Coaching or Mentoring – What’s the difference 🤷‍♂️ ?

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I’ve been working through the ILM Level 7 Executive Coaching Qualification.

One of the tasks involved in gaining the qualification is to complete a written project answering a series of questions using personal experiences and knowledge of coaching at an executive level.

The first question is: Critically compare the strategic purposes of coaching and mentoring at an executive or senior level.

A lot of people make the same mistake by thinking that coaching and mentoring are the same thing. They are not. It’s common for people to confuse executive coaching styles and techniques with those of sports and/or fitness coaching. A sports coach will give instruction to a performer; a tennis coach will often tell a player to do a certain movement or how to react to a specific situation.

Executive coaching is about building relationships, communication and discovery rather than being taught or told. Sir John Whitmore describes coaching in his book Coaching for Performance as “Unlocking people’s potential to maximise their own performance”. And believes that coaching is less about instruction and more about guided discovery.

Mentoring on the other hand is when someone advises, guides and/or teaches someone. This is done through the mentor passing on advice through their own experiences and knowledge to a protege or the ‘mentee’.

It’s easy to think that in order to be a successful executive coach, the person coaching should have the relevant experience and knowledge of the job and tasks involved. This is actually not necessarily true; if an executive coach has knowledge and experience in the area that they are coaching in, then there is the danger of the coach imparting their knowledge and telling the person/people they are coaching what to do. This could potentially block the discovery process and move into the teacher/trainer/mentor role. Whitmore backs this theory up; “..mentoring is very different to coaching, because coaching is not dependent on a more experienced person passing down their knowledge – in fact, this undermines the building of self-belief which creates sustained performance..”

Coaching is more about facilitating the process for the individual or the group. The famous former American Football coach who became known as The Trillion Dollar Coach and worked with Apple and Google Execs would often say “Coach the team, not the problem”. Even if he had the answers for what he thought was the best way to solve the problem, he would rather use coaching techniques with his team of execs to guide them to the solution.

This doesn’t mean there is no requirement for mentoring. Far from it. If there is someone in any organisation with a wealth of experience and knowledge, then they should be used in a way to pass it on to people who might be in need of it. A mentor is hugely valuable in leadership roles. This is vital in the learning and development process for any organisation. It can’t be expected that a less experienced executive is left alone to gain experience and understanding with no guidance from someone who can help by imparting their own knowledge.

So is there a place for coaching and mentoring in the workplace?

Carol Wilson explains it perfectly in her book Performance Coaching; “An effective leader is able to move smoothly between directive and non-directive management, serving his or her subordinates sometimes as a coach and sometimes as a mentor, and where necessary giving orders.”

A leader needs to be able to switch between coach and mentor continuously. Understanding when a learning moment requires the non-directive guidance to allow the individual or team the space to discover the answers on their own. And when their own knowledge and experience will be valuable to pass down. A good leader develops people to their best potential and doesn’t hold people back. Once a mentor has passed on all of their wisdom, they can become an anchor and end up holding individuals and teams back. When a leader uses a mixture of coaching and mentoring, they give the individuals and groups the chance to gain even more knowledge which grows the individual or groups potential.

“Good coaching and leading, and good mentoring for that matter, can and should take the coachee beyond the limitations of the coach, leader, or mentor’s own knowledge.” – Sir John Whitmore Coaching for Performance

The main differences are that coaching is all about non-directive communication and guided discovery. Getting the ‘coachee’ to solve their own problems through creating self-belief and not depending on being given the answers. It can be personal and doesn’t necessarily require an expert in the subject area to be a coach. In fact, the opposite could be better.

Mentoring is someone with more knowledge and experience passing on their wisdom and directing the ‘mentee’ on what they think they should do to improve their performance. This is very helpful for learning development and can be tailored for the individual by using a mentor with the specific expertise. However, this can cause a dependency from the individual to the mentor. And once the mentor has passed on all of their knowledge and wisdom, this could hold the mentee back.

Learning to use non-directive coaching techniques can help individuals, teams and organisations grow. The more coaching skills that a leader can gain and use, the better chance they have of creating a successful environment where everyone can maximise their performance.

 

 

Seek first to understand, then to be understood – How to build effective interpersonal communication to build influence

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In his book – The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Stephen Covey dedicates a chapter to Habit No.5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. 

We are all guilty of being too keen to help someone with a problem they have. We jump in and explain what we think they should do or what we think they need to hear. And it will often come from a good place; “You should try doing this…” or “what you need is…”. But really, all we’re doing in these circumstances is passing on our thoughts based on what we think.

