ABOUT | guydraper

"Developing a Coaching Cultural one person at a time"

Coaching and Mentoring people at work?

Many people, even senior-level executives, have never learned how to be an effective mentor and coach. Mentoring is not simply answering questions and giving advice; it requires a unique set of skills and practice.

Mentoring and coaching skills

As an effective mentor or coach you need to have, and be prepared to develop, certain skills including integrity, confidentiality, honesty and an ability to provide feedback. You need to be willing to commit your time and to have an interest in developing others. You also need effective listening and questioning skills.

Listening well allows you as coach or mentor to avoid making assumptions and to develop questions around what is being said (Thomson 2006). This builds rapport and shows respect, enabling the mentee/coachee to open up. Effective listening builds an understanding of:

where a person is having difficulties
what will be of interest
what they might need to know
how much time is available.

Coupled with listening, effective questioning promotes deep thinking, exploring contradictions, challenging commitment and offering new perspectives (Thomson 2006). Open questions are most effective as they do not pre-suppose the answer and encourage in-depth replies.

One model that can be helpful for you to use as a basis for structuring a coaching or mentoring session is GROW (Whitmore 1993):

Goal