N001 : Coaching and Mentoring : Difference Between Coaching and Mentor

The roles of mentoring falls under two categories, one is the psychological factors and the other is the career related factors. The psychological roles are related to the personal aspects while the career aspect deals with all the career related concepts. It is related to the advancement made in the career goals. It stimulates the function that stimulate the career advancement for the mentee (Kram 1985). There are some examples of the same:

• This includes the communication of the formal as well as the informal realities that are related to the development in any institution.
• It includes a clear meaning of different paths of career like the medical paths, research path, administrative path or the educational paths.
• This includes the recommendation of the advanced plans for an appropriate direction of career.
• This includes reconsidering the developmental plans of the mentees and a regular check of the same is kept.
• The mentor assists the mentee to identify the obstacles that are often found in the path of success. The mentees are taught to tackle those obstacles and take effective actions to eradicate those.
• It includes the intervention on behalf of the mentee and it further includes the representation of their concerns to the higher authorities in case of special issues.
• The mentor helps the mentee to clarify the long-term as well as the short-term goals that can lead them towards the path of development.
• The mentor encourages the independent behaviour of the mentee but at the same time prepares the mentee to work without the mentor.

I had a great experience as a mentor in Post 16 Education. It was a rewarding experience for me. It was a two way learning process where I not only had to teach my mentees but I received valuable inputs from them as well (Brockbank 2006). This developed the sense of confidence in them. It helped them to identify their skills and personal ability and therefore they were able to develop them easily (Wisker et al. 2008). It was observed by Furlongs Maynard (1995), that mentoring is a resource of approval to another individual so that they can achieve something adeptly. It was stated by Egan (1990), that if the mentoring is not effective, the visible communication, paying keen attention and making the issues simple are not done properly. It is asserted by Boreen et al (2000), that a mentor should be able to design the learning method at a personal level. It is important for the mentors to understand the mentality of the mentees so that he might be able to improve the gaps that lies in the mentees. It is required for the mentors to confidentially assign concerns and practices.

From my perceptive I believe that it is important to select the correct mentor so that there can be good working relationship that would help a mentor to connect with the mentee and vice-versa.

It is necessary for the mentors to deal the mentees sensitively. This is the reason they need to be mentally sound so that they can devote time and effort to constructively assist another individual (Shea 1995).  

The concept of mentorship can be related to the concept of mentoring, networking and training Boreen, Niday and Johnson (2003).

Task 2:

Three strategies and resources used in helping the student and state coaching:

It is a matter of fact that a team that is effectively managed is like a complete machine that is well-oiled. In cases where the employees are on the same page and they are equipped to meet their goals and targets, a company pays the attention to improve the chances of constructing the customer-loyalty, this might include the out-shining the competition and increasing the bottom line. When a company have the employees who lack skills of leadership they can be compared to the cars with misfiring gaskets. Lack of leadership increases the failure of achieving objectives of any kind inside the organization.

Building a report of resources with the 10 employee-coaching tools will help an individual to be the most effective manager.

1. Know your student

A good mechanic always knows the positive as well as the negative sides of his engine. In the same way a good manager must know each every aspect of the members of his team. The mangers must make concrete efforts to know the members of his team. He should be aware of the strengths and the weaknesses of the team members. It is important to take not of the facts that motivates the members and what the challenges that they have to face. This can be done with the formal personality test. Each of the team members are expected to make a self-evaluation of the test. They are supposed to use their results in order to ensure whether each employee is used in the most effective way or not.

2.foster transparency:

Transparency in the team helps the employees to build trust and efficiency in the team. It helps the employees to build a healthy relationship inside the organization. The culture of communication inside the company is made better if a transparency is maintained. The transparency with the mentee can be asked by asking the following questions:

• How open am I to others and how do I allow others to know me?
• Did I clearly mentioned my team about my values and motivations?
• Am I clear and consistent in the way I make my choices and decisions?
• Do I ever infirm my mentee when I commit some mistake or when I discover my faults in my own knowledge base?

3.collaborations is key

The humans are generally competitive by their nature. There is competition in all the fields and the human’s needs to go through all kinds of competition in order to sustain in the world. The competition is in the field of education, sports, and events and in other fields of career goals. The second nature of this is competing within the office setting. A culture will be able to foster within the team inside the workplace by encouraging collaboration and recognizing the achievements of the group rather than individual accomplishments.

4.create clear objectives and goals:

It is impossible to clearly define the objectives and goals virtually without a strategic planning. Once a team is gathered an individual is required to start with the goals of big-picture. The members should be encouraged to think big and they should be taught to keep big goals. This is the best time to shift the attention from the dedication of the team to individual strength. This is the time when the commitment from the team can be expected. After the larger goals are identified a time line should be developed for the same that might include milestones and benchmarks that helps in measuring the progress of the team.

Why those strategies were used?

In the field of education that is in the case of school teaching those strategies are used to raise the quality of the teaching and learning process and enrich the culture that include:

• Teaching in itself is public and it focuses on the study of the professionals.
• It includes the thorough planning for instructions and it digs deeply into the content.
• It includes the plan of improving the students.

It basically involves two people, the teacher of a classroom and the coach. The work of the coach is to work one-on-one with teachers in their classrooms, providing guidance and training.

They work together in order to focus on the practical strategies in order to encourage the students to improve their learning. There are three agencies under it:

1. Schools welfare team
2. Head teacher’
3. Health and safety executives

The reasons for working with these agencies:

• To identify the barriers or limitations
• To identify the need of referral
• To provide specific support that is available for the accuracy of language and literacy.
• To provide the opportunity for the development of the numeracy skills.
• To develop an action plan based on the strengths and the needs of the learners.
• To facilitate actions to specialist support services for children and for young people that face barriers to learning.

Identification of my own strengths and the areas that I feel needs improvement to help myself in a future one-to-one role with

• The basic mentoring skill is the active learning. The mentor should listen to the mentees.
• The encouraging responses should be made in order to make it appear genuine.
• I generally use the techniques like looking directly into the eyes of the mentees, nodding my head, frowning or even smiling.
• I don’t interrupt my mentees while they are talking.
• I always show interest in the things they say.
• I summarize the issues faced by the mentees.
• I try to find immediate solutions to the problems.
• I first listen carefully and then I react. I try to make the mentees to be a good listener and then solve the problems accordingly.

Building trust

Trust forms the base of all relations. It is same even in the case of a mentor and a mentee. I should be such that my mentees might be able to trust me. In order to become trustable, I must:

• Keep confidences that are shared by the mentors as well as the mentees.
• The mentees and the mentor should spend appropriate time together.
• I should follow the promises made by me.
• I should respect the boundaries that is created between a mentor and a mentee.
• I should correct my errors.
• I should be kind enough to state the reasons of being wrong to the mentees.

Five (5) point action plan to help improve my own skills in relation to one-to-one teaching and learning situations (mentoring, coaching, and tutoring).

• I should build a positive attitude towards my mentee.
• I should choose the relationship with the mentee carefully.
• A mentoring contract should be designed and it should be maintained.
• The relationship of mentor and mentee should be maintained.
• One should be a good listener than a good speaker.

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