Coaching vs Mentoring: Do you need both?

Key Takeaways

• Coaching vs. Mentoring: Key Differences: Coaches focus on personalized growth, offering tools and strategies for skill and leadership development, while mentors share their experience, providing industry-specific insights and helping expand professional networks.
• Diverse Career Support Options: Beyond coaches and mentors, career support can come from sponsors (who advocate for promotions), allies (mutual workplace support), therapists (emotional guidance), and friends (personal encouragement).
• Structured vs. Informal Relationships: Mentoring can be informal, based on mutual agreement, or structured through programs targeting employee development. Coaching, as a profession, offers specialized types like executive, career, leadership, or life coaching.
• Value of Both Coaching and Mentoring: Combining coaching’s tailored development approach with mentoring’s industry-specific expertise ensures comprehensive career and leadership growth.
• Maximizing Relationships: To get the most out of coaching or mentoring, set clear goals, prepare for sessions, track progress, and maintain open communication while respecting boundaries and confidentiality.

There are many ways to get stuck in your career. You can find yourself feeling unmotivated, frustrated at a lack of progress, confused about what your goals should be, or uncertain about how to motivate your team, manage your workload or get your mojo back. When you hit a wall, it’s time to ask for help. But where should you turn? Should you consider coaching vs mentoring? What kinds of coaches and mentors would be a good fit? What other kinds of support might you find to help you out?

Who can help me when I am stuck in my career?

Friends are always a good first step, but when it comes to career and professional dilemmas, and growing into your personal and professional potential, it’s best to turn to people who have a broader view of career development, leadership development, and personal development, interpersonal skills, relationship building, and who can offer you valuable insights based on their experience and training. It’s also important to turn to those who can offer neutral and constructive feedback with an objectivity that your friends may not have.

Many people start exploring coaching vs mentoring for career advice, but I want to encourage you to expand your view of support to overcome challenges you encounter in the work world. While coaches and mentors will both offer the most direct advice and support, depending on how and why you’re stuck, you’ll find support and good ideas from a variety of other people. Use them all!

Here’s a quick primer on the key differences between the types of people who can help you when you’re facing a career dilemma.

Mentors

• The best mentors have achieved some of the success you seek and can offer you insights into the organizational and industry waters you are swimming in and their own work experience is best if closely aligned with your career goals. If they’re familiar with your work situation they may also be able to give you domain expertise and skills enhancement ideas to for performance improvement, nurture your strategic thinking, download a knowledge transfer in specific situations, and offer valuable insights into how to work with specific individuals (e.g., a line manager or senior executives). They might also give you real-time observation and feedback as well as help you grow your professional network.

Coaches:

• Good coaches will have relevant experience, but there are distinct differences in how they address your overall development. The best ones will put their own experience to the side to focus on you and your specific career, leadership and professional challenges. They will offer practical tools and strategies, often using both structured sessions and a creative process to help you gain the skills required to improve your job performance. They may also be able to give you behavioral alternatives that will help you develop a specific skill, or provide professional development tools (e.g., 360 assessments) to support your personal and professional development.

Sponsors:

• A sponsor will open doors for you and create opportunities by putting their credibility on the line to support you for promotions and stretch assignments. Sometimes you may not even know they’re there as sponsorship often happens behind closed doors. Sometimes you know the person is sponsoring you, and sometimes they can be a mentor (rarely a coach), but you generally do not have a development focused relationship with a sponsor. They support you because you achieve the kinds of desired outcomes they value.

Allies:

• People you can ally with have aligned goals and needs in your work environment. You can ally with people for both business and personal reasons, but such relationships do not focus on skill development or professional development as much as mentoring and coaching do. Their support is usually a two-way street, both of you offering each other some support to gain influence or access to specific stakeholders, information and resources.

Therapists:

• Psychological counselors are solely focused on what’s going on inside you and will have less interest in, or insight into, your professional context, persona or success. Therapists tend to focus on core emotional issues that are common across your personal and professional lives. They will have few to no insights on common business challenges like career development, employee development, employee performance, employee engagement, skill enhancement, and professional growth opportunities.

Friends:

• We all need friends and family who love us despite our career frustrations. In addition to allowing us to vent and feel seen and heard, friends can be great referral sources for mentors, coaches and therapists.

There’s no one-size-fits all support person for your career challenges. Make sure to surround yourself with a team of people who can give you different perspectives and kinds of support. 

How are coaching and mentoring similar?

Both coaching and mentoring provide the two most important types of leadership development and long term career development support you can get. The reason their support is so instrumental to your success is because both coaching and mentoring focus their efforts solely on YOU. Both mentoring and coaching are there for you and your benefit. They offer the gifts of their knowledge, wisdom and expertise, in service to you and your goals.

