Definitions of Coaching and Mentoring
Mentorship and coaching are terms that are used interchangeably in different professional fields to show the transfer of useful skills from one individual to the other. Various researchers have given the words diverse meanings that are contextually relevant to their investigations. Clutterbuck (2014, p. 11) describes coaching as offline assistance that one individual gets from another in making transitions in, knowledge, profession, or thinking. According to him, the definition is accepted because of its developmental orientation and its empowerment approach to mentoring (Clutterbuck, 2014). Other researchers such as Connor and Pokora (2017, p. 13) distinguish between the two vocabularies in terms of their durations on a client. Nevertheless, the authors contend that both mentoring and coaching involve the transmission of knowledge or expertise which should be accomplished in a facilitative manner and not in a directive way (Connor and Pokora, 2017). As evident, the definition of either of the words depends on individual writers and their writing purposes.
Apart from the insights that Clutterbuck, Connor, and Pokora give to mentorship and coaching, it is also proper to understand other meanings from additional writers to gain a more robust conception of their ideas. McCarthy (2014, p. 2) explains mentorship and coaching as collaborative processes involving more than one party. According to her, the exercises involve an individual working with others through dialogue to help them grow their self-awareness, improve their performance, and check whether their goals align with those of their employers (McCarthy, 2014). Without a doubt, this gives a more elaborate and extensive meaning to mentorship itself and coaching as an art.
Values of Mentorship Programs to a Client
Identification of Clientās Goals and Increased Levels of Engagement
Indeed, coaching or mentoring has a lot of usefulness that it affixes on to a client whether it is an organization or an individual. Mentoring enables one to recognize personal goals or entire organizationās objectives, and endeavors towards accomplishing them (Downy, 2015). More precisely, coaching or mentorship grants a person a chance to define their professional objectives more realistically. Ideally, the coach assists the coachee to set his ambitions and work actively towards realizing them (Grant and Hartley, 2013). This is extremely crucial to an organization due to the increased possibility that such aims will be realized in the long term. Accomplishing career missions by an employee through coaching is assured since the mentoring process involves building the individual’s skills set as well as molding the professional behavior of the worker (Grant and Hartley, 2013). Undoubtedly, coaching or mentoring is an avenue through which clients can be inspired to achieve all their targets.
Secondly, mentorship or coaching increases the level of engagement within an organization setup. Mentorship engages all participants with its distinct one-on-one feedback and lots of encouragement (Rodgers, 2012). Later on, when an individual becomes engaged with his workplace, he is then, more able to contribute effectively to the team and the whole organization. Essentially, this helps to increase the retention rates of employees in the organizations and their productivity, therefore allowing for the growth of their careers within the firms (Grant and Hartley, 2013). The level of engagement between employees and their employers can also be supported by the current technological advancements such as software. These computer programs may provide the organization with ways to check on the coaching relationship and steer progress. In essence, coaching or mentorship programs facilitate communication in a workplace in a professional manner to ensure the organization achieves its key mission or goals.
Gaining of Perspective and Deep Insight to Learning by a Client
As well, mentorship adds value to a mentee as the program provides him with a platform to gain a perspective. Having a mentor itself is of benefit to a mentee because he is guaranteed a space to go and share his thoughtful issues (Kline, 1999). Notably, when a person has another individual who is not his colleague or co-worker as a mentor, there is a greater likelihood that he, as a mentee will gain a perspective without feeling intimidated. This is opposed to when a mentor or coach works in the same organization as the mentee; because at times, the mentor will be involved in the coaching not only as a guide but also as a third party. In such cases, the mentee can gain perspective only if the coach and the mentee establish a secure way to communicate (Van Nieuwerburgh, 2020). Accordingly, using a safe place to communicate is useful as it allows in-depth and greater levels of comfort with the skills a mentee has acquired. Ultimately, an individual becomes more comfortable with his skills and they can start to use them in their careers.
