https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mentoring-life-style-oleksandr-korytskyy
My friends know my attitude to coaching. I hate it.
Not in the sense that I hate it. I hate what coaching has become in the corporate culture: mandatory process which gives no idea what to do, but wastes your time with mirrored questions.
Not that it’s no good, it helps people that are not professionals to look like professionals asking very wise question “If you knew the solution….” And some other professional-sounding questions. And senseless when it comes to operational activities.
Want the example? Here you have some:
– I need to reboot server. What and how to do it?
– If you knew the answer to this question, which button would you press?
-…
– We need to buy critical hardware for the company. And I can’t reach the approver (Chief Accountant, Director, Manager, CEO – put yours here), I tried emailing, messenging, calling to work, mobile. It looks like I’m ignored.
– Did you look for any other solutions or way of reaching person or tried approving in different way?
Corporate culture usually is obsessed with KPIs. Any KPIs. Any KPIs that can be presented despite their illusionary weight. Including KPIs on how many times you coached somebody.
The issue is that of consiousness. You can’t use a hammer where you need a needle.
Coaching is a hammer, dealing with situations when you’re in dead end, at the Big Wall, or your creativity stopped. You crash brains by absolutely Zen questions with no chance of getting brains back.
Mentoring is a needle allowing you to embroid beautiful things by putting together the whole process of [self-]development. You create a staircase for an individuality to step from newcomer to senior, supervisor, lead, manager, director.
One of the best so far comparative presentations for Mentoring Vs Coaching from Management Mentors.
Mentoring vs coaching (pdf direct)