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…

How can we really tell someone what we think they need, or need to do without fully understanding their needs? Stephen Covey uses an example of using someone else’s glasses to fix their eyesight. Just because the glasses might benefit the person who is wearing them, doesn’t mean they’ll be any good to anyone else who has eyesight issues.

We can’t fully ‘fix’ someone’s issues, if we don’t fully understand what the problem is. And what works for us, won’t always work for someone else.

I see this a lot in the mental health awareness and ambassador/first aider training that I deliver. Our instinct is to tell a person suffering from poor mental health what we think they should do to get ‘better’. We forget to seek to understand and jump straight to wanting them to understand what we think the problem is and what they should do.

More often than not, the majority of us don’t actually want to hear someone giving us their solutions to our problems, we just want them to listen and understand.

And there lies the problem… Listening.

When did we learn to listen?

Covey describes the 4 basic types of communication:

Reading

Writing 

Speaking 

Listening

But what ones do we use the most every day?

For the vast majority of us, speaking is the main form of communication that we use. Writing and reading would come next and listening often comes last. From our earliest years, we are first taught how to speak, then read and write. But can anyone actually remember being taught to listen?

Julian Treasure’s TEDTalk – How to speak so that people want to listen – is one of the most popular TEDTalks of all time. It sits in the top 10 talks comfortably and has well over 50 million views on YouTube. However, in his interview on the Diary of a CEO Podcast, Julian explains that he has done 5 TEDTalks, and the talk he did on listening has just a 5th of the viewers as his talk on speaking.

“We’re much keener to be heard than we are to listen to others” – Julian Treasure 

Why do we want to be heard so much, but struggle to hear others?

Everyone likes to feel heard. We want to be validated and feel valued. We want to give our value to others and help them when they need it. But we often fall into the trap of doing it on our terms instead of the other person’s. We forget to seek the understanding. Asking questions instead of imparting our knowledge. Truly finding out exactly what the issues, problems or needs are.

We look at things through our own perspectives and hold our own judgments. But as Stephen Covey explains in his book – “The key to good judgement is understanding.” 

A mistake often made in sales is trying to sell a product rather than selling the solution. Finding out exactly what the needs are of the buyer or the market is how some of the most innovative inventions and technology has been created.

Communication is a 2 way process. When we speak, we want to be heard. Julian Treasure can explain exactly how to do that in his TEDTalk. If we really want to be heard and really want our message to have an impact on the people we are talking to, then we need to know and understand them first. Then and only then can we have the impact that we want our own words to have.

How do we listen?

Stephen Covey believes that Empathetic Listening is key to creating an understanding. Trust plays a huge role in being able to get someone to open up and confide in the listener. If anyone starts to feel judged or unsafe, they we won’t be as open as they would if they were comfortable with the listener. We can’t build an understanding if the person we communicate with doesn’t feel comfortable enough to speak to us.

Listen with the intent to understand rather than listening with the intent to reply. Sometimes, silence is golden. We might think that we’ve had a similar experience, but this is their space to share not ours. Respect their space.

Empathise, don’t sympathise. Sympathy is a form of judgmental listening. Sympathy can create dependancy, and Covey explains that people can often feed off sympathy.

It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing, it’s about understanding. We all see the world differently and can have varying perspectives. Enjoy finding out how to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Be aware!

Empathetic listening is just one way to improve communication. It’s not a technique, and it’s certainly not something that needs to be used all of the time. If someone feels like a technique is being used on them, then they won’t trust you. It takes practice but more importantly, it takes awareness.

Be aware of when to use it and when you don’t need to use it. And be especially aware of when you find yourself creeping back into bad habits of judgmental listening, telling rather than asking and/or diagnosing before prescribing.

 

Visualise – Catastrophise – Energise | Prof Damien Hughes TEDx Talk on Finding your Courage

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Professor Damien Hughes has written and spoken about high performance in business and sport. He has written books and is co-host with Jame Humphry on one of the top podcasts in the UK – The High Performance Podcast. 

In his recent TEDx Talk in Manchester – How Peak Performers Find the Path to Courage – he talks about the challenges we face when it comes to making change. This can be as individuals but also applied to organisations and teams.

