Mentoring programmes v coaching initiatives
The terms mentoring and coaching are frequently used interchangeably – or, from another perspective, confused with each other. The reason is that both are evolving disciplines, with common roots and multiple approaches.
The term Mentor derives from the Odyssey, in which Athena, the goddess of wisdom, helps both King Odysseus and his young son, Telemachus on their own journeys to wisdom. Athena takes the guise of an old courtier, Mentor – hence the term mentoring. In the 20th century, mentoring took two routes, based on different interpretations of the “ment” suffix. In the US, emphasis was placed on “minding” – direct intervention and advice on behalf of a younger protégé (someone, who is protected). In Europe, the emphasis was on thinking and reflection. One definition of mentoring is “helping someone with the quality of their thinking about issues that are important to them”. Various combinations of these two models of mentoring can be found around the world.
The term coaching emerged from the world of sport and encompasses a similar range of directive and non-directive models (Garvey, 2011). Most coaching within organizations is still based on a process, in which an authority figure provides feedback on how an individual performs against a specific standard and helps them review and plan how to improve. Most modern books on coaching emphasize a different, less directive model, in which the client is helped to define and work towards their own goals, with the help of open questions. Hawkins & Smith (2006) define four key types of coaching – skills, performance, behavioural and transformational. The importance of internal motivation for change is assumed to increase across this spectrum.
The non-directive models of both coaching and mentoring help people better to understand themselves – their strengths, weaknesses, values, identity, motivations etc – in order to clarify what they want to achieve (coaching) or to become (mentoring), to plan how they will get there, and to sustain the momentum of personal change.
Within organizations, there is room for all of these models and approaches – and a lot of crossover between them. However, some differentiations are that:
- mentoring typically involves a programme, while coaching typically involves an initiative
- mentoring normally takes place within the organization, but outside the reporting line, while coaching mainly occurs either within the reporting line or using external professionals
- mentoring is typically unpaid, while externally resourced coaching is typically paid
Of course, there are exceptions to all of these!
Three topics have particular significance from an organizational perspective: mentoring programmes, the coaching portfolio (the range and scope of coaching activities) and coaching/mentoring culture.
Mentoring programmes
The early studies of mentoring (Levinson, 1978; Kram, 1985) examined informal mentoring relationships in the US. More formalized approaches began to appear in the early 1980s, as companies attempted to spread the benefits of supportive relationships between older, more experienced professionals and managers and younger recruits. Initial emphases of these programmes were on helping talented graduate recruits settle in and on talent retention. Gradually, the emphasis expanded to embrace diversity objectives and supporting people in making significant role transitions. The scope of mentoring now includes:
- community-oriented programmes – for example, to assist ex-offenders to go straight, or to support young persons at risk
- education-oriented programmes– for example, facilitating access to top universities for disabled students, addressing the relatively high drop-out rate of black students in undergraduate courses, increasing the number of female tenured professors
- gender-oriented programmes – for example, supporting women on maternity leave in returning to work
- reverse mentoring (where the mentor is hierarchically more junior the mentee) – for example, in the UK Government’s Cabinet Office, young managers from black and minority ethnic backgrounds mentor more senior bureaucrats on the diversity issues.
Inherent in all of these programmes is the transfer (or exchange) of experience, as a means of helping an individual progress in their career. (Kram, 1985, Clutterbuck, 1985) The outcomes in developmental mentoring can be measured in terms of learning, career progress, enabling factors (e.g. having a stronger career plan, more extensive networks, more positive reputation) and emotional factors (e.g. greater self-confidence). The International Standards for Mentoring Programmes at Work (www.ismpe.com) provide a general benchmark for programme quality and efficacy. Among significant success factors identified by the ISMPE are having a dedicated and trained programme manager, top management support, initial and ongoing training and support for both mentors and mentees, measurement, and engagement with target communities.
