What’s the differences - coaching and mentoring?

People often ask:  What’s the differences between coaching and mentoring? It’s a good question, and if you’ve done some research on Mentorship, you will have noticed that responses widely differ, leaving a lot of confusion. To shed some light on this, here are some enlightening comments from Professor David Clutterbuck,  Practice Lead, Clutterbuck Associates. These are taken from the notes that I took during his session at the APEGGA Mentorship Conference in Calgary, Alberta in October 2010, Please give them some thought, see if they help you, and feel free to add your thoughts as a comment to this post. Thanks.

David Clutterbuck’s comments: If you know where the conversation is going, and have a clear scheme in your mind for the discussion ... it’s not mentoring.  Where you get to in a Mentoring conversation may not be where you originally intended ... it’s a journey of discovery, a creative conversation.

On the other hand, coaches typically have you do something. They observe you and provide you with some feedback. As a result of following their direction, improvements can quickly result.  While there may be some long-term develop that occurs, the main focus is on improving your immediate results.

Coaching is always about performance, it’s about ‘doing’. Whereas, Mentoring is about development, it’s about ‘becoming’ more than what you are now.



Following the APEGGA Mentorship Conference, I came across the following from an article by Professor David Clutterbuck.  It seemed to address this puzzling question and was titled, ENSURING COACHING & MENTORING DELIVER REAL VALUE TO INDIVIDUALS & ORGANISATIONS (2005).

Confusion about what is meant by coaching, mentoring and other forms of development, he says, leads to a mismatch of expectations between participants. Enjoy the balance of Clutterbuck’s explanation and then share your comments to this post.

Terminological confusion: There are at least two major types or styles of both coaching and mentoring.

Traditional coaching, as typified in sports coaching is a system for imparting skills and improving performance, using observation and feedback by the coach.

Developmental coaching has the same goals, but uses a much greater level of self- observation, reflection and self-feedback by the learners – the coach’s role is essentially to help them coach themselves. There is often a high emphasis on behaviour change.

Sponsoring mentoring, derived from US practice and still the dominant model in N. America, is a relationship in which a senior person uses their influence and experience to guide the career of someone more junior. It is generally a one-way learning activity that places high emphasis on career achievements and on direct intervention by the mentor.

Developmental mentoring is largely independent of the power issues, although the mentor’s greater experience is important. It is a two-way exchange of learning, where personal growth is the critical outcome (which may or may not lead to career achievement). The emphasis is on helping the other learning partner do things for him/herself.

People describing themselves as executive coaches or life coaches, for example, might operate in any of these styles, or a blend of several. Successful learning relationships therefore need to define clearly what each party expects in terms of approach and behaviours. It’s also important to examine the experience and qualifications of people offering coaching and mentoring services to determine how relevant they are to the approach expected.