Coaching and Mentoring

What is Coaching?

A coach tutors or instructs a person to achieve a specific goal or skill. In baseball, a batting coach only focuses on the mechanics of hitting the ball. They spend time instructing the hitter how to change their swing to improve their performance. They give exercises and goals to the hitter that target the swing of the bat.
In the office environment, you may see similar coaches helping others improve a skill. They may be sales coaches or customer service coaches. No matter what the area of focus is, a coach specializes on improving one or two areas of development at a time.
Here is a recap of the characteristics of a coach:
• Trainer
• Instructor
• Tutor
• Focus on one or two skills at a time• Their interaction is planned and structured

What is Mentoring?

Mentoring has a different purpose and goal. Mentoring is the act of guiding, counseling, and supporting. This is vastly different from coaching. It is fundamentally teaching. However, the objective is slightly different.
Mentorship is more voluntary in nature and is less formal than coaching. The mentor and protégé endeavor on a broad development goal, like becoming a leader. Mentoring encompasses many complex areas of development.
In your matching activity, we learned that coaching scenarios include the following:
• Sales
• Customer service
• Production work
• Behavioral issues like tardiness
Likewise, we learned that mentoring scenarios include the following:
• Networking
• Political strategizing
• Negotiation
• Managing

Scenario

You are in your office looking over your performance report and it happened again. Your low performing employee failed to meet quota this month even after you spoke with them about the importance of meeting goals. This employee has a great attitude and you know they can do better. You just do not know how to motivate them to reach the goal. Money used to work, but that has worn off. You are baffled and you know being frustrated makes matters worse. What do you do?

The Coaching And Mentoring course focuses on how to better coach your employees to higher performance. Coaching is a process of relationship building and setting goals. How well you coach is related directly to how well you are able to foster a great working relationship with your employees through understanding them and strategic goal setting.

Course Objectives:

• Define coaching, mentoring and the GROW model.
• Identify and set appropriate goals using the SMART technique of goal setting.
• Identify the steps necessary in defining the current state or reality of your employee’s situation.
• Identify the steps in developing a finalized plan or wrapping it up and getting your employees motivated to accomplish those plans.
• Identify the benefits of building and fostering trust with your employees.
• Identify the steps in giving effective feedback while maintaining trust.
• Identify and overcoming common obstacles.
• Identify when the coaching is at an end and transitioning your employee to other growth opportunities.
• Identify the difference between mentoring and coaching.