Coaching to win

Increasingly major hotels and hotel companies & other corporations in both the public and private sectors, as well as in the not-for profit sector, are integrating coaching and mentoring

into their development programmes for senior and other executives.

These programmes will also typically include work based development, formal training and self learning.  The terms‘coach’ and ‘mentor’ have tended to merge as if into one but, in fact, there are critical differences between being a coach and being a mentor.

If we think about the great sports coaches acclaimed by fans and media - and indeed by the

boards of the companies that run football, cricket, basketball, ice hockey - it becomes clear

that a coach is focused on improving performance.  The coach has a single goal.  The

relationship between coach and executive is tied up in the organisations structure and the

coach exercises influence because of the position he has been given.  As the recipient of

coaching, the executive hopes to benefit from improved personal performance as an

individual and as a member of the various teams in which the executive plays.  The arena in

which the coach and the executive interact is limited to the task in hand – the task that is to be

improved.

Compare this to the role of a mentor. The mentor is charged with facilitating an individual as

they self-select how to learn for any or all of life’s challenges. Generally, the mentee selects

the mentor; the relationship is not forced upon the mentee by the shape of the organisation.

The mentee reacts to the mentor’s words and actions not because of any organisational

power play but because the mentee perceives the mentor’s advice to have value.

A mentor is biased in favour of the mentee – a coach is impartial, focused on improvement in

behaviour. The coach develops specific skills for the task, challenge and performance

expectations at work.

A mentor is a power-free two-way mutually beneficial relationship.  Mentors are teachers and

facilitators, allowing the protégé to discover their own direction.  They let their mentees find

their own solutions.  A coach has a set agenda to reinforce or change skills and behaviours.

Even in formal mentoring programmes, the protégé and the mentor have choices – to

continue, to stop, to change focus. If I’m your mentor you probably chose me. Coaching is

much more likely to be imposed as part of an agreed organisational programme Indeed your

coach probably hired you.

A coach is strategically assessing and monitoring progress and giving advice for effectiveness

and efficiency. A mentor is much more like a sounding board.

So coaching and mentoring are not the same thing.  If I am your coach, then you probably

work for me and my concern is your performance and your ability to change and I want to

enrol you in the vision and direction of the hotel or hotel company that we are both part of.

In realising my organisational requirement as a coach, I may need to add competence, inject

elements provided by external resources, change my own behaviour, to better achieve the

coaching responsibilities that my position places on me.