Mentoring also provides an individual with a deeper insight to learning of not only things that may be job-related, but also with skills he can apply elsewhere apart from the workplace. An example of such a program is corporate coaching which is used by many corporate enterprises on their employees as part of organizational culture. Through mentorship mentees can learn more about themselves, gauge how others perceive them, improve on their personalities or traits that they are not satisfied with (O’Connell, Palmer, and Williams, 2012). Therefore, coaching takes learning to other levels that are beyond memorizing and understanding. Moreover, mentees can transfer the learned skills presented by their coach and apply them in situations that may present themselves in their future lives (O’Connell, Palmer, and Williams, 2012). It is therefore easy for an individual to become a mentor too, provided one has gained the prerequisite skills that are fundamental to coaching. Finally, the skills for the individual will be solidified through constant learning and application.
Creation of Awareness and Support for Specific Skills Development
Furthermore, research that has been done shows that coaching brings value to a mentee by making him build personal awareness. A coach can give their mentees ideas to improve themselves, but more importantly, he can make them aware of areas that the clients may not be able to spot but are also in need of refinement (McCarthy, 2014). Once the client is made aware of the specific areas that warrant his attention, the mentor can help him to start improving on them (McCarthy, 2014). Specifically, taking personality tests has proved to be a great way of improving an individual’s self-awareness. Therefore mentees may take some tests with the guidance of the coach to be able to understand themselves better. Taking the tests is necessary because there are scores that are recorded and specific personality traits are assigned to some particular scores. Through developing self-awareness, an individual can then transform their unknown weaknesses into some beneficial strength (Kline, 1999). Certainly, personal awareness is a crucial confidence booster for people in skills development programs that can help them in future responsibilities.
The mentors also provide support to mentees regarding the improvement of specific skills. Having support for augmenting peopleās skills can be beneficial not only to an individual but also to the immediate environment in which he lives (Clutterbuck, 2014). In simple terms, knowing that there is a person who is specifically there to assist in goal achievement is an important aspect of mentoring or coaching process. As skill development is mostly the attention of mentoring associations, there should be an explicit emphasis on particular skills to build so that the process is efficient and directed towards achieving the objective (Rogers, 2012). Examples of particular skills that can call for support for their improvement are communication skills, delegation of duties, conflict and crises management, team building, and persuasion (Kline, 1999). Clearly, guided support by a coach makes the mentoring relationship successful in achieving its objectives and also building confidence in mentees.
Bridging of Gap between Organizational and Employee Needs
Good mentorship programs bridge the gap between individual employee needs and also the organizationās needs. Some studies have shown that employees are usually happy, engaged, and productive in their workplaces when their needs and those of their employer organizations are in agreement (Clutterbuck, 2014). Strikingly, the extrinsic rewards of good salaries may fetch the best talent in the job market but it will neither guarantee retention capacity nor success in performance by an employee. The research goes further to hypothesize that employees reach their full potential when professionals also accrue intrinsic rewards (Clutterbuck, 2014). For instance, the rewards that are associated with the feeling of doing purposeful work which is linked with personal and professional development bring the full potential in an employee. It is for this reason those good coaches are sought by organizations to link the intrinsic and extrinsic needs of employees in any organization (McCarthy, 2014). Indisputably, mentorship or coaching exercises connect the needs of employees and their employer in a tacit way.
Enhancement of Diversity and Inclusion While Reducing Learning Costs to Clients
Organizational inclusion and diversity initiatives are better empowered through mentorship or coaching programs. Greater diversity in the workplace enables innovations, inspirations, and employee contentment as well as increased revenue for the organization (Downey, 2015). A reason why diversity is encouraged in the workplace is to safeguard the underrepresented employees from the challenges of inclusion and career progression. As such, mentorship provides opportunities for skill development and networking which can mitigate these challenges as workers can get into new leadership positions or new roles in an institution (Downey, 2015). Unlike other strategies that are employed by organizations, mentoring has proven to make a greater difference. Mentorship is also important in enhancing diversity, inclusion, and equity because different mentorship models have specific objectives that can be aligned to the goals of every organization (McCarthy, 2014). Indeed coaching remains to be the best way to remove barriers, confront bias, and establish compassionate relationships in a workplace.
