It’s a topic that keeps surfacing and resurfacing: What do we mean by coaching and mentoring? This constant recycling occurs because when new people become engaged in coaching and mentoring in some way, they are faced with multiple descriptions and definitions. In some cases, the resulting confusion prevents organizations embarking on coaching or mentoring initiatives because it’s not clear what is being talked about.

The reality is that there are many models of both coaching and mentoring, some directive, some non-directive. Different cultures and organizations have very different perspectives. Traditional US approaches to mentoring see it as a form of sponsorship and one-way learning, while European approaches emphasise “helping someone with the quality of their thinking” and two-way learning. Many US companies have imported developmental mentoring; some European countries have an affinity with sponsorship mentoring; and some companies have programmes incorporating elements of both. Some of the most powerful mentoring is reverse mentoring, for example, young managers of various ethnicities in the UK Cabinet Office mentoring top Civil Servants around issues of diversity.

The European Mentoring and Coaching Council has spent a lot of effort trying to put clear water between coaching and mentoring, and concluded that it just isn’t that simple. However, we can define some activities that are predominantly associated with one or the other (for example, observing and giving feedback in coaching and helping someone understand organizational politics in mentoring, both of which happen frequently but not always). And there is one clear distinction―coaching almost always has an element of performance improvement in a particular task or against a specific goal, while mentoring almost always explores the mentee’s career and takes a broader, more holistic view of their personal development. Hence mentoring tends (but is not always) to be longer term than coaching.

When I talk about mentoring, it is in the context of the European model, usually called developmental mentoring. The confusion of terms we see here is the flip side of the wonderful richness and diversity of application of both mentoring and coaching. The tragedy comes when people with a particular axe to grind insist that their model of coaching or mentoring, or their distinction between them, is the “right” one―given that both coaching and mentoring are at root about open learning dialogue, such narrowness is both unhelpful and suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the mentoring concept.

The great thing about forums such as this is that they promote open discussion and exploration of different facets and interpretations of mentoring and coaching―thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts and perspectives so generously!