COACHING AND MENTORING

CoachingCoaching relates primarily to performance

improvement (often over the short term) in a specific skill area. The goals, or at least the intermediate or sub-goals, are typically set with or the suggestions of the coach. While the learner has a primary ownership of the goals, the coach has a primarily ownerships of the process. In most cases involves direct extrinsic feedback (i.e. the coach reports to the coachee what s/he has observed).

When to consider coaching: When a company is seeking to develop its employees in specific

competencies using performance management tools and involving the immediate manager

When a company has a number of talented employees who are not meeting expectations

When a company is introducing a new system or program

When a company has a small group of individuals (5-8) in need of increased competency in specific areas

When a leader or executive needs assistance in acquiring a new skill as an additional responsibility

MentoringMentoring relates to the primarily identification

and nurturing of potential for the whole person. It can be long-term relationships, where the goals may change but are always set by the listener. The learners own both the goals and the process. Feedback comes from within the mentee, the mentor helps them to develop insight and understanding through intrinsic observation.

When to consider mentoring: When a company is seeking to develop its leaders or talent pool as part

of succession planning

When a company seeks to develop its diverse employees to remove barriers that hinder their success

When a company seeks to more completely develop its employees in ways that are additional to the acquisition of specific skills/competencies

When a company seeks to retain its internal expertise and experience residing in its baby boomer employees for future generations

When a company wants to create a workforce that balances the professional and the personal.

Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring1. Establishing and managing the coaching or mentoring relationships

This cluster includes all the process for setting up coaching or mentoring relationships. These includes getting to know each other, establishing the grounds for relationship success, creating and maintaining rapport and clarifying mutual expectations within the relationships.

2. Setting goals

Issues here include raising horizons and visioning, assessing and choosing between options, and identifying gaps and needs to lead to a course of action. They also include identifying the goal you really want.

3. Clarifying and understanding the situation

This involves helping people to understand through metaphor, story and drama. There are techniques for mapping the context, and identifying the components of a situation. It includes developing both intellectual and emotional understanding.

4. Building self-knowledge

This one is about techniques that help the individual to at themselves. For example, techniques that helps people to identify and access personal values, to change belief sets, to bring stereotypes into the open and to understand their life and career.

5. Understanding people’s behavior

The focus turns external again, on understanding others. We look at empathy, which is much neglected or disparaged in other texts, and then we explore bridging difference between the helper and the learner, particularly within the diversity programs.

6. Dealing with roadblocks

Include identifying and recognizing the nature of the roadblock and the value of respecting the blocks. We looks also the alternatives strategies of living with them or moving them, paying particular attention to addressing emotions in these process.

7. Stimulating creative thinking

Issues here include being live and dealing with internal conflicts that reduce creativity. Big assumptions, values and beliefs are explored and a technique is presented which helps people to articulate complex problems. Modeling situation is described and the place of a belief of being lucky is outlined.

8. Deciding what to do

Coming to the point of what to do can be difficult for some people who are inclined for prevaricate. Techniques include here will help people make the decision that will unlock future commitment to action. We look at a spectrum from helping listeners to do less to encourage them to impel themselves into more actions.

9. Committing to action

The commitment following a decision is a crucial part of the work of the coaches and mentors and involves alignment of the head, heart and guts. Emotions, beliefs and assumptions play a part here as in so much of coaching and mentoring. We look at a means of calibrating commitment and thus increasing it and how a sense of danger reduces it. We end the chapter with two perspectives on the place of the personal development planning.

10. Managing the learner’s own behaviorIssues here include helping the learners to focus and attend to their issues

and the depth approaches to enable individuals to take a strong grasp of their behavior, particularly where they are embroiled in patterns or habits that are deeply ingrained.

11. Building wider network of support, influence and learningWe look at how the coach or mentors helps the learner to develop other

resources upon which they can draw. This cluster also includes processes for maximizing learning in the helping relationships. 12. Ending the coaching and mentoring relationships

The main issue here is how the coach or mentor terminates the relationships, leaving the learner for the stronger for the intervention. Explore the crucial part that review plays in maximizing learning and preparing for a good closure.

13. Some generic techniques

These are techniques that can be used across the stage implicit in the previous twelve clusters, for example, storytelling and questioning. There are uses about managing the portfolio of techniques, keeping a record of these and ensuring that techniques that are used are focused firmly on the agenda of the learner.

The chart below demonstrates some of the differences between coaching and mentoring.

COACHING MENTORING

GOALS Improve job performance

or skills Support and guide personal

career growth

INITIATIVE Coach directs learning Mentee is in charge of learning

VOLUNTEERISM Protégé agrees to accept

coaching; may not be voluntary

Both mentor and mentee are volunteers

FOCUS Immediate problems & learning opportunities

Longer term personal development

ROLE Focus on telling with appropriate feedback

Focus on listening, behavioral role model, making suggestions

and connections