Mentoring & Coaching

MYOB 2008-08-04
Show #86
Release date: 04 Aug 2008

Notes

In our 86th show, entrepreneurs Guy Kingston and John Richards keep their sceptical hats on and take a look at business coaching and mentoring.

Is there any point to being mentored or coached?

Who makes a good mentor, a good coach? How do you find the right one for you? Do you need someone with experience or qualification credentials?

Do conflicts of interest arise when you pay people to advise/mentor? What about business support organisations?

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Mentoring & Coaching

Words like Mentor, Adviser, Coach, and Consultant are now thrown around fairly freely. Sometimes they are used as specific job titles. They may even become careers.

Yet there are important differences between them. These can become very significant when an entrepreneur is in need of one thing but ends up with something completely different.

A Mentor is essentially a role model. The original Mentor was a person, Mentor son of Alcumus, a friend of the wily Odysseus. When Odysseus left – very reluctantly – for the Trojan War, from which he was not to return for twenty years, he entrusted his infant son, Telemachus, to Mentor’s care.

Telemachus obviously held Mentor in high regard. According to Homer, when Athena wanted to advise Telemachus to do something, she did so disguised as Mentor.

In much the same way, an ancient Celt would send his son to live with a Foster Father, who would teach him the ways of the world. Thereafter, the boy and his Foster Family would be bound together for life by the strongest ties of mutual loyalty. The Vikings had a similar tradition, and, as every film buff knows, a Godfather performs the same role in other cultures.

In medieval times, a young man of gentle birth would learn martial arts and good manners expected of one of his class by serving an apprenticeship, as Page and then as Esquire, to some distinguished Knight or Nobleman.

So there have been Mentors throughout history. They have been particularly important to future leaders, because leadership demands independence and independence is not learned within organisations.

A Mentor’s main role is as a living example of what is possible and of how things should be done. He might also give advice, but, where an official Adviser or Counsellor is usually of subordinate status, a Mentor really has to be of senior status.

This is the essential distinction between a Mentor and an Adviser or Counsellor.

An Adviser or Counsellor may be an employee, or at least on a retainer. Indeed, senior subordinates, irrespective of their actual titles, are sometimes described collectively as “advisers” or “counsellors”.

As a subordinate, the Adviser or Counsellor has a degree of permanent, or at least ongoing, commitment to the one being advised or counselled.

By contrast, a Consultant is an independent operator, not an employee, and is brought in to advise on a specific issue. Not having an ongoing commitment, the Consultant should be able to take a more objective view.

The status of the Consultant is variable. Although acting as a sort of temporary employee, the Consultant is as independent as the one employing him, and therefore of equal status – indeed sometimes superior. Some senior Consultants can be, in effect, temporary Mentors.

The sporting title Coach – meaning a Trainer – is also working its way into business. It signifies one who teaches certain specific skills, and then encourages their use and development. Where the status of a Coach is traditionally that of a Mentor, its use in business is closer to that of a Consultant, and Trainers are essentially subordinates.

Just do not tell them that!