There are loads of examples of people who have gone against the grain and challenged the perception of how something can be done differently. And all of them will have gone through Arthur Schopenhauer’s ‘Three Stages of a Known Truth’: 

  1. Ridicule 
  2. Violently opposed 
  3. Accepted as self-evident

In his talk, Hughes uses a real life ‘hare and the tortoise story’ from the first ever ultra marathon in Australia. When the 61 year old Cliff Young turned up to enter the 875km race in his farming overalls and boots no one believed he would genuinely attempt to start the race. When the race started and the athletes all ran past him, it was clear that Cliff had his own unique shuffle style of running.

Needless to say, from his appearance, age and running style; Cliff Young was ridiculed by everyone involved in the event. But when Cliff decided not to take a break and carry on shuffling through the night while the other athletes were resting, he gradually built up a lead on them and went on to win the first ever Australian Ultra Marathon.

This was when Cliff Young’s approach was violently opposed and questioned. ‘He must have cheated’ they all thought. It was standard practice for ultra marathon athletes to stop for a 6 hour rest. But Cliff hadn’t bothered. As it turns out, there was nothing in the rules about rest times for the runners. It had just become a standard practice that everyone conformed to.

So it was no surprise 12 months later at the same race, when the majority of the race entrants had adopted the same Cliff Young shuffle running style. It had finally become accepted as self-evident.

The moral of this story isn’t the same as the ‘Hare and the Tortoise’ tale. It isn’t about chipping away at something slowly and steadily like the tortoise did. It isn’t about being humble which was the lesson for the hare. It’s about courage and having the bravery to stand out from the crowd to challenge the perceptions of others and keep going with it, even when you’re being ridiculed and opposed.

“Dead fish go with the flow”

We all like to think we can stand out from the crowd and walk our own paths. But how easy is it to do that? How strong do you have to be when faced with the challenges of doing something a different way?

For all the people who had the courage to do something differently and challenge the perceptions of the others around them, how many people didn’t? And how many ideas have been lost to the buckling of peer pressure or the fear of what others might think?

“It’s presence doesn’t always guarantee success, but it’s absence almost makes success impossible”  – Courage

Allodoxaphobia – the fear of other people’s opinions – is the second highest phobia in the UK. It’s safe to say we all suffer from this at different points in our lives. Social anxiety and a fear of being judged can seriously damage our confidence and prevent us from standing out from the crowd.

We need that feeling of belonging and we don’t want to be rejected. This is why social conformity is often the easiest option. But do we want to just be ‘dead fish’ going with the flow? Or do we want to stand out and follow the path that we believe in, even if it goes against the grain?

To help with overcoming these fears and anxieties, Damien Hughes discusses processes that are used with professional athletes and high performers to keep them on the right track.

Visualise

Visualisation helps us all literally paint a picture in our minds. There is more and more scientific evidence that suggests visualising specific activities or scenarios can activate the same neural pathways in the brain as actually performing those activities or experiencing those scenarios.

Catastrophise

We often stay away from the ‘what if’ questions. No one likes being brought down to reality when someone starts trying to pick holes in our plans. But we need to be prepared for all eventualities. What if the plan doesn’t work out like we thought? How will we react if something does go wrong?

Creating these pre-mortems and asking ourselves what could or can go wrong, will ultimately help prepare us for hurdles we might have to face. By adding catastrophising with the visualisation, our courage can increase by up to 32%. It builds resilience for if/when something does go wrong.

Damien Hughes talks about writing a ‘Zander Letter’ which is a letter to yourself written as if it is 12 months in the future. In this letter you write about how you have achieved what you set out to achieve and how you overcame the obstacles that were in your way. This encourages you to really think in detail what could get in the way and how you will deal with it for when that happens.

Energise

Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter came up with what is now known as ‘Kanter’s Law’ when it comes to change: In the middle, everything looks like a failure.

How do we keep ourselves energised to keep going when we’re stuck in the middle and it’s too far to go back and the finish line looks a million miles away?

Having the courage to keep going is the hardest part. Reminding ourselves why we are doing what we are doing. We are full of energy at the start of a project and we love the feeling when we’ve finished. But when we find ourselves in the messy middle and things start to feel overwhelming, we need to find a way to keep the energy to keep going in the times that she lost her confidence.

Hughes ends his talk with examples of reminders that athletes use to re-centre their minds in moments of doubt. He also quotes the ‘Paradoxical Commandments’ by Kent Keith which Mother Teresa often used to keep her own levels of courage high so she could keep doing what she was doing.

Courage doesn’t always come naturally. It takes work and practice like everything else. Visualising, catastrophising and keeping ourselves energised can help us all have the courage to make the changes we need to make and get to the finish line.