In her book Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders, Lori Mazan takes a rather critical approach to mentoring. She sees it as helpful but only when matched with coaching and of lesser value than coaching: “In a sense, mentoring can encourage looking back, emulating what was previously successful. Coaching is a methodology for looking out ahead and figuring out what's going to be successful next.”
She goes on to say, “Mentoring just can't take the place of the kind of transformative development employees can get from coaching.”
Just for clarity, let’s define terms here. In mentoring, someone (usually an experienced person in the field) shares their knowledge, skills, and experience with another person to help them to progress. The person being mentored is identified by terms such as “mentee” or “protégé.”
Coaching is a partnership between coach and client. They are “thought partners.” The coach helps the client to achieve their personal best and to produce the results they want in their personal and professional lives.
If done right, I believe that mentoring can be very helpful. If a mentoring process is less than effective, it is probably due to inadequate training of mentors, imprecise expectations by proteges, and uncoordinated pairing. In Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring, Lisa Z. Fain and Lois J. Zachary offer a methodology for overcoming those problems. They also show how the mentoring relationship is helpful to both parties.
I suggest that we can design a development process for clients that moves from mentoring to coaching. The process begins with a strong mentoring relationship where the needs of both the individual and the organization are defined and moves toward a more interactive conversation that benefits both the individual and the organization. The best aspects of both mentoring and coaching provide a strong model.
The challenge for both the mentor/coach and the protégé/client in this approach is to be flexible and be involved in an ongoing dialogue about where they are in the process. In this approach, mentoring and coaching can be complementary processes contributing to both organizational and personal growth.
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