Coaching. Mentoring. Consulting. Training. Counselling.

Since 2019 when I started to practice coaching and develop myself as a professional coach, I realised how little is known to people about what coaching is and about its significant benefits. 

I often hear, especially in environments where highly skilled professionals work, beliefs about coaching referred to as small talk, chit-chat or leisure conversation. The more these professionals are involved within hard core technical-matter centred fields of activity, the more is present the perception that coaching is selling words in the air. 

This is why I take time and space :-) in this post to explain the difference between the main personal development services: training, counselling, mentoring and coaching. In addition, in this post I would like to also address the mindsets people acting in the personal development field have and the impact created by each of them.

Research is saying that one’s career success is dependent upon the ability to understand oneself, manage oneself effectively, understand others and manage relationships. 

In practical terms, this means things like managing your own motivation, stress and mood, being able to negotiate and influence effectively, build and lead teams, manage effectively your relationship vertically both upwards: with your boss and higher-ups and downwards: with your team members, and horizontally with other management peers.

If you already are in a management position, most probably you have already noticed that management is not about knowing more technical stuff, although certain technical expertise is absolutely necessary for you to establish your credibility with the stakeholders relevant to you and get their adherence to the technical solutions you recommend.

And most probably, you also have seen colleagues about whom there is a clear shared organisational acceptance that they are not the best technical experts your company has, however you see them advancing faster than you, and so you keep asking yourself how is that possible.

The reality shows that to access a management position one definitely needs indeed “some” technical expertise (where “some” vary largely with the field, company or the existent culture), but there are other criteria that are assessed and make the difference in who is chosen to fill that management position.

And to name with one word, the difference is made by the mindset of the candidate. 

The way I realised the term coaching is not understood, the term mindset is also very little understood.

Your mindset is your collection of thoughts and beliefs that shape your thought habits. And your thought habits affect how you think, what you feel, and what you do. Your mind-set impacts how you make sense of the world (situations and people around), and how you make sense of you.

And to give you some examples, I will use the examples of the mindsets at play in relation with the mentioned services of personal development.

1. Counsellor - A counsellor is a person whose job is to give advice to people who need it, especially advice on their personal problems. Counselling is usually seen as a relationship based around a short-term issue or crisis, such as marriage guidance, trauma counselling, illness, retirement, being fired or made redundant, etc.

Counseling is focused on the psychological well-being of an individual. It is a retrospective based process of gaining understanding and insight into any difficulties an individual may be experiencing. It helps develop emotional resilience and address fears to adopt constructive life practices to bring about real change. Counseling can be practiced only by licensed professionals. 

A different form that I would include in the same category is psychotherapy; it is usually seen as addressing psychological issues involving emotional suffering or discomfort beyond the point of challenge, more into the field of trauma.

Anyone who would reach out for mental health support has the mindset of being aware they need that support, and of believing they do not have inner resources nor knowledge to cope with the moment. They are already in a scarcity type mindset, believing they need to bring in this support from outside for them to be able to stand up, and show up further in their own life. 

On the other hand, the counsellor or the therapist knows the person in front of them has a problem and needs help, and they will try their best to fix this problem for their client. So a counsellor’s mindset is a resolving mindset and all their actions will stem from the belief their client needs “to be fixed”.

2. Trainer - A trainer is a person, expert in their field, you will invite them to provide you with new knowledge and to fill a  knowledge gap. 

Therefore, during the training you will act from the conviction that an expert is teaching you and, therefore, you - most probably - will not question the truth of what you receive. 

You will also  expect to retrieve visible signs of your trainer’s expertise, and when you cannot perceive these, you may become either disappointed or feel mistrust. 

Furthermore, you will not contest the effort necessary to learn that body of knowledge, as the matter of fact you will most probably be motivated to learn, because you believe and have the expectation that this effort will pay off somehow in future. 

You will also be motivated to show curiosity and ask all your questions during the training because you do not expect to continue the relationship with the trainer beyond this training.

On the other hand, the trainer is the person who has the power - given by their expertise and higher knowledge - in the relationship. 

They expect right from the beginning you do not know something. Therefore a trainer will always operate from the perspective they are there to bridge a knowledge gap. 

They will deliver the training trying to push as much information as necessary, and will check with you the intellectual / theoretical grasp of the respective piece of knowledge.

The trainer knows that after training finishes, they have actually accomplished their mission, and it is on you to implement and apply whatever they taught you.

3. Consultant - Let’s say you have in your team or hired a consultant, and gave them a certain mandate. 

The consultant is there as a resource to you, let’s assume for simplification they have complementary expertise than yours (although this may not always be the case). 

It is normal for a consultant to carry a double agenda: an official one, given by you or your company when you hired them; the other, very personal, containing their own personal and professional objectives that may remain hidden to you or your company. 

You know that you paid “good money” and will push to see your problem solved to move forward. 

Therefore, you will put as much effort into the relationship with this consultant depending on the value you hope to retrieve, the money you paid for and the significance you give that amount, your appetite for risk, and the meaning the project you work for has for you. 

You might notice at this consultant different work practises or actions than you are used to, and may start categorising or labelling them (“not good”, “too complicated”, “unnecessary”, “very useful”) according to your own criteria, i.e. knowledge and perception; this might create various feelings for you, from enthusiasm when you see something useful, to total mistrust when you see something that “does not talk to you”.