For both an organization and an employee, coaching or mentorship is beneficial as it reduces the costs of learning to a worker and the expenses an organization may incur for the risks associated with a lack of mentorship programs. The main advantage coaching and mentorship has over other programs in an organization, is that, once it has been established as a development opportunity, it minimizes the need for external development and costs for the organization itself (O’Connell, Palmer, and Williams, 2012). At the beginning of setting up internal mentorship programs, the company will incur costs that will eventually diminish as the programs become entrenched (Downy, 2015). Significantly, workers can do things differently and more permanently and thereby becoming useful assets to the organization. In addition, hiring an external coach has proven to be more expensive to many organizations, and therefore for this cost to be an investment, then it should be applied directly to the workplace and the workforce (Downy, 2015). Inarguably, mentorship is beneficial to an organization because it assists in building coaches and mentors who may also be used in generating revenue for the firm.
Career Network Boosts and Improved Leadership Competencies
As important as mentorship or coaching is, it is essential to remember that is important for building successful careers through networking. In consequence, a mentee may request the mentor to build or expand a network for him during the coaching program. Studies on mentorship programs have shown that a mentee can benefit from the contacts of his mentor by adding the contacts to his network (Connor and Pokora, 2017). As a matter of fact, some mentors help their mentees by introducing the key people in their network to their mentees. For instance, these could be individuals that can help the mentee to gain some employment or other sales opportunities for cases where the mentee is an insurance broker or a car dealer. Additionally, the mentorship also provides networking skills to a mentee. A skill such as empathy helps in establishing the networking ability of an individual (Grant and Hartley, 2013). As an acquired competency, a person can use it to acquire new connections. Being able to grow a network from a mentorās connections is a good way in which mentorship helps in broadening professional networks.
During mentorship sessions, there is a dynamic relationship that exists between the coach and the mentee, and in the end, this helps in improving the leadership skills for both participants. A skill such as team playing is inculcated in an individual who seeks guidance from a network of peers within his profession (Van Nieuwerburgh, 2020). Other writers on coaching and mentorship have agreed that mentoring on a regular basis has trained people to focus on their full attention to others when they are speaking to them (Connor and Pokora, 2017). The peer mentorship model has been cited as one example of a relationship that has helped many people to grow in their roles and assume leadership responsibilities. The reason behind the growth in leadership is that people meet and share advice or experiences. On that account, mentorship or coaching builds leadership in an individual through the building of listening skills and managerial skills that makes an individual a great leader.
Reference List
Clutterbuck, D. (2014) Everyone needs a mentor: fostering talent in your organization. 4th edn. London: Chartered Institute of Personal Development.
Connor, M. and Pokora, J. (2017) Coaching and Mentoring at Work: developing effective practice. 3rd edn. London: McGraw-Hill Education.
Downey, M. (2015) Modern effective coaching: the principles and art of successful business coaching. London: LID Publishing.
Grant, A. and Hartley, M. (2013) āDeveloping the leader as coach: insights, strategies and tips for embedding coaching skills in the workplaceā, Coaching: An international Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, 6(2), pp.102-115.
Kline, N. (1999) Time to think: listening to ignite the human mind. London: Hachette UK.
McCarthy, G. (2014) Coaching and mentoring for business. London: Sage.
O’Connell, B., Palmer, S. and Williams, H. (2012) Solution focused coaching in practice. East Sussex: Routledge.
Rogers, J. (2012) Coaching skills: a handbook. 3rd edn. Berkshire: McGraw-Hill Education.
Van Nieuwerburgh, C. (2020) An introduction to coaching skills: a practical guide. 3rd edn. London: Sage Publishers.