What Do You Need, A Coach Or A Mentor?

Are you at a key moment in your professional life? Do you have the opportunity to move up in your company and to grow in a keyway? Are you wondering who can help you and you don't know whether to look for a coach or a mentor? Hundreds of professionals do this every day.

Coaching and Mentoring can be defined as learning processes, development tools that help people to enhance their personal and professional skills. They are disciplines that pursue the achievement of goals and require a deep reflection on oneself, aimed at self-knowledge about who you are and whom you want to become. 

Whether you find a coach or mentor, in both cases, the key factor for success is the commitment to implement actions that help you achieve the best version of yourself.

Both methodologies have more in common than what separates them, being the context in which you find yourself and what you expect to get from the professional who accompanies you, factors that will determine whether you choose a Mentor or a Coach.

- Are you in a process of change or do you need to learn to adapt to a new context, do you want to acquire new skills, do you want to improve your performance?

In these circumstances, the Coach accompanies you with a more short-term approach, focused on behavioural transformation and deep analysis of the present situation. The coach may come from a completely different professional environment to their own, and in this antagonism of experiences lies part of the value that this methodology provides. 

Their star working tool is the open question, and the guide is an almost non-existent element in the sessions. He will rarely take a position to give you his opinion and what you will receive from him will be questions that, if they are the right ones, will help you find your own answer and path, leaving his own story and experience out of the equation.

- Are you in a time of transition to a new position; are you considering different options and would like to have an expert's view; are you looking to gain new insights or experiences of success; do you want to align yourself with your company's values?

In that context, the Mentor accompanies you with a more long-term approach, focused on the future but leveraging on his or her own past experience to capitalise on it. A Mentor is a person with a higher level of experience, who will advise you from the personal and professional maturity of what he/she has experienced before, due to his/her vision as an expert in a specific field or environment. Their approach will generally be more open, as they will integrate different roles (teacher, coach, tutor, sponsor, guide). 

The 'good' mentor will inspire, challenge and guide you, generously sharing their experience and experiences of what worked for them in similar environments, as talking about the same environment, business or sector, or even being in the same company, will facilitate the focus of conversations and mutual understanding.

The risk of having a Mentor is, from our point of view, just the advantage of having a Coach, and vice versa. In a mentoring process, we can fall into the mistaken belief that much of what worked for the Mentor will work for other people. We recommend taking the mentor's experience as an alternative path, but not as the only option to follow. The risk we identify in coaching lies in the fact of not sharing the same professional environment and in the methodology itself, which implies that the coach does not take a position or offer guidance, and may affect mutual understanding. We recommend that before opting for this option, you should be clear about the alternative you need at the moment.

Almost all choices in life carry certain risks, but the greatest risk is the fear of being wrong and not acting to get what you want. We humbly share some recipes for maximising success in any development process, whether you choose Coaching, Mentoring or any other accompanying discipline: reflect, have a plan B, look at success stories, ask questions, have a long-term vision, have well-managed ambition and trust yourself.

Growth is within the reach of anyone who sets their mind to it and each one of us is ultimately responsible for our own development.