If we think about the great sports coaches acclaimed by fans and media, and indeed by the boards of the companies that run football, cricket, basketball, ice hockey, then it becomes clear that a coach is focused on improving performance. The coach has a single goal. The relationship between coach and executive is tied up in the organisations structure and the coach exercises influence because of the position he has been given. As the recipient of coaching, the executive hopes to benefit from improved personal performance as an individual and as a member of the various teams in which the executive plays. The arena in which the coach and the executive interact is limited to the task in hand – the task that is to be improved.

Compare this to the role of a mentor. The mentor is charged with facilitating an individual as they self-select how to learn for any or all of life’s challenges. Generally, the mentee selects the mentor; the relationship is not forced upon the mentee by the shape of the organisation. The mentee reacts to the mentor’s words and actions not because of any organisational power play but because the mentee perceives the mentor’s advice to have value.

A mentor is biased in favour of the mentee – a coach is impartial, focused on improvement in behaviour. The coach develops specific skills for the task, challenge and performance expectations at work.

A mentor is a power-free two-way mutually beneficial relationship. Mentors are teachers and facilitators, allowing the protégé to discover their own direction. They let their mentees find their own solutions. A coach has a set agenda to reinforce or change skills and behaviours.

Even in formal mentoring programmes, the protégé and the mentor have choices – to continue, to stop, to change focus. If I’m your mentor you probably chose me. Coaching is much more likely to be imposed as part of an agreed organisational programme Indeed your coach probably hired you.

A coach is strategically assessing and monitoring progress and giving advice for effectiveness and efficiency. A mentor is much more like a sounding board.

So coaching and mentoring are not the same thing. If I am your coach, then you probably work for me and my concern is your performance, your ability to change, and I want to enrol you in the vision and direction of the hotel or hotel company that we are both part of. In realising my organisational requirement as a coach, I may need to add competence, inject elements provided by external resources, change my own behaviour, to better achieve the coaching responsibilities that my position places on me.