The coaching portfolio
The most common applications of coaching are:
- Line manager to direct reports (mainly performance and developmental coaching)
- Transfer of technical expertise from a specialist (skills and knowledge coaching)
- Internally resourced executive coaching (behavioural and transformational)
- Externally resourced executive coaching (behavioural and transformational)
- Life coaching
Ferrar (2006) identifies a number of impediments to coaching by line managers to direct reports, including instinctive default to parent-child behaviours, hidden agendas and the common perception that coaching is remedial, rather than developmental. It is unsurprising then, that there is little evidence of significant impact of short-term line manager as coach training. Indeed, in gathering anecdotal evidence from line managers and their teams, I have found that there is a rapid reversal to pre-course behaviours in a matter of days. The problem, it appears, is that the manager and the team form a social system. Coaching is a radical and uncomfortable change to that system – so the system works to return things to normal. Unpublished experiments with large UK organizations indicate that the solution lies at least in part in the following factors:
- Educating both the line manager and their direct reports in coaching together, at the same time, so they can be co-supportive in making and sustaining the necessary behavioural and conversational changes
- Creating an appropriate atmosphere of psychological safety
- Extending the learning process over several months, so that the new ways of thinking and behaving, and the coaching process, can be assimilated gradually into how the team functions
- Ensuring that the learning dialogue is linked to current work issues of relevance to the team as a whole
Coaching by a technical specialist is largely a matter of applying less directive dialogue to the learning process.
Internal and external executive coaching requires a greater level of specialist training, which typically draws on other disciplines, such as counseling and psychology. In the case of team coaching, the expertise draws also on team psychology, facilitation and family therapy. Although it is often assumed that an external professional will have greater expertise than an internal, there is no evidence to support this, and indeed, the evidence of coach assessment centres suggests a very wide variation in external coach competence. There does not seem to be any correlation between competence and fee levels, number of hours coaching experience, or basic coaching qualifications. However, there does appear to be a correlation between competence and the quality of supervision coaches receive, as well as the level of impact of that supervision. A major current trend is for organizations to attempt to assure quality of executive coaching by placing greater emphasis on internal resources, where they can manage the training, supervision and continuous professional assessment. Internal or external, executive coaches are typically members of one or more professional bodies (e.g. International Coach Federation globally, European Mentoring and Coaching Council in Europe).
Life coaching is often regarded as the poor sister of coaching and most serious professionals tend to avoid the label, which is often associated with fringe therapies.
Coaching and mentoring culture
The concept of a coaching culture derives in part from the “learning organization”. A coaching and mentoring culture is one where “coaching/ mentoring is the predominant style of managing and working together, and where a commitment to grow the organization is embedded in a parallel commitment to grow the people in the organization” (Clutterbuck & Megginson, 2005, p19). An alternative perspective is that a coaching/ mentoring culture is one where a learning perspective and the application of learning dialogue are the norm in all the key organizational processes, including, for example, strategic planning, customer relationship management, performance management and even discipline. As in team coaching, the skills of learning dialogue and the presence of psychological safety are key components.
Although the characteristics of a coaching and mentoring culture can be relatively succinctly described, the concept is largely aspirational, with few if any companies having consistently embedded all the structures, processes and behaviours required. Yet Wageman et al (2008) demonstrate that having a coaching mindset at the top of a large organization is closely and causally correlated with high performing top teams.
Summary
Formal, planned coaching and mentoring are relative newcomers to management. In 30 years they have evolved a great deal, to the extent that most leadership competency frameworks include coaching and mentoring as core skills. The key processes in coaching and mentoring – active listening, powerful questioning, withholding advice until both the coach/mentor and the coachee/mentee fully understand the issues and have exhausted their own insights – don’t come naturally to managers. Yet adopting a coaching/ mentoring style of management greatly improves the quality of thinking and hence of decision-making. Organizations that thrive will increasingly need to build their coaching and mentoring capability.
Bibliography
Clutterbuck, D & Megginson, D (2005) Making Coaching Work: Creating a Coaching Culture, CIPD, Wimbledon
Ferrar, Phillip (2006) The Paradox of Manager as Coach: Does being a manager inhibit effective coaching? thesis submitted to Oxford Brookes University
Garvey, R (2011) A very short, fairly interesting and reasonably cheap book about coaching ands mentoring, Sage, London
Kram, K (1985) Mentoring at Work: Developmental relationships in organizational life, Scott, Foresman, Glenview, IL
Levinson, DJ (1978) Seasons of a man’s life, Knopf, New York
Wageman, R, Nunes, DA, Buruss, JA & Hackman, JR (2007) Senior Leadership Teams, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA
© David Clutterbuck, 2015
Prof David Clutterbuck
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