Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 56
or supervising members of another service will need to
clearly understand how this affects the expectations
they set for leader development responsibilities. These
differing perceptions present yet another challenge to
building the joint, interagency team.
uncovering potential, eliminating developmental
barriers, developing action plans and commitment, and
following up. In the Army’s view, a coach helps identify
short- and long-term goals, and discusses strengths and
weaknesses in reaching those goals. Once again, mentoring one’s subordinates could involve all or only some of
those steps. The difference is that mentoring focuses on
what occurs outside the chain of command. A mentor
probably would not supervise job-specific skills or tasks,
but should look at the long-term development of the
mentee through helping with self-awareness, uncovering potential, developing action plans, and following
up. One method of following up is for the mentor to
provide feedback to mentees on their progress toward
their goals. Here again we see what may be an overlap
in actions between developmental functions.
Coaching
The use of the term mentoring in the Air Force and
Marine Corps may be more in line with the Army’s use
of the word coaching. Confusion between mentoring
and coaching often arises due to the perceived overlap
of functions. Florence Stone, a scholar in this field, stated that, “one of the functions of a mentor is to coach
the protégé or mentee. But whereas mentoring uses
many of the same techniques as coaching, mentoring
involves going above and beyond.”14 A mentor, using the
Army definition, will not necessarily be in a position to
observe the mentee’s daily performance and thus not be
in a position to coach the mentee on task performance.
However, the mentor should help the mentee develop
a plan for professional and personal growth and to support the mentee in implementing that plan.
Army doctrine in ADRP 6-22 descri