In my blog post about Expat Coaching and “The Expat Lifecycle” (see also: https://www.erhan-coaching.com/en/post/expat-coaching-and-the-expat-lifecycle), I mentioned that bringing an Expat Coach on board right from the beginning of an international assignment, appears to be a meaningful investment compared to the potential costs of an Expat failure. Under bullet point 7. I also mentioned that assigning a Mentor with whom a regular call can take place is essential.
Unfortunately, too many times the difference between Coaching and Mentoring appears to be not clear. Frequently Coaching is used to describe the support needed to be given to an employee, while actually Mentoring is meant. Therefore, the following tries to shed some light on the differences between Coaching and Mentoring.
The Origins of “Mentoring” and “Coaching”
The word “Mentor” goes back to ancient Greek (see Wikipedia and Wiktionary). Mentor was the paternal advisor and educator of Odysseus' son Telemachus. It therefore refers to an older, wise and benevolent advisor to a young person.
The word "Coaching" originated in the 16th century and initially referred to a method of transportation, specifically a horse-drawn carriage (see Wikipedia). Nowadays it represents the process of guiding and supporting individuals in their personal and professional development.
Definition of a Mentor and a Coach
Per the above-mentioned origins of the two words, both are being defined as following:
A Mentor is an expert who provides wisdom and guidance to a Mentee based on his or her own experience. Mentoring is mainly focusing on giving advice.
A Coach will not give advises, but rather focuses on helping the Coachee to come to his own conclusions. This will be achieved through active listening and asking questions within a guided process (similar to the driver of a horse-drawn carriage), with the target to help the Coachee finding his own answers.[1] Therefore the German Association for Coaching and Training defines Coaching crisp and clearly as “helping people to help themselves” (Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe).[2]
Similarities between Coaching and Mentoring are for example that both target to support career development, it requires listening abilities, both do not relate to psychotherapy and so on. The main differences however can be seen in the following table:
Main Take-Aways
Coaching and Mentoring both target to support an employee, but with different approaches. There are clear differences between the target, target groups, relationship, needed qualification, duration, definition of topics and the scope of topics. From my personal point of view, both approaches do not substitute-, but rather complement each other with the target to give an employee the best possible support. Especially in a “high stress setting” such as having an employee on an international assignment for an organization as Expatriate.
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