Coaching vs. Mentoring: What Do Organizations and People Need?

The general idea of turning people towards themselves, their talents, potential, and needs for expression is increasingly being applied in the people development programs that organizations create and implement.

Coaching and mentoring are two of the most commonly used tools in workplace interactions. We invited Ekaterina Tonova, Business Development, and Sales Manager in our Talent Development team, together with Teodora Kamenova, a professional communication coach with the highest accreditation - ISC, a mentor of coaches and a business trainer, to talk about the similarities and differences between the two approaches, as well as the benefits of collaboration between them.

What is coaching and what is mentoring?

Ekaterina: As defined by the ICF (International Coaching Federation), coaching is a partnership in a thoughtful and creative process that inspires people to maximize their personal and professional potential. The goal of coaching is to achieve optimal performance by focusing on specific skills and goals without the coach providing direction, opinion, or advice.

Mentoring is a relationship between two people for the purpose of professional and personal development.

Mentoring develops the individual in their specific role, e.g. work environment, and thus directly influences their professional performance in the long term. It helps the mentee to achieve clearly defined goals and provides guidance, advice, experience, opinion, and feedback from a position of experience in the specific field.

Both coaching and mentoring improve and develop people professionally, in practice they happen to collaborate.

To develop their teams, managers, and leaders must remember that they need to be both: coaches and mentors.

Theodora: In addition, coaching is not a panacea for every case. It's important to approach training people first, then go through mentoring, and then build up with coaching for sustainable results. It's important to use the full palette of options and methods to support our teams. For me, the most important thing is to treat each person the way he or she wants to be treated. Not assuming, but asking and not approaching every situation with the same style as everyone. This also develops us as managers, leaders, and people.

What are the differences between the two approaches and how to balance them?

Ekaterina: The focus of coaching is on supporting you to gain (self)knowledge and find your own solution in a zone free from advice while mentoring sets clear instructions and directions.

The context in coaching depends on what the desired outcome is, what requirements and criteria the coachee (called client) has set, and what personal or professional transformation he wants to achieve, while in mentoring we always talk about development - personal or professional.

The clear intention of the coaching approach is to find the appropriate solutions for the specific professional development in the specific role, and mentoring provides (off the shelf) these solutions and directly shares the experience.

How can a person become a good mentor - does it depend on their role in the organization (in the context of the work environment), what skills they need to have, and what training they need to undergo?

Theodora: In order to be a good mentor in the organization, you either need to have been in the role that the newcomer has taken or you need to have years of experience in the organization's activities and be able to describe it to the new colleague. Support him/her in orientation with questions, sharing experiences, guidance, and advice. In addition, it is helpful to have developed effective communication skills - to be able to listen, give constructive feedback, know the power of closed and open questions and who is appropriate to ask when, have command of your tone of voice and communicate non-verbally, i.e., have command of body language. All of these skills are also taught in specific coaching skills courses. In addition to these, the coaching courses also study at a basic level how the brain is set up and how new neural connections are made, what motivates people, etc.

What do we need to consider when implementing coaching and mentoring in the organization?

Ekaterina: There are several key factors that we cannot do without:

• Business strategy - that is, the needs of the business and how mentoring and coaching programs help deliver business value.
• Analyzing and systemizing the process - so we need to be able to understand what the barriers to implementation might be, and secure senior management support.
• Start the process with clear objectives and fair, transparent criteria.
• Develop the process - make sure program participants have appropriate knowledge, skills, and expertise, introduce them to the programs, and expectations, support them in the months ahead, provide opportunities for development, and create conditions for sharing and feedback.
• Recognition for development and progress - employees who show good coaching and mentoring skills, and a willingness to support these programs and want to be part of them, should be recognized and rewarded.

It is important for the company that coaching and mentoring programs occur in an environment of trust, mutual respect, and clearly defined ethical rules and norms (e.g., Project Charter), and (if possible) that a dedicated person be designated to lead the mentoring and coaching programs in the organization.

Teodora Kamenova has over 2500 hours of experience with individual clients and teams in small and large Bulgarian and international companies, many of which are on the list of the most successful Fortune 500 companies. 

He is currently the chairman of the local representation of the federation in Bulgaria - ICF Bulgaria - the association of professional coaches who are our official partners in various projects and initiatives. We had the pleasure to be their hosts and our team experienced the effect and power of the coaching approach firsthand, for which we thank them.