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What is the difference between coaching and mentoring? It depends who you ask!
People seek distinctions between mentoring and coaching and arguments can become quite vehement between various schools of thought.
Why the Controversy?
Career counselling materialised during the recession of the early 1990s when commercial enterprises trained career counsellors and coaches. Executive, personal and business coaches came into vogue and life coaching became popular. Coaching and counselling became an industry, without regulation, anyone could set up a business as a coach or counsellor.
Counselling has therapeutic connotations and psychologists, quite rightly, wanted to protect the integrity of that term, so there was push-back and a move toward coach accreditation and qualifications. Coaching is still way ahead of mentoring in terms of accreditation with numerous reputable training courses leading to certification available through the International Coach Federation.
It is hard to find accredited mentor training. Some TAFEs offer single semester courses based on TAEDEL404A Mentor in the workplace. There are a few diploma courses that include mentoring, coaching and interpersonal facilitation or training, together. So mentors are usually only informally recognised.
Definitions
Today, coaching emphasises empowerment and so does mentoring. The definition of coaching has moved away from the skills and performance focus we associate with sports coaches, into the realm of personal development. Mentoring has moved away from the paternalistic pairing of an...