What is the difference between Coaching, Mentoring, Training and consulting?
The terms coaching, mentoring, training and consulting are often used interchangeably and frequently causes
confusion.
A Mentor is a
person, often more experienced than the person they are helping (mentee), who
can draw upon their experience to help the mentee to progress. For example
someone in a new role at work may have a mentor who has done that job before or
been in the organisation for a longer period of time, therefore demonstrate as
to how to go about planning and implementing a project or answer questions and
support them if things get tough. Mentor
may advice on a specific domain or an area where he has great amount of
experience and the guidance he provides may range from asking open ended
questions to suggesting some good book to read, to undergo a specific training
program etc.
Training is about
imparting/ transferring specific skill
or knowledge to someone who would like
to acquire a skill or a knowledge. It could be as simple as someone teaching
English in a school or a training how to operate a lathe in a factory or training
how to create slide decks. Here the assumption is that the trainee is less
skilled and thus trainer is impacting his knowledge/skills.
Consulting is about
supporting organisation with specific domain expertise. For e.g. there may be
an organisation who has experts in Supply chain domain and may provide their
expertise to another organisation who need such knowledge/skill. Specialization
or niche is the key in consulting. Not all can be consultants unless they know
end to end about a particular domain.
Whereas Coaching is all about making the client realize their
fullest potential.
ü Coaching is about asking questions in order to
help the client find his own answers (without giving any advice).
ü When used effectively and appropriately, it raises
your awareness—like a laser on your thinking that cuts through a maze of
confusion and brings forth unknown ideas and options.
ü Coaching is not telling someone what to do; it’s
not giving advice or providing solutions. It is not the same as mentoring,
training or consulting.
