What’s The Difference Between Coaching and Mentoring?

Many people confuse coaching and mentoring because of their seeming similarities, causing the terms to be used interchangeably. Understanding the difference between coaching and mentoring is essential for gaining a deeper understanding of the two practices. If you’re considering either – it will help to grasp the definitions of coaching vs mentoring.

What is Coaching?

Coaching is like being a personal trainer for someone’s career. It’s all about setting goals, teaching skills and helping people reach their full potential in specific areas. Coaches are professionals who bring structure and guidance to the table, helping others reach specific objectives. More often, a coach will have a set of specific skills in a certain discipline that they teach over and over.

A coach is more likely to do the following:

• Train in a particular field
• Set career-related goals
• Improve productivity
• Tackle a challenge

What is Mentoring?

Mentoring is a mutually beneficial relationship built on support and experience. It’s a relationship where the mentor shares their knowledge with the mentee and takes the time to understand the challenges they face and how best to overcome them. The mentor then helps the mentee navigate those challenges based on their understanding of the problems and their personal experience.

The mentor-mentee relationship can have a long-lasting positive impact on the mentee’s career and, unlike coaching, mentoring is long-term and takes a highly personalised approach. One of the key differences between coaching and mentoring is that a mentor is more likely to do the following:

• Act as a role model
• Help mentees build confidence and self-esteem
• Offer career guidance
• Help mentees learn from their experiences

6 Key Differences Between Coaching and Mentoring

Mentoring and coaching are very similar in that they help people achieve success and defeat work challenges. However, there are some key differences between mentoring vs coaching too. These include:

1. Focus

Coaching is about helping you achieve specific goals. Mentoring, on the other hand, is more about long-term development and career guidance. Coaches focus a lot more on training and upskilling to help you develop a winning mindset.

2. Structure

Coaching follows a structured process with clear steps, often towards a specific goal or challenge. Coaches assess the student, set goals, make plans and track progress. Mentoring does not have as structured a process. Mentors are like guiding stars that shine a light on the path of personal and professional growth. They are the ones who offer their valuable insights and perspectives to help the mentee steer through the ups and downs of their career.

3. Expertise

Coaches are usually trained professionals. They bring their expertise to the table and give you guidance and strategies to step up your game. Their expertise is usually in one particular area or skill and their remit rarely strays beyond it.

In contrast, mentors are experienced people who’ve “been there, done that”. They share their knowledge and experience to help you navigate your career journey.

4. Timeframe

One major difference between coaching and mentoring is the duration of the relationship. Coaching relationships are usually shorter because they’re goal-specific. Mentorship is a relationship built on personal experiences that have a broader outlook and provide insights that can last a lifetime.

5. Overall Approach

Coaching takes on a more directive approach, which makes sense given the often very short-term, goal-specific nature of coaching. It’s about asking the right questions and putting the ball in the court of the person being coached.

However, the coach knows the end result and will have his or her own ideas on the best way to get there. They are the one that provides the solution.

With mentoring, the mentor shares their knowledge and experience and guides the mentee through. Mentoring is less about pointing and pushing and more about nudging and guiding. The mentor and mentee work together to achieve the solutions.

6. Level of Formality

Another big difference between a coach and a mentor is that coaches are experts in a specific area and provide formal guidance (often following a set programme) and support to aid in goal achievement.

Mentors, however, tend to take a more relaxed and informal approach to personal development. They can afford to do this as they don’t have a rigid ‘programme’ to stick to.

Mentoring is often more fluid than coaching.

Mentoring vs Coaching: What Path Should You Follow?

The differences between coaching and mentoring mean they typically suit different types of people and skill sets. Think about your skills and whether they’d be best suited to coaching vs mentoring to find the right path for you.

Skills Required for Mentoring

There are some skills you need if you’re going to be an effective mentor.
Here are a few of them:

• You have to be genuinely interested in helping other people.
• You need to have first-hand experience, knowledge and insights in the area you want to provide mentoring in because your mentees trust you to give them solid advice and guidance. How are you going to give them that if you have zero experience?
• You need interpersonal skills to be a good mentor because mentoring is relationship based.
• You need to stay committed to your mentee. If you’re beginning a mentoring journey with someone, you have to see it through until the end.
• You must be able to empathise with and understand the mentee. Mentors should care about their mentees and be able to put themselves in their shoes. They should also be able to offer emotional support.

