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If you think that someone in your team or beyond could benefit from coaching or mentoring and are considering taking on the role of coach/mentor, perhaps to further your own development as well, you might want to have a look through these tips to find out what it will involve and assess your suitability.
Why Become a Coach/Mentor?
Adopting a coaching/mentoring approach can have many benefits. As well as helping people with their personal or career development, coaching/mentoring can help to boost motivation and job satisfaction and increase productivity. The coach/mentor can also benefit in many ways – it can help them to develop their interpersonal skills and increase their visibility within the organization.
- You may be considering becoming a coach/mentor for one or more of the following reasons:
- You have identified an individual whom you think would benefit from having a coach/mentor.
- You have been asked by an individual to become their coach/mentor.
- You want to add to your management skills and increase your visibility/profile in your organization.
You believe that coaching/mentoring can optimize the management potential within your organization and believe that you have useful skills and knowledge that you could share.
Coaching/mentoring involve many of the things that managers already do. If you have not been a coach or mentor before, there is a good chance you will have relevant experiences to draw on and will have built up many of the competencies required to undertake this satisfying role successfully. Some core management skills that can be applied to coaching and mentoring are:
- communication
- problem-solving
- intuition
- building rapport and trust
- delegation
- giving praise and recognition
- training others
- goal-setting
- listening
- motivating and inspiring others
- planning
- managing performance
Who Can Be a Mentor?
The coach or mentor will usually be more experienced than the individual, but may not necessarily be their line manager. Coaches and mentors should be interested in developing themselves and others. They should be approachable and should be someone in whom others feel they can confide.
Could I Be a Coach/Mentor?
The success of coaching/mentoring as a development tool will, to a great extent, depend on the coach’s/mentor’s experience, interpersonal skills and abilities.
If you have ever done any of the following, you may already have developed the skills necessary for effective coaching/mentoring:
- helped someone structure ideas about how to tackle career opportunities/problems
- helped someone analyze why things went well or badly
- given constructive feedback
- acted as a sounding board
- offered alternative ways of looking at an issue
- helped someone set higher personal standards
- helped someone set realistic learning objectives
- offered an individual personal observations about their behavior in a sensitive but constructive manner
- helped someone assess their own progress
If you think you would be a good coach/mentor, you need to start by asking yourself a number of questions:
- Are you clear about what kinds of practical help you can give someone else?
- Are you prepared to enter into a relationship that will involve a great deal of time and commitment?
- Do you have some ideas of what you are looking to achieve for yourself from this relationship, or what learning you might acquire from this experience?
- Are you prepared and able to allow and encourage the client to drive the relationship and to focus only on their needs?
How Can I Become a Coach/Mentor?
There are various possibilities. You may already have been approached by someone asking you to be their coach/mentor. Or perhaps you know someone who would benefit from coaching/ mentoring and you may wish to approach them informally. Alternatively, your Human Resources or training department may have an organized coaching or mentoring scheme that can pair people up. If not, they may well know of individuals who have expressed an interest in being coached or mentored.
Organizations that have coaching or mentoring schemes will no doubt have training programs to help people to develop the skills required to be a successful coach or mentor. Alternatively, you may want to:
- enquire about the possibility of attending an external training course
- undertake some personal study at your organization’s learning center if it has one, or your local library
- get some advice from, or shadow, an experienced coach/mentor
