Coaching and mentoring – what's the difference?

Why coaching and mentoring? You will recognise that to survive and prosper in these tough times, your organisation has to be performing at the highest level of effectiveness.

This means leadership skills, decision-making, staff relations, creativity, stress and time management, meeting control or sensitive issue handling, has to be of the very highest order.

Executive coaching and mentoring can help you in all those vital areas and more, because it's all about the future ...

... discovering your hidden potential and achieving it – fast!

Brefi Group has enjoyed enormous success doing exactly this for leading organisations around the world for over two decades.

What is coaching?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) lists some characteristics of coaching in organisations that are generally agreed on by most coaching professionals: -

• It consists of one-to-one developmental discussions.
• It provides people with feedback on both their strengths and weaknesses.
• It is aimed at specific issues/areas.
• It is a relatively short-term activity, except in executive coaching, which tends to have a longer timeframe.
• It is essentially a non-directive form of development.
• It focuses on improving performance and developing/enhancing individuals skills.
• It is used to address a wide range of issues.
• Coaching activities have both organisational and individual goals.
• It assumes that the individual is psychologically healthy and does not require a clinical intervention.
• It works on the premise that clients are self-aware, or can achieve self-awareness.
• It is time-bounded.
• It is a skilled activity
• Personal issues may be discussed but the emphasis is on performance on work.

Coaching and mentoring processes

Individual and management development can take place in many forms, some delivered by managers and some by internal or external coaches, or mentors. Robert Dilts defines the different activities as follows: -

Guiding: the process of directing an individual or a group along the path leading from present state to a desired state

Coaching: helping another person to improve awareness, to set and achieve goals in order to improve a particular behavioural performance

Teaching: helping an individual or group develop cognitive skills and capabilities

Mentoring: helping to shape an individual’s beliefs and values in a positive way; often a longer term career relationship from someone who has ‘done it before’

Counselling: helping an individual to improve performance by resolving situations from the past.

Differences between mentoring and coaching

The CIPD differentiates between coaching, mentoring and counselling. It is helpful to understand these differences as, although many of the processes are similar, they are generally delivered by individuals with different qualifications and different relationships with their client.

Mentoring	Coaching
Ongoing relationship that can last for a long period of time	Relationship generally has a set duration
Can be more informal and meetings can take place as and when the mentee needs some advice, guidance or support	Generally more structured in nature and meetings are scheduled on a regular basis
More long-term and takes a broader view of the person	Short-term (sometimes time-bounded) and focused on specific development areas/issues
Mentor is usually more experienced and qualified than the ‘mentee’. Often a senior person in the organisation who can pass on knowledge, experience and open doors to otherwise out-of-reach opportunities	Coaching is generally not performed on the basis that the coach needs to have direct experience of their client’s formal occupational role, unless the coaching is specific and skills-focused
Focus is on career and personal development	Focus is generally on development/issues at work
Agenda is set by the mentee, with the mentor providing support and guidance to prepare them for future roles	The agenda is focused on achieving specific, immediate goals
Mentoring resolves more around developing the mentee professional	Coaching revolves more around specific development areas/issues

Counselling, is a highly skilled intervention focused on helping individuals address underlying psychological problems.

Differences between counselling and coaching

Counselling	Coaching
Broader focus and greater depth	Narrower focus
Goal is to help people understand the root causes of long-standing performance problems/issues at work	The goal is to improve an individual’s performance at work
A short-term intervention, but can last for longer time periods due to the breadth of issues to be addressed	Tends for be a short-term intervention
Counselling can be used to address psycho-social as well as performance issues	Coaching does not seek to resolve any underlying psychological problems. It assumes a person does not require a psycho-social intervention
The agenda is generally agreed by the individuals and the counsellor	The agenda is typically set by the individual, but in agreement/ consultation with the organisation
Other stakeholders are rarely involved	Other stakeholders are involved

What to do next about coaching and mentoring

It's vital that you don't leave this site without identifying exactly what you need.

The reason you are here – is that you recognise there are areas of your business and your organisation that need to be improved.

We can help with that...

With our MBA level experience and training in the psychology of change, Brefi Group possesses the unique combination of maturity, professional skills and human qualities required for coaching and mentoring top decision-makers and the leaders of the future, whether they be in commercial or public organisations or running a small company.

Such key individuals have the maximum leverage for change – they provide the leadership and role models for the rest of the organisation. They are under the greatest pressure, and are more likely to suffer from stress and an out of balance work/home life.

We can also train managers as coaches and set up in-house coaching and mentoring schemes.

Spend as long as you can, visiting all the detailed pages relating to your area(s) of specific interest. It's simple to navigate, or use the search box at the top of the page.

When you are ready to move forward, the next step is easy.

Contact us, by telephone on 0845 0678 222 or +44 (0) 1223 654 072 if you are calling from outside the United Kingdom – or use our contact page.

If you are still undecided and would like to know a little bit more about us before making contact, please visit our About us page to consider our impeccable credentials and the many benefits we could offer to you and your organisation.

You will find further simple contact links available there.