Mentoring vs Coaching what is the difference do you think? This question came up since I’ve been offering my volunteer hours mentoring at Score.
I decided to research it and discover if the difference was the same as mine.
A Mentor is someone who guides you along, points you in the right direction..to help you to achieve your Big goals.
A Coach tends to ask questions, listens and gives you homework so you can grow into your big dreams
According to the dictionary..
“Mentorship is the patronage, influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor.“ A mentor is someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced person. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and professional growth of a mentee. Most traditional mentorships involve having senior employees mentor more junior employees, but mentors do not necessarily have to be more senior than the people they mentor. What matters is that mentors have experience that others can learn from.
According to the Business Dictionary, a mentor is a senior or more experienced person who is assigned to function as an advisor, counsellor, or guide to a junior or trainee. The mentor is responsible for offering help and feedback to the person under their supervision. A mentor’s role, according to this definition, is to use their experience to help a junior employee by supporting them in their work and career, providing comments on their work, and, most crucially, offering direction to mentees as they work through problems and circumstances at work.”
“A Business Coach, is someone who walks beside you to help you to achieve whatever challenges you are working on. Listens, provides you guidance and feedback.”
Business coaching is a type of human resource development for executives, members of management, teams, and leadership. It provides positive support, feedback, and advice on an individual or group basis to improve personal effectiveness in the business setting, many a time focusing on behavioral changes. Business coaching is also called executive coaching, corporate coaching or leadership coaching. Coaches help their clients advance towards specific professional goals.
These may include career transition, interpersonal and professional communication, organizational effectiveness, managing career, and personal changes, developing executive presence, building credibility, enhancing strategic thinking, dealing effectively with conflict, facing work challenges and making swift and sound decisions, leading a change and building an effective team within an organization.
Business coaching is not restricted to external experts or providers. Many organizations expect their senior leaders and middle managers to coach their team members to reach higher levels of performance, increased job satisfaction, personal growth, and career development. Research studies suggest that executive coaching has positive effects both within workplace performance as well as personal areas outside the workplace, with some differences in the impact of internal and external coaches.
Ok, what is a facilitator then?
“The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking and practice. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements” – Kaner et al
Anyone in these roles are not here to do your work for you, unfortunately it’s great sometimes if we would, you will not learn anything if we did the work for you.
As a Score Mentor, people who are thinking about starting their own business, or in the middle of wanting financing for their business.. somewhere in their minds think I am to do their work for them.
A guy decides to start a brokerage company, the broker that he is working with tells him he is required to have a business plan, permits, the financials in place etc and pass an exam.
Ans: I suggest that there is a business plan class coming up that he can start there, then ask the broker agent of whom he is going to work with where he can find the permits, books for the exam etc.
At the end of the session, he really wants me to do his business plan and set up his business for him.
Update: has not completed his business plan, is working on the other requirements he needs.
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A gal asks for help to get financing for her business, she knows she needs a business plan. She is struggling with it, I suggest taking the class and if she wants more help make an appointment see where she needs extra help.
Ans: turns out she hires someone else to do the business plan and finds another agency to help her get money. I am happy for her., that she found extra help.
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As a Mentor I feel I am only here to guide people, and most people that ask for help have high expectations and requests .
Perhaps before you reach out, think about what you want and need..and tell the person who has been assigned to you.
All these roles have something in common yet they are all different.
I was pretty close to the definitions, Mentoring vs Coaching what I do is to encourage you to give a few hours of your time to mentor someone on Score.org.. Jackie a lawyer didn’t think she has something to offer.. she was surprised ( she’s retiring out this fall). We have some new mentors in marketing, CPA’s, social media.. retail management etc. there is many things that you can share and give back.
I am offering coaching as well.. check my new services for women. or other articles that have been written about what I am into. Thanks for checking out Mentoring vs Coaching what is the difference? The Women’s group will be starting in May.
Until next time, stay safe
Mari-Lyn
