2025-04-02 Mentoring vs Coaching

I think mentoring is valuable, I think coaching is valuable, and I think they’re two different things, though I often see them conflated. Roughly put, I’d say:

• Mentoring - “I’ve done Things Like This before, let me share my experience and knowledge and thoughts”

• Coaching - “I see you’re trying to do a Thing, let me help you work through that with questions and reflections and facilitation”

That is, you need to have relevant experience in the area to mentor someone on it, whereas anyone basically competent can coach. And I absolutely do not mean to be dismissive or downplay anything there - being a good coach is a real skill and I’ve had the fortune to know and work with some truly fantastic coaches. But I think you could pluck a random person off the street and give them a print-out of the GROW model and they could help someone, because coaching is primarily about the person being coached, while mentoring is about both mentee and mentor and requires that the mentor have at least some relevant experience.

In a more concrete example - I expect Engineering Managers in my organisation to act as coaches for Engineers reporting to them, but I don’t expect them to act as mentors - this is where other (usually senior) Engineers come in. And this comes from me not expecting Engineering Managers to be Engineers - I expect them to be technical, just not necessarily actually engineers (former or otherwise) - hence I don’t expect them to necessarily be in a position to mentor another engineer.

So

Language prescriptivism has its problems and I’m certainly not trying to claim this as some universal truth - but I think folks who conflate the two terms aren’t necessarily doing so consciously or knowingly. I think both techniques are valuable, and maintaining a clear distinction avoids losing sight of one or both.