When training internal coaches and mentors, clients regularly ask me: What would you expect to cover in each curriculum? And can you use the same content for both roles?
There are overlaps, so you can use the same content for parts of the coach and mentor preparation. However, there are also differences.
Similarities
In my experience, internal coaches and mentors require similar skills and knowledge:
- Active listening, questioning and giving feedback skills
- Processing models to create reflective space
- Understanding the life cycle of a relationship
- How to contract safely and ethically
- How to set focus, direction and, if appropriate, goals.
Differences
- Understanding roles
The main difference comes back to how people and organisations view coaching and mentoring, which is sometimes a controversial topic.
As a designer of programmes, I view both as ‘developmental dialogues’. However, you do need to differentiate and define these types of dialogues, despite their shared skillset, so individuals understand their roles clearly.
Mentoring Mentoring is generally a planned pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a less experienced person. Mentoring involves helping clients develop their career, skills and expertise, often drawing on the experiences of the mentor in the process.
Coaching Coaches need not have first-hand experience of the client’s line of work and can be an independent external professional with expertise in coaching, or an internal coach.
Line managers can also use coaching techniques to manage and develop team members.
In any organisational programme, understanding the role of the coach or mentor, behaviours and responsibilities, is paramount.
- Volume of education
The other big difference in programmes is the amount of education provided. Most mentoring programmes offer a one-hour webinar or a half-day face-to-face training workshop to launch the relationships. This allows only the most basic exploration of topics.
Internal coach programmes generally provide accredited training over time, building on basic skills with extra tools, techniques, models and lots of time for reflective practice. No wonder mentoring can be viewed as the more amateur role.
In one mentoring programme I support, a recent survey highlighted that a third of the mentor training requests were for approaches to bolster confidence as a mentor.
Handling coach/mentor education
In practice, most organisations keep coach and mentor education separate, for fear of confusing participants, despite using similar content. It also avoids senior leaders who volunteer to mentor undertaking an onerous amount of preparation, which could put them off.
However, increasingly I find clients want to use ‘shared’ toolkits, the same intranet content or invite both coaches and mentors to up-skilling workshops. Perhaps this may elevate the perception of mentors as we see more cross-fertilisation of learning between coaches and mentors, less distinction in training content and organisations becoming wiser about developing both roles.
- Next issue: How to develop a mentor’s confidence levels
- Lis Merrick is a consultant specialising in mentoring programme design and development. She welcomes correspondence on anything to do with mentoring.
- Contact: Lismerrick@coachmentoring.co.uk