WHAT I DO
Identify
Invent
Running a business, whether large or small, is time-consuming. Owners, executives or managers don’t often get a chance to step back and identify the issues or the improvements that need addressing. All too often they concentrate on the urgent matters, instead of the important issues; I help you focus and prioritise.
I work with you to solve, or see, a different perspective of the issues and the obstacles. Unlike consultants, lawyers, accountants and friends, I am not personally involved with your business. Instead, I bring an unbiased view and perspective to assist you.
Implement
This graph below demonstrates how my coaching & mentoring differs from other approaches
| Coaching | Mentoring | Consulting | Therapy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Is future-focused and aimed at understanding barriers to goals and designing strategies to eliminate those barriers | Helps mostly to assist clients who need answers or to gain knowledge, from someone with experience in the field | Deals mostly with problems and seeks to provide information/expertise to solve them | Often deals with a person’s past and any trauma to seek healing |
| Equal Partnership (Client has the answers; Coach assists Client in self-discovery) | More Experience – Less Experience Relationship (Mentor has the answers) | Expert – Consultant has the answers | Doctor – Patient Relationship |
| Assumes emotions are natural and “normalises” them | Is limited to emotional response within the mentoring parameters | Does not normally address or deal with emotions | Assumes emotions are a symptom that something may be wrong |
| Coach stands with client and helps identify challenges, and works with client to turn the challenges into victories, to reach goals | Mentor allows client to observe behaviour, offers advice, answers questions, provides guidance for the stated purpose of mentoring | Consultant stands back, evaluates a situation, then tells client what the problem is and how to fix it | Therapist diagnoses, then provides professional expertise to provide a path to healing |
| I can help you find the answers | My experience is…”This is how U did it” | I know how. This is what you are paying me to tell you | I know how to guide you |
The fundamental principle of coaching is that it is question based. Although beneficial, the coach does not need to have any specific ‘sector’ experience but instead needs to be skilled in extracting all the various options available to you through questioning, and encourage you to select the option you feels best fits the issue. As a result, you take ownership of the exercise because your commitment to action is based on your own conclusions.
As a coach, I can stand apart from the issues you are experiencing in your business and help you see it from a different perspective, while guiding you to self-discover the solution; I provide encouragement, diagnosis, directions (goal setting) and feedback.
In contrast, mentoring is solutions-based. Because the solutions to an issue are identified and presented by the mentor, it is much faster paced than coaching. The mentor is able to guide the conversation in a manner that will enable you to profit from the mentor’s experience in the context of the issue.
Mentoring is the transfer of my knowledge, or professional experience, to you. This allows you to advance your understanding or achievement. I make use of modelling, being supportive and introducing you to people who can assist you.
Traditionally, because of the intrinsic need for the mentor to draw on the experiences that have shaped his business life, to demonstrate relevance to the situation you are in, it is likely that the mentor will need to have substantial experience across a wide range of business matters and likely needs to have been a CEO or MD of various businesses.
There are times when mentoring is required and there are times when a coaching conversation is called for, when my professional experience and beliefs are not what’s required, and can even get in the way. In times like these, my goal is to facilitate you through a process of self-discovery.
The difference between these two situations is significant, and they require very different conversations.