Skills Required for Coaching

If you’re leaning more towards coaching over mentoring, you need the following skills:

• You must know how to spot strengths in your coachees and challenge them to push themselves forward.
• You must engage in active listening to gain a deeper understanding of people’s experiences, obstacles and desired outcomes.
• You must build rapport and have a trusting relationship with the people you’re coaching.
• You must know how to help your coachees set meaningful and achievable goals.
• You must know how to deal with problems and create actionable steps. For instance, if someone wants to improve their time management skills, a good actionable step is asking them to create a daily or weekly schedule using a calendar or a planner.
• You must be able to provide constructive and non-judgmental feedback to help people identify their weaknesses and grow.

Skills Required For Both Coaching and Mentoring

Despite the many differences between coaching and mentoring, you’ve probably noticed that there’s an overlap in the skills required for both. This is because they’re very similar in more ways than not. The skills required for both include:

• Mutual trust between both individuals
• A desire to grow
• Knowledge sharing
• Skill development
• Developing self-awareness
• Discussion of goals
• Empathy
• Top-notch communication skills

Do You Want To Be a Coach or a Mentor?

It’s time to reflect on where you are at the moment; are you in a place where you think you can commit to another person to help achieve their goals? Are there skills you still need to work on? Do you find it easy to connect with people by sharing your experiences?

The first step in deciding whether coaching vs mentoring is right for you is understanding yourself and knowing your priorities. This will give you a nudge in the right direction. Let’s look at a few reasons you might want to become a mentor or a coach:

1. If you’re considering becoming either a mentor or a coach, this means you have a wealth of knowledge that you genuinely want to pass on to help others grow and succeed. There is a joy that comes with helping others.

2. Mentoring is an opportunity to build strong relationships with others. Contrary to what most people think, mentoring is a two-way street. You get to widen your perspective and build your personal network; it’s about your own growth just as much as it is about your mentee’s growth. If you’re looking to build meaningful connections, mentoring is a great choice because you’re likely to build a more personal relationship with your mentee.

3. We’ve all had those moments when a teacher or a colleague said something to us that stuck with us forever. If being there for someone, guiding them and supporting them is your idea of making a positive impact – you’re on the right track.

Mentoring relationships are some of the most valuable and rewarding connections we can have. It’s like watching a flower bloom before your very eyes – beautiful to watch. If you have the chance to be a mentor and it’s something you really want, go for it.

4. Communication and listening skills are very important skills that we need to make major progress in our professional careers. Being a mentor or a coach allows you to improve these skills because the best way to learn anything or become better at something is by practising. As coaching tends to be more focused on specific areas, mentoring might be the better option if you’re looking to have more varied conversations on different subjects.

5. One of the best things about being a mentor is how it makes you do some serious self-reflection. You get to help your mentees with their career journey all while taking a closer look at your own path. You get a greater appreciation of everything you’ve achieved, while helping a mentee follow in your footsteps.

When you remember an old achievement, a challenge you faced and overcame, it can be really powerful. As you mentor others, you may start to notice areas where you can sharpen your own skills. Maybe there’s a problem you handled, but now you see there could have been a better way. It’s these lightbulb moments that help make mentoring so valuable.

6. Being a coach or a mentor offers you flexibility. You can choose the hours you work and you have the option to work remotely. Having a background in coaching can open up many employment options.

These are some of the many reasons you might decide to pursue a career as a mentor or coach. In the end, the choice between mentoring vs coaching will depend on your individual experiences, values and goals.

How To Become a Mentor

If you’ve decided to be a mentor, we’d love to have you at Career Navig8r – a mentoring platform where experienced people like you can connect with people who are looking for guidance.

If you want a powerful, life changing and hugely rewarding career as a mentor – where your time can be flexible and there’s lots of fun to be had…

(I mean, why wouldn’t you?)

…head over to Career Navig8r and start mentoring today.
(sign up is free, easy and your privacy is guaranteed)