Coaching Handbook: An Action Kit for Trainers and Managers

Many organizations couple coaching and mentoring together as part of the same scheme or process. Again, we would agree that there is an element of overlapping; but for the purpose of this book, we have excluded mentoring. We define mentoring as:

General guidance or advice regarding life or career.

Mentoring, which covers a range of issues, is much more general than coaching, which looks at a specific skill or area. It usually helps people progress within a specific field or organization and helps individuals look at how they use their networking, profile and organizational politics.

More often than not a mentor is someone who is senior to their mentee, either within the organization or within their specialist field. In seeking a mentor, individuals will look for a role model who they can relate to on a personal level as well as someone who is well-respected within their area. This differs from coaching in a number of ways:

• The coach does not have to be senior to their coachee .

• The relationship is not so personal “ the coachee does not need to like his or her coach, but a mentee generally needs to like his or her mentor.

• Coaching is about one specific subject, where mentoring is about general issues of career and life development.