To coach or to mentor

More and more companies today realize the need to empower their people.

"In the past, people were told what they have to do by their bosses. That’s a traditional type of leadership – direct and somewhat autocratic. But with the onset of globalization, and all the transitions and turbulence that come with it, people now report to managers that may be thousands of miles away. For your company to take advantage of opportunities, you need to have people that are empowered to make decisions at all levels of the organization," said. Milagros Du Lagrosa, program director of the "Leaders and Managers as Mentors: Creating Partnerships for Learning."

The three-day seminar offered by the Asian Institute of Management from April 2 to 4, intends to walk human resource practitioners, training specialists, entrepreneurs, and managers involved in people development through the process of creating coaches and mentors.

Differences and similarities

"A coach represents a single-decker bus, usually comfortably equipped for long journeys. Seen in this light, as a vehicle for transport, coaching focuses on the movement of a person from a starting point to a destination," said Lagrosa. "As a people management tool, coaching focuses on the performance of a task. The coach concentrates on helping the performer learn how to achieve more."

Mentor traces its origins to "The Odyssey", written by the Greek poet Homer. With Odysseus leaving for the Trojan War, he entrusted his only son and heir Telemachus to a family friend named Mentor.

"Here, we can see the legacy nature of mentoring. Like Odysseus, great leaders are determined to leave behind a benefaction of added value. The old man Mentor creatively blended the wisdom of his experience with the sensitivity of a fawn to convey kingly skills to the young Telemachus without inviting resistance,’ said Lagrosa.

Objectives

AIM former dean Eduardo Morato makes a clear distinction between the two from his own experience.

"I am not the nice guy. Student choose me as adviser because they want to excel. People know they have to suffer the pain to get the pain,’ he said. "For me, mentoring is a personal engagement. My strategy is to challenge my student to face his/her fears and to increase his/her adversity quotient and learn the value of fortitude."

On the whole, Filipinos are better coaches than mentors. "As a coach, you need to be critical of your people’s work and be able to tell them face to face. We Filipinos normally shy away from this," said Lagrosa.

Coaching and mentoring, however, share the same objective of improving performance at all levels of the organization – by increasing enthusiasm and commitment; encouraging flexibility and creativity; facilitating teamwork in and supporting the engendering of creativity, open communication and cooperation; achieving managed risk-taking; increasing confidence, happiness and self-esteem in people; helping performers overcome barriers to performance; and facilitating self-motivation.

Programs

To date, two major companies have teamed up with AIM to promote mentoring within their organizations. These are the Pfizer Business Leadership Program and the Mirant Phils. Stewardship Program. Under these customized programs, participants are assigned faculty mentors.

"Investing in a coaching and mentoring program should be part of a company’s succession planning program. There are two ways to get corporate leaders – hire externally or grow them from within the organization. The latter is a good investment for companies to make, as homegrown leaders are already familiar with the company’s culture and will require no transition," said Lagrosa.

To help a company determine whether it is ready for a coaching or mentoring program, AIM has a checklist of factors and conditions that include a human resource philosophy that believes in developing people and in cultivating personal relationships.

"We want to bring in the human factor because it’s not all about technical skills,’ said Lagrosa, who was formerly a faculty member of Ateneo de Manila University and a founder-partner of consultancy firm, Transitions Asia. "At the heart of true learning is friendship. Work is a part of our life but not our life. When companies begin to realize this and look at the other facets of the lives of its people, then real learning begins."