In this sense both mentoring and coaching can offer you:

• General and specific career and leadership advice
• Knowledge transfer about career development and leadership
• Insights on how to navigate organizational dynamics
• Guidance and tools for developing key skills, including leadership skills
• Support in pursuing personal growth and thinking through your career goals and career path
• Support in developing a plan to reach your goals

Perhaps the place where coaching and mentoring are most similar is in the area of career coaching. A good mentor and an effective coach can both help a mentee navigate challenges in deciding what career goals to pursue and how to take steps or acquire a specific skill to achieve your long term career development objectives.

How are coaching and mentoring different?

When you sit down to do the coaching and mentoring analysis and decide what kind of help you need right now, it’s really useful to look at what differentiates the support you’ll get from coaching and mentoring, and what your takeaways from each may be. 

A lot of people ask me, “What is the biggest difference between coaching and mentoring?” In practice, often, a mentor will share their own experiences hoping you’ll find it relevant, while a coach who is professionally trained will center on your experience and goals, working to help you grow into your higher potential. A mentor who knows your work situation or who shares your expertise can offer you tailored insights into your particular organization, discipline or relationship dynamics. An organizational coach might be able to do the same, but in all case a coach will listen more deeply to understand what you’re missing and then offer up the information, advice or tools that can support you with your particular challenge. In this sense, coaching is usually a more customized and time-efficient way for you grow, but a mentor might be able to help you expand your professional network and technical understanding.

There are some other differences. Coaches are generally better trained in helping you pursue personal and professional development goals (or holistic development objectives) while mentors are trained at what they do for a living. This may mean they can help you develop specific skills as well as broader development goals you have. You’ll come out of a coaching engagement with new mindsets, more assignments and practical tools and strategies to apply. Unlike coaching, mentors will be more likely to give you more information specific to your industry, job track or company. Usually, you’re more likely to grow, change and develop through a coaching engagement, since that’s what coaches are trained to help you do, though in the right mentor mentee relationship, all that can happen and more. Keep in mind that while many mentors are often very interested in helping you grow, they may or may not be skilled at it. 

Here’s a typical way of comparing coaching and mentoring, which you may find in an individual coaching relationship or mentoring relationships:

What kind of mentoring relationship can you pursue?

There are two primary types of mentoring relationship:

Informal mentoring

• Informal mentoring occurs when two people decide to engage in mentoring. Sometimes this is a stated goal of the relationship, but often it simply happens because the mentor offers advice (or the mentee asks) and the mentee (or protégé) acts on the advice and then follows up with the mentor, asking for more advice. It can be that simple.

Structured mentoring through mentoring programs

• Mentoring programs offer more structure. A good mentoring program focuses on employee development/employee engagement, specific skills development and work through program administrators to engage multiple mentors and mentees and who can build programs or maintain existing programs to ensure a quality experience for participants.

What kind of coaching relationship might help you?

Because coaching is a profession, there are several different kinds of coaches you may want to consider hiring. Bear in mind that the best coaches can offer you support in more than one area, especially if their work experience is similiar to yours, though they usually have a core competence and expertise.

Executive coaching

• Executive coaches have generally held executive positions (Vice President and above) and can help you operate effectively as a senior leader (e.g., VP, EVP, SVP, CXO), communicate effectively with senior leaders, gain credibility with senior leaders, navigate corporate politics, position yourself for a promotion, manage up, and lead large and diverse teams.

Career Coaching

• Career coaches specialize in helping you research and articulate your career aspirations, explore various career paths, commit to career plans, and navigate challenging career transitions, including a change of career. Some career coaches are focused on your personal growth while others deploy a more focus coaching approach to develop your resume, LinkedIn profile, and networking plan.

Leadership Coaching

• Leadership coaches have a specific focus on helping you build the skills to manage, inspire and lead people. They tend to be experts in interpersonal skills development and be familiar with many leadership models, techniques, and tools. They also tend to have deep knowledge of various management philosophies and approaches.

Business Coaching

• A business coach (or business mentor) will typically help you develop strategies for business growth in your specific industry and/or function. They typical have personal experience creating business success and know your industry and/or function very well. You’re usually working with them for their technical and business expertise more than their ability to hep you grow as a professional.

Performance Coaching and Sales Coaching

• Similar to business coaches, performance coaches are generally experts in a particular function and can help you increase your personal performance to achieve your personal and professional potential. Often a sales coach has been a top performer and will show you how they did it.

Life Coaching

• Life coaches tend to put less focus on your professional goals and focus more on helping you find goals and mindsets to find more fulfillment and meaning in your life. The closest they usually get to career or business topics are in helping you build personal systems for navigating work-life balance conflicts and challenges.

Keep in mind that good coaching can occur informally as well as formally, through structured coaching sessions or even a structured coaching program.

