I first heard about mentoring. Coaching came later. I remember my first reaction to both words. Back then, for me, they were just words that stirred emotions, but were not filled with content and understanding.  And so it went on for at least a few years. This is how I remember it:

Coaching / mentoring is not for me:

• based on my knowledge and experience, I can solve any problem,
• managers in high positions „use it”, directors, board members, perhaps they need it, I do not,  
• it is perhaps for people who can’t cope with their position, don’t know how to act,
• I guess it’s a bit like visiting a psychologist, and after all, everything is fine with me,
• it’s just a fad, it will probably pass.

Today I know, I could hardly have been more wrong. And stereotypes once again proved unhelpful and were an obstacle to understanding the usefulness of both processes. Because both, coaching and mentoring are processes, very interrelated – and certainly I see them that way.

In the rest of the article, I will use the terms Coach and Coachee (for which I will use the word employee interchangeably) and Mentor and Mentee. Coach and Mentor are the people responsible for the coaching and mentoring process. They are the ones, who should have the competence to conduct such meetings and the experience, that the Coachee and Mentee need. They are main beneficiaries of these processes, have the burden of work and responsibility for the outcome. I will explain what this means in the following section. 

Back to the title question, do I have to choose between mentoring and coaching?

Mentoring is a process, in which a person with more experience in a particular area – the Mentor, helps another – that is, the Mentee, to reach a higher level of competence. In principle, this can be done in various ways. For example, the Mentee, in any situation in which he or she needs support, comes to the Mentor and asks for advice, and the Mentor responds based on his or her experience as to how one should proceed. The risk of this approach is, what is obvious solution and best course of action for the Mentor, may not be so for the Mentee. The two individuals can, and most likely do, differ in temperament, innate talents (these help identify the Gallup test, about which another time), predispositions and many other characteristics. 

The mentor may also identify another person on the team as a role model for the Mentee, but the risks are very similar to the previous ones. 

And what is coaching? Let me start with what it is not. 

It doesn’t take place in concert halls with a few hundred people and doesn’t promise to be a recipe for all the problems plaguing those present. A coach does not shout, lecture or convince others how to live and how to make the next million. Such coaching is an aberration of the one I write about. If you want a deeper understanding of what the coaching I write about is, I invite you to visit the websites of the ICF (International Coach Federation), and the Mukoid Institute (only Polish version), of which I am a graduate. 

So, what is coaching and what is the role of the Coach and Coachee? A Coach is a person who mainly listens, asks important and deepening questions. He shares observations made during the meeting, which are a kind of feedback. A Coachee is a person who wants to think about something, has a topic that he or she wants to “work through” together with the Coach. The result of this process is the analysis (breaking down the whole into smaller elements) and synthesis (putting together smaller elements) of the situation, which the Coach supports. The important thing is, that the main work is done by the Coachee. Working in this way, there is no risk of the Coach imposing his own solutions and interpretations. On the contrary, the developed conclusions, reflections, action plans are the individual output and property of the Coachee. 

These are the main reasons why I combine these two processes. With 90% being coaching 10% being mentoring. An element of the latter is sharing my experience. I do this after the Coachee has reached his or her own conclusions, emphasizing that these were my choices, that did or did not work in a particular situation. In this way, I don’t “pollute” and influence the other person’s thought and creative processes as they work through the meeting. 

Can I mentor any person? Yes, however, if at least one of the following conditions is not met, the mentoring will not work:

• the person who is to step into the Mentee role wants it,
• Mentee understands what mentoring is about and agrees to it,
• Mentee AND Mentor mutually accept each other and their roles.

Can I mentor my hierarchical subordinates? 

I can. In this case, in addition to meeting the above conditions, there is one more. Important, because this relationship is not indifferent when mentoring with coaching tools. Very often, for a Mentees, in order to understand the root causes of behavior, they need to address core values and sometimes identity, that is, the fundamentals that shape them. In this situation, there may be discomfort on the part of the Mentee, who will not want to open up so “deeply” to his supervisor. This is completely understandable and should be respected (this also happens in coaching meetings, where such a relationship does not occur). Whether the discussion is allowed to go deeper or not, the question asked remains and has a chance to be earned in the future, already without the presence of the Mentor. 

When do I hold mentoring meetings?

As a general rule, I do not do these types of meetings on an ad hoc basis. For several reasons. 

First, this meeting should last at least 30-60 minutes. Our calendars are planned at least several days in advance, so in the case of spontaneously organized meetings there is a risk, that they will have to be interrupted just as spontaneously – and this is not conducive to a reflective atmosphere. 

Second. When a meeting is scheduled in advance, the coachee has time to choose the topic of the meeting.

Third. A scheduled meeting allows both parties to calm down and prepare for the mentoring, so that the time is used as effectively as possible.

The place where I organize mentoring is mainly my office. There is a small table where we can put a cups with a drink, possible notebooks. There’s also a whiteboard where we take notes to help during the meeting. The wall to the room is made of glass, so as a rule, no one disturbs us when they see a meeting going on. 

An alternative venue for mentoring is online meetings. I’ve had the opportunity to be a participant in such a process (in both roles), and I must say, that this is also a very effective form. Of course, face-to-face meetings have the advantage that we can read body language, it is easier to supplement communication with a whiteboard or flip chart, and in general, we can “feel” the atmosphere better. Nevertheless, online meetings are a very good equivalent to face-to-face meetings and I will use them in the future. 

There are companies that formalize the process of mentoring or coaching for their employees. In this model, the Coach or Mentor may be an employee of the company or the provider of such services. Often there is a procedure that regulates who can or should participate in such a process and under what conditions. There may also be an administrative duty to report progress and a final evaluation of the process.

