Mentoring has been with us since pa fall of the bus. In fact, it might have been that fall that gave birth to the mentoring process.

What “Pa” maybe needed was a bus-rider with greater experience & skill than himself to show him how to keep his balance on the steps going out of the bus. Or maybe just some knowledgeable person to tell him the minimum degree of sobriety needed before setting out on the journey!!

The mentor is an individual whose knowledge & experience is specifically applicable to what the client is trying to do (By the way, I use the word “client” to describe the person at the receiving end of a service. It is more respectful & less clumsy than “mentees”, which always suggests to me some kind of toothpaste!) You would be unlikely to get much benefit from providing a web designer with a carpenter for a mentor – or would you??

Seriously, the mentor’s values comes from their ability to show the client how to do things more rapidly and/or more efficiently, based on the skill that the mentor has & the experience gained in the long-time exercise of those skills. Thus mentoring frequently presupposes an unequal relationship, in that a senior person (the mentor) passes on specific information to a younger or less experienced person.

My observation is that mentoring is considered to be of small value in the 21st century world of business.

How do I come to that conclusion? People say that they need it but do not want to pay for it! No sane person expects to receive a valuable service for nothing. So – what happened to mentoring?

- Modern technology has raised the standard of communication expected from service providers. Many mentors are excellent at what they realize how to do, but cannot communicate their knowledge & experience to the client in an interesting, understandable fashion.
- Clients are impatient, but demand patience from service providers. Highly skilled & experienced people are often perceived as slow & methodical whilst “not suffering fools (ie clients) gladly”
- The elements that cause the mentor to be successful, when they were doing the job ten years ago have been superseded by changes in technology and/or methodology. It is now no longer “how things are done around here”. Many mentors have not adapted & updated their experience & skills, to be relevant to the client’s environment.
- Mentors are sometimes seen as agents for authority figures; cash lenders, managers, HR executives, & as such are viewed with some suspicion that erodes the mutual respect needed in any successful relationship.
- Hybrid mentors (these are managers who have mentorship as one of their key performance objectives, or owner managers who attempt to find time to mentor their key staff) often have other pressing priorities that make the process to become inconsistent in the quantity & quality of mentorship?

So… what’s good about mentoring?
It’s like chicken soup, it can’t do you any harm & it could do you a lot of good. If you can get it – go for it!! If it is good you should pay for it, & find a way of measuring the benefits you get from it, so that you can relate the cost to the value received.

Coaching is the new buzz word. Everybody who says anything to anybody else that is reputed to be helpful is a coach. In fact in the South African world of business we have so many coaches, all we are short of are some locomotives to take them away, & park them, in some far away, HR marshalling yard.

Coaching is a new profession. It does not yet have a global recognised set of qualifications or code of conduct or regulatory bodies for its practitioners. Coaching for business people was birthed out of recognition by leading American business schools that coaching played a significant role in the achievement of sporting people & teams. They decided to research the field of coaching & made those remarkable discoveries.

- Success has only something to do with the application of skill: the rest comes from internal mental & spiritual energy & strength.
- Success comes from within the individual or team; it’s not dependent on negative or positive external factors.
- Methodologies exist that enable & empower people to generate & sustain mental & spiritual energy & strength.
- Individual & team self-esteem & confidence can be kindled & nurtured to a point where it becomes self sustaining.
- COACHING IS THE VEHICLE THAT DELIVERS THESE POWERFUL ASSETS.
- THE WORLD OF SPORT COACHING CAN MIGRATE TO THE WORLD OF BUSINESS TO CREATE:
o COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
o ACHIEVEMENT OF TARGETS
o INDIVIDUAL AN TEAM GROWTH

Today, in South Africa, there are a number of reputable people & organisations (of which I am proud to be one) who are able to bring the benefits of coaching to the business community. Coaching is a collaborative relationship (like, we do it together!) between the coach & the client, for the purpose of generating high level performance in an individual or team.

Coaching is solution & goal orientated. You, the client, need to realize where you want to be & when you want to get there. You need to realize it specifically – what it will look like, sound like, feel like – maybe even taste like & smell like!

The coach will then take you through a process of examining the choices that you as a completely unique individual or team have, in deciding on the path that takes you from where you are to where you want to be. And then what challenges you need to face before you set out; in other words “In order to get to where I want to be, on my chosen path, what I must stop doing that I am presently doing & what must I start to do that I am not doing now?”

Then we hit the “New Years resolution syndrome”. In the euphoric glow of a new beginning, we are prepared to give up, & start to do, anything! “Whoa!” says the coach? “What about all those things that you value & all those things that you believe in – the product of your conditioning since you were knee high to a grasshopper.” Is the pastor’s son who respects & has internalised his father’s beliefs & values really going to open an escort agency, just because it is a quick way to make lots of money?

You, the client, are now given the opportunity to align your future path & your response to its challenges, with your inner value set & belief system. Once this is done you are ready to act.

The coach then works with you to co-create a strategy for following the path of your selection to the destination that you have chosen. Every two weeks for a suggested period of 6 months the coach will review progress with you & examine the feedback you are receiving from your business, family & social environments. This review & forward plan session usually lasts for two hours.

Coaches who are experienced will usually charge from R4000 a month per executive, owner manager or team.

FAQs
Q: What happens after the six month coaching assignment has been completed?
A: The individual or group should now have sufficient experience of the process to coach themselves. It is not desirable to create a dependency of the client on the coach. Alternatively a new goal may be set as the subject for a new coaching assignment.

Q: What happens if I don’t get where I want to be in the specified time?
A: The coaching guarantee is that you will either be where you wanted to be at the end of the coaching assignment or you will somewhere else!! Wherever you are, you will realize precisely how & why you have come to be there.

Q: Can I not be coached for less money?
A: Not really, the cost is related to the value received. Think what you pay for telephones, rent, travel & wages. How do these relate to a service that offers to empower & enable you, by accessing & skilfully using your inner resources, to achieve your business & personal targets in a time frame set by yourself ?

So …..Mentoring is like chicken soup, coaching is the main course, meat & potatoes or 5 kinds of fresh vegetables if you prefer.

Select your coach carefully – this is probably the most valuable business partner you will find. Enter in to the process positively & enthusiastically. Stay with it, experience the results, They will transform your business & your life.

Good luck & good hunting.

Ian J Jones
http://www.ianjjones.com