Leadership Coaching vs. Mentoring: Know the Difference

Leadership: a skill many people dream to possess, yet few know how to start. Two popular methods to develop one’s leadership skills are coaching and mentoring. These terms are often used interchangeably, but they’re not the same. 

This article will describe what leadership coaching and mentoring are, the similarities and differences between them, and how both may help you on your path to becoming a better leader.

What is Leadership Coaching?

Leadership coaching is an objective-driven, structured process. A coach works one-on-one with you to bring about the goals you have set for yourself to become a better leader.

Goals may be something like communication, which can be more effective decisions time management, or anything else that supports your role.

Coaching is generally time-constrained and targeted to those current problems. It is a solution provider that responds to your queries, gives you feedback, and writes out plans you employ to work your way through these problems toward realizing your set objectives.

The following are some of the critical characteristics of leadership coaching:

• Result-oriented: Aim at delivering certain set results.
• Time Constrained: A defined period is set and typically lasts for several months.
• Systematic: It’s done in a very structured framework or plan.
• Feedback-based: It holds continuous feedback to help you improve yourself.

Example of Coaching in Leadership in Practice

Your situation is similar to a team leader who has no way of effectively time managing. A leadership coach will train with you, identify the cause, and then develop strategies that will make you effective.

For instance, it may be on the issue of priority setting, identifying how to delegate, and division of a huge project into smaller accessible ones, among others.

What is Leadership Mentoring?

Leadership mentoring is a long-term relationship between two individuals, a less experienced person called the mentee and the more experienced one called the mentor.

A mentor guides supports, and advises a mentee based on his own experiences, thereby making the mentee grow not only personally but professionally as well.

Mentoring is generally more development-oriented than coaching which focuses on specific goals. It is much less formal and the mentor, in most cases, is more of a role model who should offer wisdom and life lessons beyond professional education.

Some of the characteristics of mentoring are as follows:

• Mentoring relationships are long-term, by nature.
• Holistic: It brings on intellectual and professional development.
• Experience-based: Most mentors share experiences and insights.
• Relationship driven: The tie between the mentor and the mentee plays a great role in the ultimate success of the mentoring relationship.

Mentoring Role Played in Action

Imagine you as a young manager having an ambition to expand your career. A mentor with 20 years of experience in the industry can relate his personal experience and share similar experiences.

This could support you to overcome issues that arise daily, such as company politics, work-life balance, or perhaps how to control team culture at its best.

Gradually, such a relationship can make you more confident and see long-term planning in career strategies.

Coaching vs. Mentoring: What’s Different?

After defining what coaching and mentoring are, we should look deeper into their differences.

Focus

• Coaching: It is goal-specific, and the critical issues are short-term.
• Mentoring: The focus is general development, which is long-term in nature.

Duration

• Coaching: Mainly a short-term engagement that ranges from weeks to months or so.
• Mentoring: This is long-term in nature and can take many years or even an entire lifetime.

Structure

• Coaching: It is structured since it involves clear goals, with an outcome-based, and pretty detailed process.
• Mentoring: The approach is informal, taking an easy swing according to the needs of the mentee.

Leadership Role

• Coaching: This involves a facilitator who removes the solutions through assistance to the leader in coming up with solutions on his own.
• Mentoring: It is someone whom the mentee can look upon as a source of guidance and perhaps a model, considering the experience that they have gained.

Experience Level

Coaching does not require more experience on the coach’s part than it does on the part of whom he or she is coaching. His role is guiding rather than advising.

• Coaching: Coaches tend to have more experience and have been in similar circumstances to that of the learner.

When to Use Leadership Coaching

You’ll likely need leadership coaching if you have specific, near-term goals. Examples include:

• Learn a particular skill: If you want to become a better public speaker, a coach may be able to give you specific practice exercises as well as feedback.
• You have been called to pursue a specific challenge: If the team is working on a mammoth project and you cannot delegate, a coach will be able to help you come up with plans on how you’re going to overcome the workload.
• You have recently been promoted or inherited a new leadership role: A coach can help you adapt to the new role.

Coaching in this regard will give you the right answers which can be implemented.

When to Hire a Mentor?

Well, mentoring is more suitable for long-term growth. If you want help and guidance not only at work but also in your personal life, then having a mentor would surely be helpful.

The following scenarios indicate why you need mentoring:

• Newly hired: A mentor will introduce you to the industry and advise you on how you can excel in your job.
• Personal development: Coaches may be able to help you improve your soft skills, such as building up your emotional intelligence, and resilience, or achieving a healthy balance between work and life.
• You’d desire a role model: With a person who experienced and faced “the thing”, you’d get a real view of challenges and opportunities.

Can You Have Both a Coach and a Mentor?

Absolutely! Indeed, most successful leaders work at various stages of their careers with a combination of coaches and mentors.

As a coach can help you achieve short-term goals successfully, you will receive constant support and guidance in your working or professional life from a mentor.

Here is how both shall benefit you:

• Immediate solutions with a coach; long-term perspectives with a mentor.
• Skill development in distinct areas with a mentor, and holistic development with a coach.
• Structured feedback from a coach as well as personal advice from a mentor.

Coaching and mentoring will be the best of two worlds; you may speed up the development of leadership.

Conclusion

Coaching and mentoring help develop a good leader in different ways. Coaching is more apt to focus on just very specific short-term challenges, whereas mentoring would be more focused on longer-term development and relationships.

So, whether you choose to get a coach, a mentor, or both, the result, the outcome of it all is the same: learning and growth. This is the place wherein you ask others to guide you to fast-track your leadership journey, become more prepared to face the opportunities and challenges that you will encounter, and lead your workers and subordinates to better heights.

 A coach like Sailaja Manacha, founder of Physis, has decades of experience in transformational work as a psychotherapist and executive leadership coach. She has helped many emerging and senior leaders advance in their careers and meet their challenges.

So, what’s your next move? Do you need a coach for a particular challenge or a mentor who will guide you throughout your career? Or maybe, both? It is your choice!