Coaching & Mentoring: How you can achieve what you want!

Great guidance comes in many forms, and both coaches and mentors can help you make progress in your personal and professional life. While both can contribute to your success, they play complementary roles in your development.

• A Coach is someone who helps create a conversation that will benefit the other person.
  • They do not need to have experience in the domain the Coachee is working in. The conversation will relate to the Coachee’s learning and development and is entirely focused on the Coachee, starting with clarifying what they are really trying to achieve, setting a feasible yet challenging and appealing goal and resulting in a committed plan to take actions or make improvements.
  • A Coach is a trusted partner that brings in methodology expertise.
  • The Coach has the faith and trust in the Coachee’s own problem-solving capability and ability to brainstorm ideas and options, to explore and discover useful resources and then eventually to take decisions and move themselves forward.
  • Coaches are partners that do not offer solutions themselves, they do not insert their views and opinions into the conversation. They listen, they ask, they guide, they challenge, they provide structure – and bring in therefore their coaching experience and methodology expertise. All this with the aim to prompt the Coachee to explore the topic by themselves from different perspectives and other people’s point of view and to take responsibility for developing the solution.

• Mentoring is all about sharing knowledge, experience and expertise
  • A great Mentor provides the support that is relevant to the development of the Mentee, and has the interpersonal skills required to effectively share these resources. However, despite 76% of people claiming mentors are important, only 37% say they currently have one.
  • Mentors range in job title, age, and seniority, but they usually have one thing in common: they are motivated to help others by sharing their experiences and connections – and worth to remember -they will help ou a lot when your problems revolve around your career or business, rather than your personal life. For example, most people seek out a Mentor to get critical advice from a more seasoned professional and o gain access to the Mentor’s network. Plus, some people work with a Mentor within their organization specifically to be able access higher-level leadership since they might have not that many opportunities to do so in their daily work.
  • Sounds like a dream, right? Yes, but Mentors have their limits. Even in a structured Mentoring Program, your connection with your Mentor is often based on their availability.
  • For senior-level Executives, spare time tends to be limited. That may mean that the more successful your Mentor is, the less available they may be, leaving Mentees waiting for a chance to catch up. A monthly lunch with your Mentor can be valuable for building your network and asking questions. But they may not be the best resource to help you build a new skill, try a new appraoch or make progress on a specific goal.