Coach or mentor? What do you need?

When Cristiano Ronaldo announced he was returning to Manchester United, he cited the influence of his former coach Sir Alex Ferguson as key to his decision – calling him his mentor. As a professional coach I flinched at his conflation of two different roles. Yet it reflects many people’s uncertainty about coaching and mentoring and therefore what help they actually need.

Of course, in sport the roles of coaches are rather different to executive coaches. In sport coaching tends to be more about training, than would ever be the case in the executive world.

Helping you learn

So, what is an executive coach? John Whitmore* offers a practical definition:

Coaching is unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance. It is helping them to learn rather than teaching them.

In practice this means creating a space in which an executive can reflect on and recognise their true priorities, capabilities and performance. As a process it’s about enabling someone to learn, it’s not about teaching, let alone training.

So, the emphasis is on the coachee setting the goals for working with their coach. The executive coach’s role is to then provide the right environment and framework within which the coachee explores and hopefully resolves their issue.

Mentoring - imparting knowhow

By comparison, mentoring in business is about imparting knowledge and experience, where the mentor counsels the mentee to help them resolve problems. The mentor is the senior party, but the best mentoring should not be directing, rather it should be a two-way learning process. Many CEOs have a mentor who is often a senior colleague or friend who helps them voluntarily.

Indeed, I mentor young professionals and start-ups, on a pro-bono basis. It’s an ad hoc process, and its often about them sharing their idea or problem and me offering insight from my own experience or helping them connect with someone who can provide specialist help.

Its different to my coaching C-suite executives. There, they set - or their HR lead sets – specific performance issues and describe where what they want to achieve from our sessions. My role then is to listen and to give them the opportunity to explore the issues, often through asking the right questions to ask. The sessions are about them, not me.

These examples highlight another difference. Coaching tends to be more formal, often in regular focused sessions, for a limited period. Mentoring is less formal and often is an ongoing relationship, sometimes over years.

What do you need?

So, how can you work out what you need? Start by asking yourself if you want someone to enable you to work through the problem, or someone to tell you what they have done in similar circumstances. If it’s the former, you need a coach, if it’s the later, you need a mentor.

Mentoring in that sense seems easier – drawing on someone else’s long experience to tell you what to do. However, if you want to have a deeper understanding of how to address these issues now and in the future, coaching will provide the better overall outcome.

For example, several years ago I was approached by a senior technician from a respected academic institution She said she wanted coaching. Yet it become clear that she really needed was specific advice about dealing with a colleague. In that instance I paused our session, said I was happy to tell her what she might do, but it would not be coaching. She eagerly sought that advice. Later we were able to resume coaching, but with her clear about the difference.

Clients’ needs come first

This highlights one further thing to bear in mind. The client’s needs should come first and a good executive coach should be prepared to step back, if a different approach is needed. Indeed, many people need both coaching and mentoring at different points and so qualified coaches like myself should be able to recognise this, be open with their coachees and adapt or step back accordingly.

In that sense, Ronaldo’s view of Ferguson as both coach and mentor is not so far from the reality for many successful executives.

I have coached or mentored several senior business leaders on this issue and would be pleased to see if I can help you. Go to ‘How I coach’ for more about my approach and my contact details.

*Sir John Whitmore, author Coaching for performance (and former racing driver)