Mentoring vs coaching vs teaching … what's the difference?
Reminding people they can solve their own problems, with a little guidance.
If you’ve been asked to mentor someone at work you might be wondering what the job entails.
The rule of any mentoring relationship is that the mentee drives the agenda.
Knowing this, you can know what to expect when approaching someone you admire; and equally, how to manage the relationship if someone asks for your support.
The time poor leader tells me they’ve been asked to mentor someone in their workplace.
“I want to say yes”, they say. “But I was wondering: what’s involved, exactly?”
Here’s what I told them.
Mentoring vs coaching vs teaching … what's the difference?
A mentor has experience that someone else values.
A mentor shares their lived experience in response to questions. If someone wants you to be a mentor, it's because they want to emulate something you’ve done before.
A coach helps someone figure out what they want to do next. They don’t give ‘advice’ like a mentor would. Instead, they help you figure out what you want to do.
A teacher shows someone how to do something.
What mentoring, coaching and teaching all have in common is reminding people they can solve their own problems, with a little guidance.
You might instinctively already do one of these. If so, you’re already onto something great.
Why is it so useful?
In a study of 87,000 leaders, it was discovered that three elements of trust influenced people's experiences at work.
These were the ability to:
Create and reinforce positive relationships (resolve conflict).
Use good judgement and demonstrate expertise.
Be consistent: walk the talk, honour your commitments and follow through.
When you lean into a mentoring, coaching or teaching relationship, you are using a bit of all three. Conversely, the person receiving your expertise is learning how to do all of the above, from you.
Really, it’s a way to add additional skills into your kete (bag) and grow your influence.
Truth be told, it doesn’t matter what term you use.
But definitions are useful because they set the expectation.
When both people in a dynamic know what is expected of them, they can be more successful.
Which dynamic is best?
A mentor dynamic works best when people have senior level skills or a level of familiarity with the gig. This is because they can take your insights and apply it quickly.
A coaching dynamic works best when someone is at the intermediate level or newer to certain elements of the job. This is because they have some awareness of the job to be done and reminding them of their agency and ability to solve problems helps them solve bigger ones the more they grow.
A teaching dynamic is best for junior team members or people who have never had experiences requiring certain elements. This is because they need to know the nuts and bolts before you can coach them to figure out things for themselves.
The mentoring time investment.
If you are short on time, mentoring is less of a time investment (than coaching or teaching), as the agenda is driven by the mentee.
In a mentor relationship, your only requirement is to recall your personal experiences as you go. There is no project management involved in that you simply respond to questions, unless discussed prior.
This works particularly well for people who have a strong drive and are keen to do the work involved following a conversation.
For me personally, I choose to use a little of all of the above in my team.
I mentor those who have significant experience, I coach others who have a newer understanding of the business and I teach those who need a guide to get them started.
I don’t formally mentor people outside of my business. This is because teaching, mentoring and coaching my team takes my complete capacity. Instead, I choose to invest time and energy to make sure my team is the best in the biz. These tools help me do that.
The leader who reached out to learn more about the mentoring commitment did so because they were already close to capacity. They wanted to know if they could do it, and if they could, if they had capacity to do it well.
A conversation, like most things in life, helps you figure out whether you can both commit to that. After stepping through the three options, they realised being a mentor was something they wanted to do, and they had capacity, as long as someone else project managed it.
Which is why mentoring was a good fit for this leader.
How does a mentorship relationship work, exactly?
In a mentoring relationship, it’s incumbent on the mentee to drive the agenda.
Before you agree to mentor someone, ask them to clarify what specifically they want to learn about. And make sure to outline that you understand they will drive the agenda so everyone is set up for success.
If they aren’t sure yet what they are looking for, that is helpful data in itself. You might direct them to find a coach. A coach is a person who helps them make a game plan for their career. From there, they can figure out what mentor will be useful for their future prospects.
Mentoring examples could include:
A leader has experience combining two departments as a result of a merger. They have specific advice for someone doing it for the first time. A mentee is about to manage a merger in their team and is craving some real world insights and advice.
A leader has experience creating a startup within an established brand. They have specific lived experience that could help someone starting their own business as a result of an investment from a bigger brand. A mentee is about to take on a new investment in their startup and is craving talking to someone who’s done it before, without risking their investors knowing they are freaking out.
An employee has experience managing the expectations of the CEO. As a result, they have tricks and tips to share with someone who is looking to become a credible confidant to their CEO. A new player in the company wants to build a respectful relationship with the CEO so is craving tips from those in the know about what they’d recommend to build authentic trust.
There are the informal ‘phone a friend’ mentors too, of course.
I have many on speed dial. For example, when the ATO said I owed them $90,000 I called someone to remind me this was a good thing, because they had business experience I didn’t. When a client asked me something particular and I didn’t know how to interpret it, I called a mentor who has worked with many peculiar people. When I am stuck in a presentation, I call a facilitator I respect.
I learn from their lived experience. And that has value.
I’ve never asked them formally to be my mentor, but because I have access to them and they have experiences in things I don’t, I give them a call when I need their advice. Not a coach, not a teacher: someone who has actually lived it.
Having the conversation.
A lovely thing I have learned from having a team is that how you see something, and how they see something, won’t always be the same.
Research has discovered, in teams that are dispersed, those that are more successful, are so, because they have explicit expectations. By making your implicit assumptions explicit, you are more easily able to edit any moments of misalignment from the get to.
Any partnership benefits from understanding:
Who will project manage this. Who will set up the meetings? (The mentee, the coach, the teacher).
What will we talk about? (The mentee drives the agenda and prepares questions in advance. If they’re happy to chat on the spot, confidence they have a question they need answered).
What do you want to be able to know/do/achieve as a result of our time together? This helps the mentee understand, and make tangible, what they want to achieve as a result.
When do we finish? Being specific about whether it’s a monthly casual coffee or a formal bimonthly meeting helps people know when the utility of the relationship is over. If mentor and mentees become friends - call it friendship and lessen the pressure for the mentee to do the work.
How do we get out of it? Being explicit about how both parties let each other know if it’s no longer useful or they simply don’t have capacity gives each other permission to be open and direct.
It sounds like a lot of work but really, you’re doing your due diligence before you agree to assign your energy and intellect to a project. Because you do work of quality, you want it to be quality right? This helps you ascertain whether you have capacity to do it.
Pro tip: send them the checklist above in your email response. See what they come back with.
The benefits of mentoring.
One of the most impactful ways you can embed a new skill is to teach it to someone else. Because the foundation of mentoring is to distil an experience, it can help us reflect on our own experiences. And when we do that, we minimise the forgetting curve.
As we age, it can be useful to reflect on how far we’ve come. The experiences we’ve gone through. The lessons learned. Sometimes that just feels nice, being appreciated, for the effort you’ve made in your career, and having someone acknowledge that it is valuable.
Of course, you don’t have to say yes if it doesn’t interest you.
Just because someone asks, doesn’t mean it’s right for you or remotely interests you.
But if it genuinely interests you, and you have a sincere interest in the person succeeding, consider whether it could be a low time investment and a way to practise your leadership skills.
You might do it for members of your team if they are senior enough. You might do it for a friend going through a unique experience you have worked through. You might do it for someone half your age who has to pull off something that is only possible with your perspective helping them along.
Really, if ever there is a chance to keep active and practice leadership skills like empathy, listening, feedback and thoughtful enquiry, on people who aren’t direct reports, without getting a survey on their experience or reading about it on Glassdoor: this would be it.