Feature

A mentor or a coach?

Sudipta Dev analyses the impact of coaching and mentoring, and finds out which is the more effective process.

The debate on the effectiveness of coaching vis-a-vis mentoring, has been an ongoing one. A coach and a mentor are integral to an individual’s professional and personal development—they are not substitutes and serve different purposes in their ward’s growth. The duration of their relationship varies along with the intended impact. While coaching is more short-term and specific, the mentorship programme is prolonged and holistic. The common factor is that both are guided by business interests.

Interestingly, while all experts agree that mentoring is more effective, coaching remains the most popular trend in organisations, despite the fact that it costs much more. Initiating a mentorship programme requires a different type of commitment and focus from an organisation.

Mentoring has a wider applicability than coaching which is short-term and immediate. “It is long-term, more relational, need not be between a supervisor and subordinate. It includes emotional issues and problems,” says Vivek Govilkar, Senior VP, HR and Training, i-flex Solutions. He believes that the success of both is ensured if implemented properly.

Arun Rao, VP-HR, AppLabs Technologies, points out the factors that differentiate coaching and mentoring:

• Time frame: While mentoring could be an ongoing relationship, coaching is more time-frame bound
• Formality: While coaching could be a more structured affair, mentoring is more informal and could depend on mentee’s need for help
• Experience: Mentor is acceptedly more experienced than the mentee (in the organisation —could be more skilled) while a coach need not necessarily have more experience than the occupational role
• Focus: The focus in the mentoring framework could be on career development while coaching focusses on issues at work.

Judging the effectiveness

It has been long argued that mentorship is more effective than coaching as it has a long-term perspective. The truth is that both serve different purposes and are no substitute for each other. Kalpana Srinivasan, HR Head, Aspire Systems acknowledges that coaching and mentoring have benefits of their own, “They both help develop individuals on various levels. Coaching helps people develop on the professional level while mentoring helps them grow personally. Both have long-term impact. Hence, its difficult to differentiate as to which process is most effective. Both play equally important roles.”

There are many factors that make organisations vouch for the success of the mentorship programme. Atul Srivastava, Senior VP, HRD, Datamatics, lists a few points:

• It enables managers internalise the work cultures and environment
• It assists employees in personal and career development
• It enables employees achieve the desired drive and professional competence

Both coaching and mentorship have common objectives—achieving high levels of personal mastery and guiding behaviours. It requires great personal commitment. “The effectiveness depends on the culture that supports the process. We at Fujitsu encourage openness, innovation, etc.,” says Rajkumari Achtani, HR Head, Fujitsu Consulting India. The company has just embarked upon a mentorship programme, which will be outsourced to a well-known management consultant.

Biju Nair, VP-HR, Four Soft, adds that good mentors understand and practice good coaching skills. Both are used to manage talent and improve performance. “Mentoring is used to develop future leaders and this is a way in which knowledge is shared and preserved.”

While the effectiveness of mentorship programme has been proven time and again, coaching is the more popular process normally adopted by IT organisations in India to develop talent. Implementing a mentorship programme and finding the right people to drive is not an easy task and takes prolonged planning by an organisation.

Large, tier-1 companies put a lot of emphasis on organisational mentoring. Dr Shurjo Ghosh, COO of RS Software explains why, “In large organisations, young employees feel lost. Teams and bosses often change very rapidly and young professionals feel a kind of emotional stress as they switch from one cultural silo to another. Someone at the highest level who possesses a well-recognised personal brand, can help a lot by mentoring others.” Coaching, on the other hand, is mostly done by the immediate manager and is usually role-dependent.

Ghosh rues that unfortunately, most IT professionals have little business school training that would help them in managing the people side of a project rather than just managing the process and technology aspects which they are more comfortable handling. “If trained, the boss can be a good coach, but can seldom be a good mentor because at the end of the day he also does your appraisal,” he reminds.

Training for mentors and coaches

Do mentors and coaches themselves need to be continuously trained to guide other people? “Since mentors act as career guides and counsellors to employees in the organisation, they carry a high level of responsibility. We have regular sessions where the mentors are provided guidelines on being a career guide and counsellor, discussing progress, passing on knowledge and experience at the same time maintaining confidentiality, and in providing effective feedback,” answers Atul Srivastava. He explains that the mentor is not only passing on knowledge related to software or technology, but also in helping the mentee develop a positive mental attitude, enhance personal aptitude and provide inspiration. At the same time, mentors are reminded not to discuss issues that do not concern their mentee, like revenues, salary packages, individual-related grievance, and organisational policies.

Srinivasan albeit believes that mentors do not need training to guide others because they are people who have undergone various such situations before and it is out of experience that they imbibe values and guide juniors, where as certain companies appoint coaches who have prior experience or have been coached on a particular subject/issue.

Business interests

All training programmes are guided by business interests, but it is important to understand the business focus of mentorship programmes. An organisation like Synygy India has training programme for mentors which comprises knowledge sharing. “It is effective in retaining good employees and derives positive feedback. It ensures right trained resources and saves a lot of time,” says Jaivardhan Iyer, Senior Consultant-Professional Services, Synygy India.

Business goals drive the coaching and mentorship programmes. “If the objective of mentoring is not to create brand ambassadors within the organisation or arrest attrition or transforming it into a learning and high performing organisation, then there’s no way one can measure the effectiveness of coaching or mentoring. These activities are usually conducted by high cost people, so there has to be clear ROI for the same,” states Ghosh.

Finding a good coach/ mentor

It is easier to find a good coach, but mentors are the rare ones in any organisation. There are only that many mentors in a company who possess the maturity, the skills and the interest to personally guide people. “IT professionals are not known for their communication or HR skills, or even worldly wisdom. These are critical skills required to deliver both the coaching and mentoring functions, particularly the latter,” admits Ghosh.

Most of these people are senior professionals who are extremely busy and finding the time for mentoring other associates is not easy. “It is a voluntary service and the available set is small and they need to have time available. Typically people selected as mentors are old-timers, they should know the i-flex culture,” states Govilkar. At i-flex, mentorship programme has been implemented in small pockets and the response has been very encouraging.

Making the perfect match between a mentor and a mentee is a delicate task and mistakes sometimes happen. Synygy India, which has a highly evolved mentorship programme tries to ensure that both have some level of background equanimity as far as educational qualifications are concerned. At Synygy everyone has a mentor, while someone who is fresh out of college is guided by an individual who has 1-2 years of experience, the latter is himself mentored by somebody more senior. “A mentee at all levels needs to look up to his mentor. This we try to ensure,” states Iyer. “If there is a problem we speak to both the individuals and try to understand the reason behind the mismatch,” he adds.

The biggest disadvantage in an organisation is that as there are very few senior people who have to mentor too many individuals this sometimes brings down the quality of the relationship.