You might feel the difference in power in this relationship, since the consultant has the power of an expert in their own field, and this might make the dynamic between the two of you imbalanced and overwhelming, adding a relationship complexity to the technical complexity already present.

On the consultant's side, they know right from the beginning they are the expert and it is that why they were brought in, and thus they feel empowered. They assume there is no in-house capability for drawing that solution, i.e. they expect you do not know anything or have little understanding of the mandate they received.

They know they are there in charge of generating a solution (sometimes THE solution) which will move forward your context, therefore they will act by showing often who they are in terms of their knowledge for “earning” their service.

They will also direct their focus to removing anything that might endanger their solution in front of the company decision makers, leading to them displaying different approaches to different people for fast effectiveness and for concluding successfully the service.

At times, they will act with personal agenda in mind and might not be eager to share it with the company.

In a nutshell, the consultant will act from the perspective of finding a solution and moving forward the context.

4. Mentoring is generally regarded as a relationship in which an older, wiser, more experienced person with a similar background or upbringing, guides another, usually in a context where the mentor has a considerable degree of subject or context knowledge.

Mentoring is very much used in the workplace: it tends to describe a relationship in which a more experienced colleague shares their greater knowledge to support the development of an inexperienced member of staff. 

Mentoring relationships usually starts with cases where certain solutions or certain ways of doing things introduced by the mentor are seen as successful since they previously worked. A good mentor knows to discuss the particularities of a solution within the context that generated it and to invite the mentee to look at their current context and recycle what they think might work in the new context, while discarding or adjusting what might not be directly applicable. 

A mentor is someone “who tells it how it is”, meaning that will see in a mentee someone who needs their input for success, and this brings a certain power imbalance in their relationship. 

Any mature mentor though knows how to elicit the solution from their mentee (as opposed to presenting it as the one and only) through open questions directed by the context and, possibly, by previous experience of the mentor. 

A mentor mentee relationship works best when the two participants move beyond the directive approach of a senior colleague “telling it how it is”, evening the power distance to a relationship in which both parties learn from each other. An effective mentoring relationship is a learning opportunity for both participants, encouraging sharing and learning across generations and/or between roles.

The mentee will benefit from the relationship by choosing to follow the mentor’s path toward development and requires a high level of accountability from the mentee to benefit from the mentoring relationship.

Mentoring relationships are used usually in the organisational context of succession planning, when a key in-house candidate will be groomed for personal development by a higher-up over a certain period to develop a sound approach to dealing with the context and decision making in the organisational job for which is prepared.

5. Coaching - Coaching is a development approach based on the use of one-to-one conversations to enhance an individual’s skills, knowledge or work performance.

International Coaching Federation defines coaching as partnering in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires the client to maximise their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.  

So, your coach is a thinking partner for you. This means there is an even relationship between the coach and you. Your coach sees in you infinite potential and ability. 

Your coach already knows that previously you have been able to pass over similar situations, meaning that somewhere inside you, well hidden, you do have the inner powers to go over this challenge.

With this belief at core, your coach will listen deeply and will pick pieces of information out of what you brought on the table of the coaching conversation and will encourage or invite you to see connections, meaning, significance as per your own mindset.

Your coach will use information you provide, and will not in any way attach any judgement nor any predefined direction to it.

Your coach will both encourage and challenge you, as suitable to you. However, any challenge will be done with your consent and you will retrieve in the coaching relationship a safe space to unpack, sift, sort, discard, replace and shift values, thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, feelings, and behaviours congruent with your personal and professional objectives.

Coaching space is also a space of safe experimentation. You will test scenarios and will see yourself acting in those scenarios. You will also define who you want to be in those scenarios.

Coaching will help you in a very non-directive manner to draw out what you know and are aware of and what you know but are not aware of about your mindset. In this way you learn things about yourself that you can integrate further at a different level of understanding or significance for you.

As you see, coaching is not about giving advice, nor about providing content, nor about healing traumas or neutralising significant emotional imbalances. In fact, a professional coach would always let you know whether in their best professional assessment your “case” is of coaching or needs a different personal development service.

Coaching is a very structured process that is professionally conducted by the coach and aims of guiding the person receiving the coaching through several stages of awareness, clarity and choice till redefining who they are and having installed their own choice at the level of new beliefs and new reactions.

Coaching is especially suitable in the following cases:

• Career development dilemmas
• Fast integration in a higher responsibility job
• Relationship issues at work, e.g. managing the boss
• Work/life balance issues
• Issues around confidence in handling oneself growth in a position with more responsibility or new position
• Handling stress or dissatisfaction
• Making tough and important decisions
• Reality checking, e.g. are they doing the right things as a leader

Hiring an external professional executive coach will be especially impactful also when you notice you put yourself many barriers to success, have often second thoughts, oscillate between alternatives and do not act, act with a different energy than it would beneficial to you (and you know it), feel that you often find yourself acting in resistance to instead of in line with, feel your creativity is lost, and cannot motivate yourself as previously.

Hope this overview, albeit long, clarifies with sufficient detail the differences between various personal development services and you could see from a different perspective how coaching can bring you the opportunity of accelerated personal development, and when to book a discovery session with a coach or to search for another specialist.

In case you resonate with any of the situations listed above, and feel and know you have untapped inner potential and see your performance not matching that potential, I remain open and willing to work with you for a 90-minute free discovery session for your strategic personal development plan. Book it here.