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Coaching and mentoring focuses on the long-term success of your team. By committing to provide continuous, you are helping them grow their skills and reach their full potential.

What is the difference between mentoring and coaching?

Often the terms mentoring and coaching are intertwined, but they are in fact two very different methods of assisting your team. Let’s break it down a little.

What is coaching?

Coaching is all about tutoring or instructing a person on a particular skill or goal. A coach may specialise in improving one or two areas of development through planned and structured content. Coaching may or may not be voluntary and is often used in a business environment as part of the performance appraisal process.

What is mentoring?

Mentoring has a different purpose to coaching and has a less formal approach. It is usually approached through voluntary methods and is done over an extended period. Mentoring looks at the entire career path rather than one specific skill and is less structured than coaching.

Adopting the GROW model for your team

One popular way to coach, teach, instruct and mentor your team is through the GROW model. Managers use this efficient model to assist their team solve problems, learn skills, make well-informed decisions and further their career goals.

G is for Goal Setting

Coaching is ineffective without a goal to give it direction or shape a discussion. When you are talking to your team get them to think about their goals and what they would like to accomplish.

• What do they want to change?
• What outcome are they hoping for?

R is for Reality Check

Without goals being based on the current situation, it will be ineffective. You and your team need to have a clear understanding on current issues so all the obstacles can be overcome. Consider where you are now in relation to your goal and what progress has been made to date.

O is for Options

Take your time to explore any necessary action steps to grow performance.

Are there multiple options? Consider each one carefully.

• What could be the first step?
• What is your perceived outcome?
• What will act as a hindrance to your choices?

W is for Wrap it up

Once you get to this stage, write it all down. You need to create a well-defined plan, so everyone in your team knows what needs to be done. This will help with accountability and demonstrate the group’s overall success or failure. Consider what resources can aid the solution and come up with a time line of events to see it through to fruition.

Whether you are focused on coaching or mentoring, it is important to realise both are useful to foster a great working relationship with your team and to create results for the business and individuals. With a perfect blend of the two, you can create a balanced development program that will benefit everyone.

“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave, is not training them and having them stay.”

— Henry Ford, Founder, Ford Motor Company

Visit our professional training library with over 210 course kits complete with manuals and instructor guides. We offer courses on a broad range of subjects including coaching and mentoring, goal setting and getting things done and employee motivation. Katie – should this be called professional training library or eLearning library – which I put in the body language wrap up.  Also do we have 210 courses available?