Until recently, when most people heard the word “coach” they typically thought of a dedicated sports trainer prepping his or her team for victory on the football, baseball or hockey field—or perhaps a devoted parent guiding a Little League team.
But today, coaches are everywhere in the business arena, and it’s a whole different ball game.
Coaching emerged as a formalized profession in the early 1990s. Suddenly, it seemed everybody was either seeking to hire or to become a coach. The profession fragmented into multiple subsets: career coach, life coach, health coach, financial coach, and more. Credentials vary widely, and even though there is a certifying organization in the form of the non-profit International Coaching Federation, through which coaches can become accredited, there’s no regulatory body as there is in medicine, so anyone can hang out a shingle and call themselves a coach.
Mentors, on the other hand, have existed as long as business itself. While a career coach is usually someone hired for a specific period of time to perform well-defined services, such as helping the client spruce up a resume, enhance current skills, or transition into a new field, a mentor relationship is often less structured, and can continue for years.
New entrepreneurs, especially, may benefit from a mentor-mentee relationship with a more experienced professional in their field of endeavor. Someone like Kris Duggan, a successful entrepreneur who’s mentored many up-and-coming business owners, is one example of how a mentor can be invaluable for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Mentor? Coach? How Do I Choose?
Deciding between a coach and a mentor can be tricky because the terms are often used interchangeably. However, there are distinct differences that can help someone seeking a support system to make the right choice at each stage of their career.
One of the critical distinctions is that a coach does not give advice. Coaches are trained to listen to their client, ask incisive questions to draw out the client’s own wisdom, and suggest relevant resources to help move the process forward. Their personal experience does not factor into the coaching relationship.
In contrast, a mentor, who is usually not a hired (i.e., paid) resource, will discuss his or her own experience as an active part of the mentoring process. It’s a reciprocal, collaborative relationship typically occurring between a junior and a senior-level individual. Advice and direction are welcome, and considered a cornerstone of the process.
Mentoring can provide leadership development for the mentee, as well as help the mentee grow in self-confidence and business acumen. For the mentor, there can be deep satisfaction in nurturing the next generation in their field, and in knowing they helped a fledgling business to develop and thrive.
New York Times bestselling author Chip Conley, founder of the Modern Elder Academy, mentored Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky from the hospitality powerhouse’s earliest days, and makes an enduring point about how, “in a confidante relationship like this, presence can substitute for performance and the process of connection can substitute for productivity.”
What Conley means is that being fully engaged in deep listening with your mentee, providing true insight, sharing your own vulnerabilities and remaining humble can create an indelible impact on both parties that goes far beyond the number of widgets produced.
Kris Duggan believes in giving of his time, insights and lessons learned to support entrepreneurs. Whether that takes the form of coaching or mentoring depends on the client and their business’s stage of development. But the outcome should always be: the coaching client or mentee is better for having worked with you.