Coaching vs Mentoring: You Need Both

Do you need coaching and mentoring? Most likely, yes. As a human on a career path, you need a coach to help you navigate your personal career and leadership journey most efficiently, but you also need the insights and knowledge of someone who’s walked the path ahead of you and who knows the kinds of technical or organizational challenges your facing due to your industry or function, which mentors can do. 

A coach acts to help you look out for the general challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, giving you tools to succeed in the moment and in the future, regardless of which path you choose. A good mentor will point at specific obstacles and choices in the path you’re on, discuss the pros and cons with you and help you decide how to keep moving. 

How can you get the most out of your time with a coach or mentor? 

The best way to get a coach or mentor talking, quickly giving you the most specific and helpful suggestions, is to share your goals and aspirations with them. Ask them for help refining your objectives and figuring out the next steps to take to reach them. Even if you’re not sure what goals you want to focus on, or what questions to ask, give them a nugget of what you do want for your future. The best coaches and mentors will quickly pick up on this and start asking you questions that make you think more deeply. They’ll ask you if you’ve tried certain strategies and help you sort out which ones are worth pursuing right now.

Here are some other tips for making the most of your relationship for coaching relationships:

• Come on time, set aside distractions
• Keep a journal or notebook with notes from your sessions to refer back to and track your thoughts and experiences related to each conversation
• Set aside time between sessions to review your notes, decide how to put your coaches advice into practice and reflect on what’s going well and what is challenging you so you can discuss what you learned with your coach
• Prepare for each session and be open with an overview of your progress and obstacles since your last discussion and areas you’d like to focus on in the current discussion

Here are some other tips for making the most of your relationship for mentoring relationships:

• Come on time, set aside distractions
• Check In regularly, especially in remote/hybrid work environments
• Agree that the mentee/protégé will set the agenda, manage scheduling logistics and come prepared to brief the mentor on progress and challenges since the last conversation
• Agree on goals and duration of mentor relationship
• Agree on allowed/not allowed confidentiality topics and communication protocols (specifically, text and phone, which are more intrusive)
• Follow Up in integrity on any commitments made to each other

What you should definitely not ask a coach or mentor is for them to do any of this work for you or tell you what you should want or do. Coaches and mentors are not mind-readers. They don’t know what’s best for you; only you know that. Their greatest gift to you is in spurring your thinking, revealing paths and strategies for you to consider and supporting you and guiding you as you move forward.

For more resources on mentoring women on the leadership track, check our InPower free resources and paid mentoring toolkits.

Are Coaching and Mentoring Confidential?

Most mentors and coaches know that they need to foster trust with you, and will treat what you discuss with them confidentially. Coaches in particular are ethically conscious of their obligation to treat what you say to them as confidential. That said, both coaches and mentors are human and, especially if they’re not aware of the sensitivity of what you share, may mention something to others you may wish they hadn’t. 

For these reasons, it’s always good to discuss confidentiality early in your relationship. And even if you’ve agreed to hold information in confidence, before sharing anything particularly private, it’s a good idea to ask that it be held in total confidentiality.Here are two specific challenges to watch out for:

Coaching confidentiality challenge: If your coach is hired by your company and has an independent line of communication with your boss it’s likely they will be asked, or want to offer, information that can help your boss manage you more successfully. While you can presume your coach would only have your best interests in mind, when you want their advice on something you or your boss would consider sensitive, call it out to your coach with a request for confidentiality. For example, in a situation where you don’t trust your boss, you can ask that everything be held in confidence. If the trust problem is of dangerous proportions, you may want to consider hiring a coach that you pay for yourself and who has no relationship or access to your boss at all.

Mentoring confidentiality challenge: If your mentor is part of your network, and has connections with friends and colleagues in your company or industry you have to remain aware of this fact. Especially in informal relationships (as opposed to structured mentoring programs with which mentors and mentees may have contractual relationships) you must remember your mentor is a free agent with their own goals unrelated to you. Generally, you cannot assume that they will treat what you tell them with complete confidentiality, so it’s always important to flag specific things and ask them to keep your thoughts private. 

How Can You Help Others?: Mentor vs. Sponsor vs. Ally

Especially when you develop experience with coaches and mentors who have helped you, please pay it forward and find ways to help others, passing on what you’ve learned.

Of course you can mentor others, but consider also using your influence within your industry or organization to sponsor others. Look for opportunities to help talented younger employees gain visibility and access to opportunities, especially among underrepresented leaders such as women, people of color, and underrepresented groups more generally. This makes you a talent scout and allows you to open doors for people, who otherwise may not get the opportunity. 

You can also become an ally for people who have aligned interests. This is particularly valuable for underrepresented leaders who may not have the natural cultural alliances that come from common race and gender demographics.

Just like coaching vs mentoring is not really an either/or choice, neither is deciding how to give back to others. Never stop learning and never stop passing on what you’ve learned–in all forms. This is how we all grow.derrepresented leaders who may not have the natural cultural alliances that come from common race and gender demographics.