Teaching, coaching, mentoring, and leading

When I first got interested in leadership, I was not sure I understood what do leaders actually do? I was following various leadership gurus on their social media. I knew that leaders do not tell others what to do. Leaders are there to inspire. The leader’s door is always open. Leaders lead by example and walk the talk. These cliches may be worth listening to, but they did not answer my question.

What do leaders actually do?

I was lucky to have many inspiring people in my environment. Both at work and my personal network. I started asking these people (all more experienced than me). What do they see as leaders’ tasks? What is important? There were a few words that kept coming up. Coaching, mentoring, teaching – and, of course, leading.

I understood the separate words. At least, I could explain what they mean, in theory. But I could not understand the meaning. Is there a difference between coaching and mentoring? Teaching – how does it work once one is past the school years? I was clueless.

What was worse, all the very smart people around me could not explain this either. They used these words, but could not describe the difference between them. They said that they coached and mentored, but could not explain what exactly they did. The majority understood it as just a talk. The more experienced person talking to a junior.

I decided that I absolutely needed to understand the difference. If I was to become the best leader I can be, I simply had to understand what does coaching, mentoring, teaching, and leading really mean. It might have been overkill to get the full coaching certification just to understand the basics. That is exactly what I want to share in this post and save some effort for the rest of you.

Differences in the approach

Coaching, mentoring, teaching all mean that you are revealing a piece of the world for other people. You might show them a hidden corner, the angle they did not know about, or shed light on a previously dark area. The differences come in HOW you do it.

Teaching

According to Harward Business Review, “If you’re not teaching, you’re not really leading”. Teaching in this context is not the same as what we saw at school. Not the standing in front of the class and writing theories on the blackboard type of thing. It is much more informal and broader sharing of knowledge. How it works in very practical terms is that the leader creates situations, which are challenging and then shows or explains what needs to be done, even if that means rolling up the sleeves and getting hands dirty.

Compared to the other approaching, teaching is much more theoretical and the leader has much deeper knowledge in the subject than the persons they teach. Typically, teaching implies that there is one “right” way to do something. This simplification is not necessary a bad thing: in the beginning the full complex picture might be too overwhelming. However, this also means that teaching is not the best approach for all situations. Leader cannot be expert in everything – and does not have to be. Once the student reaches certain level of expertise, teaching is no longer the best tool in the toolbox.

I had a few leaders that really liked to teach. One of them – let us call him Thomas – gave his favourite book (it was about making great presentations) to every team member. Each time somebody was preparing a presentation, they could be sure Thomas would come by and ask them to list key principles from the book. Afterwards, they would have to demonstrate, how their presentation matches these principles. It was my most memorable learning moment. Until this day, I remember and apply these principles in my presentations.

Mentoring

Mentoring is often related to career advancement. There is probably some logic in it. While teaching is essencial for those that have certain knowledge gaps, mentoring is for those that have the basic knowledge, but need to navigate in much more complex setting.

From how I see mentors, they usually help with the following:

• Answer complex questions, e.g. about some specific things in the certain industry. Keyword here is complex. Generalising theories and simplification used in teaching is not applicable here. Mentoring is about situations that are rare, unusual, not standard.
• Share what and how they have behaved in some situations. It is much more personal approach, focused on the mentor as a person, not on the theories and principles.
• Opening doors and connecting to other people.

I have been lucky enough to have a couple of good mentors in my life. Personally, I have especially benefited from their help to connect to the right people. In one case, I was responsible for a project, which got stuck and I could not find any ways to make it progress. My mentor invited me to shadow her in a meeting, where I met a vice president who was an important decision maker in the area my project was supposed to make changes in. After having met this vice president in the meeting, I could follow up with him about my project: I had some context I could bring up and the door to our connection was open. Needless to say, after connecting to him, the project quickly got back on track.

Coaching

Coaching was something I knew the least about. I have noticed that it is often mixed up with mentoring and sometimes even teaching. I have experienced people asking me to coach them, but then expecting that I would answer their questions or tell them what to do.

In fact, coaching is exactly the opposite: it is about asking questions. That is why it works the best with people that have the knowledge and actually have the answers, but not always know how to locate them or need some help structuring the thoughts in their head so that they start making sense. According to the coaches’ community, “Coaching helps people to learn rather than teaching them.“

For me, coaching is the most difficult out of the three. It goes against the logic of how we as leaders naturally want to behave: share our knowledge and expertise and get a quick result. That is not how coaching works. When a leader coaches, they have to first accept that they might not have all of the best thoughts and answers. Using “ask first” approach was tough on my patience. But after a while I saw that my employees could indeed solve complex problems without my direct help, just with a gentle encouragement in the form of “What do you think is the best approach in this situation?”.

Concluding thoughts

Being a leader and leading is much more than teaching, mentoring and coaching. The reason I highlighted these three is that they were the most cited and the most “fluffy”. Moreover, while e.g. making good decisions is something that was always expected of leaders, it is only in the recent years that I started seeing and hearing more about the softer skills and expectations that leaders have to develop others, not just be excellent themselves.