Coaching and Mentoring Learning Resource Manual

. Agree a suitable timescale.
6. Agree criteria for evaluation, standards and assessment of the programme.

1. Determine the area for mentoring or coaching.
2. Agree the overall objectives.
3. Identify realistic outcomes and devise an action plan to achieve the desired result.
4. Devise an appropriate mentoring or coaching programme. This might include a secondment, work shadowing or supervised working.

How the mentoring or coaching links to the organisation’s purpose and strategy.
Mentors and coaches need to be suitably matched to their protégés to avoid personality clashes or other issues.
The objectives of the mentoring or coaching – what it aims to achieve.
A process to support the mentoring or coaching programmes, for example, who will cover the protégé’s workload while they are being mentored or coached?
Evaluation and feedback mechanisms need to be established.

There needs to be:
Sufficient information about the benefits of mentoring and coaching.
An explanation of what mentoring and coaching can and cannot achieve.
Clarity about who can be involved in mentoring and coaching programmes.
Clarity about how and when the mentoring and coaching programmes could be used.

Coaching in the workplace provides an impartial and insightful means of support, designed to assist the career pathway within an organisation for an individual.

It is worth noting that there is often much overlap between coaching and mentoring, particularly if organisations ask managers to perform both roles simultaneously. The key difference is that the coach need not be an expert performer in the subject matter area, (consider sports coaching), but a mentor has usually been an acknowledged performer.

Coaching assumes the person is well and can solve their own problems; typically has a strong focus on goals. It is ‘work’ rather than ‘help’.
Coaching is owned by the coachee; there is no external curriculum or timetable. The coach does not assume that he or she necessarily has knowledge that the coachee lacks.
Coaching assumes the coachee knows best. The coach rarely offers advice but encourages coaches to wrestle with problems themselves.
Coaching is an informal process of development that can happen every day; judgement on performance is only a small part of what takes place.
Coaching is far more a relationship of equals: for purposes of the conversation, even where one person, (the coach/manager), is technically more senior than the other.

The Power-based (P1) culture– A few individuals make the decisions and exercise power over all subordinates, colleagues and contacts of all kinds. Training plans are likely to reflect attempts by those in power to improve the performance of those who are not in charge.
The People-based (P2) culture– Process comes first and consensus is prized. Group decisions are encouraged and employees are encouraged to develop themselves.
The Role-based (R) culture– Bureaucratic in nature, standard programmes and courses are followed by specific categories and groups.
The Task-based (T) culture– The current task that the organisation is geared towards achieving is prioritised over process. All appraisal data and training plans are altered to reflect this.
The Quality-based (Q) culture– The ‘Total Quality Management’ approach places demands on all employees to understand a common language and commit to conforming to a detailed set of standards. Each department houses quality teams which devise new techniques and train groups in-house. People are confronted about the discrepancies between their beliefs and their behaviour, and training is not labelled a function, more a ‘learning expectation’ in order to achieve a standard.

In 2001, Clutterbuck, a British authority on mentoring, observed that employees in the US were 35% inclined to change jobs within that year. Those employees involved in mentoring programs showed a reduced 16% desire to leave their company.