Distinguishing between coaching and mentoring is especially messy for managerial coaches, because the practicalities of your work mean that you may wind up doing both in the same conversation. And in practice, those who haven't had specialized training in coaching tend to use these terms interchangeably without any clear delineation between them.
Coming up on May 6, I'll be hosting a facilitated discussion about the messy distinctions between mentoring and coaching, and some of the other ways you support your team members. (Here's the link to register!)
So today, I'm going to map out some distinctions that'll help us jump into that conversation next week!
Coaching is a strengths-based technique that uses structured and intentional inquiry to help someone work through some challenge. In this technique, the coach does very little talking – generally less than 20% of the conversation. The assumption is that the person being coached is fully capable of working through the challenge, and just needs someone to help them break out of the thought patterns that have been keeping them stuck in a single rut or detangle a mess of swirling thoughts or work through some decision paralysis or whatever.
As much as possible, the coach acts as a partner. In reality, this is tricky in a managerial relationship, and some team members will be more open to this than others. It's important to pay attention to the power dynamics in each relationship with your team members. Coaching is for those times when you can let your team member be the one to make the decision about how to proceed. That can be something as small as how to structure regular check-ins on a performance improvement plan, or something as big as deciding on a research agenda.
When I talk about using a coaching approach, this acknowledges that there are a lot of times when you may not have the time to have a full coaching conversation. But you can still bring your coaching mindset to approach a conversation with curiosity and with the assumption that your employee is a competent professional. In your interactions with someone lower than you in the organizational hierarchy, there's a good chance that you have access to information that they don't have. So you may need to share more information about your boss's priorities, so that your employee can make decisions that are aligned with those priorities. That's more directive than “pure coaching” as defined by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), but it's more effective for helping them succeed in your organization.
I focus on helping you learn these techniques because this approach is incredibly beneficial for your team when you learn to use it well. Just embracing a coaching mindset can be enough to give some managers the confidence to trust their team members instead of tipping over toward micromanagement on higher stakes projects. Actually coaching your team members helps them develop in their roles and has been shown to improve morale, goal attainment, and willingness to take initiative. Finding opportunities to coach peers and coach up the hierarchy can help you stand out as someone with strong “leadership potential”. When you demonstrate that you can help people reach their goals without telling anyone what to do, that stands out.
But coaching is only one type of support that employees need in their professional development.
Mentoring is defined by a more experienced professional sharing their knowledge with a less experienced colleague. That makes it more hierarchical in nature, even though a good mentoring relationship doesn't feel like what I think of as any sort of rigid hierarchy. In this relationship, the mentor generally does most of the talking, and the mentee is the one asking questions. The mentor may ask some questions to get a clearer understanding of the context, but then they share their experiences and often give advice.
Yet another reason this distinction gets messy in practice is because some mentors have started using more of a coaching approach to these conversations. And there are a lot of untrained “coaches” out there dispensing more advice than listening to clients.
So if you've had a personal experience with a mentor who acted more like a coach or a coach who acted more like a mentor, that's not surprising! These are the distinctions you'll find in the literature on leadership and in the materials from professional organizations of coaches, but real life is messier.
Mentoring is incredibly valuable for helping professionals acquire knowledge about how to succeed in a new role – whether they're a brand new librarian or new to leading a team or new to chairing a committee or whatever. This relationship provides guidance and “lessons learned,” so that the mentee doesn't need to repeat those mistakes.
While a mentor should assume that their mentee is a competent professional, the inherent assumption in this relationship is that the mentee has knowledge and experience gaps that the mentor needs to fill. And that's a key distinction between mentoring and coaching – a coach assumes that the coachee has the resources they need to succeed. In that case, “resources” could mean the knowledge and experience, or it could mean the ability to seek out a mentor or training to fill any gaps.
How they complement one another
A trusted mentor can make a huge difference in a person's career. Mentorship is an incredibly valuable part of any professional network.
But.
Sometimes a well-meaning mentor can give advice that just doesn't feel right for you.
Sometimes you get three different, conflicting bits of advice from three different mentors.
I asked one of my past clients why they hired me as their coach instead of signing up for a free mentoring program. They said that they often felt like mentors were just focused on making the field better, and molding them to fit into that vision. They didn't always feel free to be honest about their feelings in those relationships. So they were left with other people's visions of how they should proceed – whether that's how they complete a project, how they lead their team, how they shape their research agenda, or anything else a mentor might offer advice about.
Coaching provides space to process and integrate all of the advice from those mentors, to focus on what is actually going to work best for the person being coached.
Trying to provide both at different times to your team members can be a tricky balance that highlights how messy managerial coaching can be.
When coaching your team member, you may reach a point where it makes sense to switch gears to provide some mentoring to fill that knowledge gap right then.
One way to use more of a coaching approach to mentoring is to be very explicit that you're sharing experience but not giving advice, and that the choice about how to move forward is still up to them.
“Would you be interested in hearing how I handled something similar in the past?”
Assuming they say yes, tell your story as your story, not as a solution to their challenge. And then, instead of “you should...”, ask something like:
“What parts of that feel relevant to your situation?”
And then talk through how that can help them move forward.
How is this landing for you?
I'd love to know how this is resonating for you and what questions it raises.
If you're available on May 6, I hope you'll join the live Zoom conversation to talk about how this plays out in your library, and how you can find more opportunities to lean into coaching!