Coaching is -
Taking someone where they can't take themselves!
Coaching is -
Knowing your clients. Knowing what motivates them, what inspires or incentivizes them, and bringing out the best in them.
Coaching is listening and not only hearing.
Coaching means sharing your client's goal. It not only involves leading your coachee to the goal but also means reaching there with them yourself.
A Coach is a friend, critic, philosopher, guide, teacher all rolled into one.
A coach and the coachee both bear the burden in case of failures and equally share the credit after a successful venture.
Mentoring on the other hand is more about leading. Leading and guiding your client towards the set goal.
A mentor is a trusted and more learned advisor. The coach helps the clients achieve their goals but may not share them.
Unlike a coach, a mentor leads a disciple towards the goal by imparting a share of knowledge, wisdom, and experience. Whereas coaching is somewhat a learning process for the coach too.
There is a certain basic guideline to be followed, some lines to be drawn, some ground rules to be established before both coaching and mentoring.
Following the path laid is the key to success for both, the client and the coach/mentor.
1. Respect and Trust:
Both need to be earned by both, that is by the coach and the client.
The coach has to trust the client to follow the advice and the client has to trust the coach to give the right one.
2. Communication:
This is the key to avoiding misunderstandings. with each other and sorting out the ethics and rules in case of business and other kinds of coaching.
Communicating
3. Being judgemental is the biggest risk.
4. Don't just hear, listen!
Understand what your client has to say. Be attentive to all the problems and offer result-oriented solutions.
5. Coach and counsel your client into setting a reachable expectation. An achievable goal. Discuss and chalk out a timeline or a deadline. Work out the strategies that'll help both to fulfill the set task.
6. Welcome feedback and constructive criticism with open arms and a fresh accepting mind.
7. You are the pillar. Assurance that your client can lean over you for support at any given point throughout the journey to achieve the goal is the best assurance you can offer.
It is the key factor in earning your client's complete trust and respect.
A mentor or a good coach can stand up to the clients, be clear about the right and wrong, the Dos and Don'ts.
The mentor knows when it's time to keep you on track and when to push you over the line.
And the mentor is the only one who shows you the mirror at one moment of time and parties with you at the other.