Page 211 - Retaining Top Employees

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Mentoring and Coaching Programs 199

• The coach shows. The coach is more concerned with the
medium term: “Here’s how to do this right and how to
improve in the future.”
• The mentor asks. The mentor is more concerned with the
long-term development of the individual: “What we can
learn from this? How would you respond to this differently
in the future?”

Another key difference between the role of a mentor and the
role of a supervisor is that of authority. A mentor will have no
direct authority over the protégé, who is free to take advice as
he or she wishes, to act or not to act in the light of what he or
she hears. A supervisor, on the other hand, will almost always
have direct authority over the employee, who will risk punish-
ment if he or she chooses not to do what the supervisor says.
A third essential difference is the nature of the communica-
tion between supervisor and employee and between mentor and
protégé. Although the term “instruction” is often used in both
circumstances, it’s more correct to say that the supervisor
directs or commands the individual, while the mentor advises.
This distinction between advice and direction is one of the
reasons it’s so important that mentors (in “pure” mentoring) are
not the line managers or supervisors of their protégés. Having
the same person play both roles will almost certainly cause the
relationship to break down eventually.

What Is the Difference Between Mentoring
and Managing?

Let’s bring all this theory down to what you do every day. Isn’t
every good manager a mentor also? Is it really necessary to dif-
ferentiate between mentoring and managing?
I would suggest the answer is “Yes.” It’s essential to distin-
guish between mentoring as a management tool and a mentor-
ing relationship. The difference between the two is independ-
ence: it’s not truly possible to have a mentoring relationship
with someone who also has direct responsibility for you.