LEADERSHIP
Career Coaching And
Mentoring For Success
In Life
By Joe Nyutu
H
aving a coach and a mentor
is becoming a regular part of
a leader’s and entrepreneur’s
working life today. One of the current
challenges most frequently heard from
coaches and leaders alike is when to coach,
when to offer advice and when to give a
directive, either at work or in the coaching
relationship. An effective manager today
must be able to move smoothly along the
continuum between coaching, mentoring
and directive management.
Coaching has its roots mainly in
psychology and sports coaching. However,
early psychology, up to and during the
time of Freud and Jung, was largely
remedial and remained so even when it
later developed through behavioral and
cognitive therapies. Therapy was about
identifying what was wrong with the
subject and attempting to fix it.
Career Counseling materialized during
the US recession of the early 1990s
when commercial enterprises trained
career counselors and coaches. Executive,
personal and business coaches came into
vogue and life coaching became popular.
Coaching and counseling became an
industry, without regulation, anyone could
set up a business as a coach or counselor.
Counseling has therapeutic connotations
and psychologists, quite rightly, wanted to
protect the integrity of that term, so there
was push-back and a move toward coach
accreditation and qualifications.
Coaching is still way ahead of mentoring
in terms of accreditation with numerous
reputable training courses leading to
certification available through the
International Coach Federation. So
mentors are usually only informally
recognized.
Today, coaching emphasizes empowerment
Mentoring has evolved from an adult-
child, master-apprentice or expert-nov-
ice directive process into a relationship
of empowerment that is much less di-
rective. The mentor’s knowledge and
experience is offered, when appropriate
but facilitating a conversation where the
mentee generates insight is the heart of
the process.
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and so does mentoring. The definition of
coaching has moved away from the skills
and performance focus we associate with
sports coaches, into the realm of personal
development. Mentoring has moved away
from the paternalistic pairing of an older,
presumed wiser, guide into the same
territory.
In the workplace, people have a whole
range of needs and they may be met with
assistance from a trainer, manager, coach,
mentor or a career counselor.
An individual’s needs are never static, they
move across the development spectrum.
At one end of the development spectrum
goals are quite specific, focused on tasks
and performance, so they are evident or
absent; learning objectives are set and
knowledge and skills taught.
At the other, the person sets their own
self-development goals; goals are broad,
building capability; the objective is
developing insight that results in actions
to achieve better outcomes. Insight may
not be evident to others. The real point of
contention is whether coaching process is
directive or non-directive.
Mentoring has evolved from an adult-
child, master-apprentice or expert-novice
directive process into a relationship of
empowerment that is much less directive.
The mentor’s knowledge and experience is
offered, when appropriate but facilitating
a conversation where the mentee generates
insight is the heart of the process.
Coaching for sport or job performance is