Both coaches and mentors offer coaching, but their approaches to doing so vary. In that regard, a mentoring connection with a mentee and a coaching relationship with a coach differ slightly from one another.
Mentor vs. coach
With the help of a coach, you can improve your self-confidence and learn new skills or develop old ones. On the other hand, a mentor functions more as an adviser than a coach. On whether to pursue a professional job, they will provide advice. Nonetheless, they won’t actively help you make that choice.
Trainer or mentor
A coach might act in the capacity of a mentor. This means that their role may change depending on how the person they are coaching is doing at any one time.
Let’s explore mentoring and coaching in more detail in this piece, so if that sounds interesting, let’s get going.
What Happens During a Coaching Session?
A coaching session is a meeting between a client and a coach when the main goal is personal growth. The coach looks at the client’s current position and offers advice on what has to be changed to achieve particular goals utilising coaching techniques. Coaches can’t tell you exactly what to do, but they can offer advice on attain your objectives.
A coaching session comprises of goals and tasks that the coach gives the coachee to perform in order to reach those particular objectives. It’s not just about asking for someone else’s opinion while seated. It involves doing as they advise in order for the coachee to start noticing improvements in both personal and professional performance.
What Happens During a Mentoring Session?
However, mentoring differs from in-person coaching sessions in that it may offer guidance or advice rather than direct instruction. Coaching, which makes use of coaching techniques, is focused with personal growth whereas mentoring focuses more on general aspects of life than specific duties.
Mentors are those who have previously achieved success in life. They can assist others in developing their goal-setting abilities and can offer comments or suggestions as needed, but they won’t provide direct coaching. They typically have more life experience than the mentees and are aware of the opportunities and problems that come with professional advancement and working with others in business.
Why Do Some Individuals Get Coaching and Mentoring Mixed Up?
Because they share the same goals and because some coaches can also act as mentors, coaching and mentoring are commonly mistaken terms.
There is a lot of misunderstanding around mentoring and coaching. This could be due to the fact that you’re working with clients who are engaged in multiple conversations at once or in new-hire training programmes where they’re starting from scratch; in any case, you must make it clear what each responsibility between mentoring and coaching includes so that current or potential coaching clients or the mentee understands each role.
Although there are certain differences between coaching and mentoring, depending on the kind of support needed, these distinctions may help establish expectations. It’s all too simple to mix up mentoring and coaching. Both aspire to assist clients in using what they’ve learned to overcome obstacles or succeed in many facets of their lives.
Coaches concentrate on helping their coaching customers achieve certain objectives. However, because mentoring lacks the same requirement for a clear desired outcome that coaching does, it may be more flexible.Conclusion
How do mentoring and coaching differ from one another? What are the prevailing misunderstandings regarding each of them?
Whatever questions you may have, please feel free to ask. Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help you, thanks.
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Jack HM Wong, Entrepreneur, Workshop Leader, and Business Consultant
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