However, nothing prevents You from introducing such a way of cooperation in your department, without formal regulation within the company. Just as no one can prohibit us from working with the team in a coaching, democratic, consultative, visionary or any other way. 

I mentioned earlier that the Mentee is the person who does the main work at the meeting. What does this work consist of? First of all, to stimulate and develop one’s awareness, which helps to understand the surrounding processes. 

The assumption is, after analyzing and synthesizing a specific situation, the Mentee will be more aware, in terms of what happened and why. What was his role in the situation, what did he do, and what could he do? How did he feel about the situation, what emotions did he evoke. What are the consequences of it for those around him?

Another assumption is that, in a similar situation, the person will change his behavior and, consequently, the course of events in the way he would like the process to go. Like many other activities in our lives, this one also requires practice and persistence. One thing is certain. It works. For determined individuals, it is a very effective tool to aid professional and personal development. 

Often my interlocutors ask me: “What can we talk about during our meetings?” “What can be the topic of these discussions?”. “Can it involve other people?”, etc. 

The most important part of my answer is, that the topic should be important to the interviewee and should relate to professional situations. If it happens that some aspect of private life has a significant impact on professional life, such a topic is also appropriate. Then I give some examples of situations that often arise in this type of conversation, and sample questions to answer. 

• You got upset during a meeting that had already taken place. Questions: How did it happen? What or who was the reason for the upset? Did your reaction surprise you? Do you view it in terms of gain/loss? How would you react if you could turn back time? Why? What would you gain by doing so?
• You don’t believe in the success of what you are currently engaged in. Questions: What is success to you? What is the measure of your success? What do you have and what do you lack to achieve it? What/who is hindering you? What/Who helps you, favors you in achieving it?
• You are preparing for an important meeting, presentation. Questions: What do you want to achieve during this meeting? How will you know if you have succeeded? What happens if you fail to achieve what you set out to achieve? And what will happen if you succeed? Who will it affect?

It happens, that we meet at the appointed time, and it turns out, that there is no specific topic that the Mentee wants to talk about. Well, what to do now? End the meeting? Change its purpose and talk about currently ongoing projects? If that will be your dedication, you can always do that. However, you can give your mentoring meetings a chance by asking a few simple questions at the beginning.

Starting with very open ones:

• How are you doing? – this simple question can quickly guide you to the right topic for the meeting. We often subconsciously spend a lot of time thinking about important, troubling or difficult things. The question “How are you?” can trigger such process, this time in verbal form, 
• What would you like to talk about today? – this question encourages sharing the topic, in situations where the employee is not sure if the topic he has prepared is “good/important enough.”
• What would you NOT like to talk about today? – is a question from the group of provocative questions, which, deepened with the question “why don’t you want to talk about it?”, can also be the beginning of an important conversation,
• What would you like to think about today? – It is useful to use the words work/discuss/reflect interchangeably in the question. Each of these words can be interpreted differently, or simply someone does not feel like working on something at the moment, but would love to think about something. 

It is crucial to determine in the initial part of the meeting whether the topic of your meeting is important to the Mentee and why. The more important the topic, the greater the commitment to analyze it, the greater the benefit of the meeting, and, ultimately, the great satisfaction of addressing an important (often difficult) topic.

You can also ask other questions, which in themselves verify the importance. These two questions show that the subject of the meeting can be situations that have already taken place, as well as those that are yet to happen:

• What important things have happened in recent days?
• What important things will happen in the coming days?

Mentoring meetings, by their very nature and the hard-to-predict leading theme, can vary in their course. However, I try to include the following elements in each of them, which result in increasing their attractiveness and effectiveness :

• the topic of the meeting depends on the employee, I make sure it is important to him and he knows why it is so,
• my questions should be in-depth to give the other person a chance to understand the meeting topic in depth. Deepening questions is about not stopping at the first answer. Questions that can affect our employee-supervisor relationship can go unanswered. Besides, any question can remain unanswered – after all, this is not an interrogation.  Also such unanswered questions, do the work in the Mentee’s head, so I boldly ask them,
• I share observations that may or may not help my interlocutor. It is he who decides at the end whether they are valuable and helpful or useless,
• at the meeting I assist with a whiteboard, I create a kind of map of the meeting, on which there are key statements from the stages of analysis and synthesis. This is a form of visualization of what the employee has just verbalized, or what I want to convey as part of my experience. These activities often result in reflection and a request, “as I see it now, however, I would call it differently,” or, “move it to another group, it doesn’t fit me here,” or “aha, this is how you understand it.”
• I do not avoid answering questions: “What would you do in my place?” Or “How do you think it is best to respond to such a situation?”. Before I answer, I ask the Mentee to think about and develop his or her own response, deepened by my questions. I always emphasize, that these are my observations, which should be treated as inspiration, not as a prescription,
• lessons learned from analyzing and synthesizing a specific situation, can also be used in other more or less similar events. Therefore, I ask if the employee sees other situations where they could use it, so as to maximize the outcome of the meeting,
• at the end I summarize what the meeting was about today, what the employee learned, what he planned to think about, I ask when they will use what we talked about.

Summary:

• coaching and mentoring are processes that complement each other therefore it is worth combining them,
• mentoring conducted in a coaching manner stimulates and develops awareness,
• both parties to these processes must be aware of what they are participating in and agree to it,
• The Mentee does the main work at the meeting, being at the same time its main beneficiary,
• The Mentor, using coaching tools, asks in-depth questions that support the process of analysis and synthesis of the topic proposed by the Mentee,
• I can mentor my team without a formal and standardized process within the company,
• both forms of mentoring, face to face and online are effective, 
• the topic of mentoring should be important to the employee, it can be prepared in advance or defined with a few simple questions to open the meeting,
• in each meeting, I try to include key elements that increase its attractiveness and effectiveness.