of vision and mission statements on LinkedIn and got tired reading it after about 80 posts. In total there were a couple of hundred comments, many of them very passionately claiming that they have the ‘right’ answer and rejecting with equal amount of passion any other definitions. It was amusing and at the same time insightful to observe how excited people could get over two harmless words.

If people can get so engaged about two words when nothing is at stake, can you imagine how serious the implications could be for any leader or organization in terms of communication within the organization?

Over the years, working as an executive myself and having coached and trained hundreds of senior executives, I have learned to appreciate how important it is for an organization to develop a common ‘language’ and ensure that everyone in the organization adopts the same understanding of ‘soft’ words that are frequently used, such as vision, mission, strategy, management, leadership, coaching, mentoring, counseling, consulting, etc. To do so effectively, I found it’s helpful to openly admit that there are no strict official definitions for these terms and then agree on certain definitions for the said terms, within the organization. Everyone in the organization should be encouraged to adopt these definitions in order to facilitate effective communication. This is ever more important in multi-cultural teams or organizations.Developing a common language, by the way, has some other advantages aside from reducing misunderstanding.  It also leads to stronger groupness (sense of belonging to the group) which is a contributing factor to higher engagement and loyalty.

In case you want to know how I distinguish between coaching and mentoring, for me, mentoring is coaching plus sharing of relevant experience and assisting with the mentor’s own network. In my understanding of mentoring, an effective mentor is also an effective coach. Unlike a coach, a mentor needs to have specific and relevant experience in the field of the mentee and is able to make use of his network of contacts to help the mentees in their advancement. As a result, a mentor is typically more senior than the mentee. This is not necessarily the case for coaching.