The Great Debate – Great results!

Thank you to all of you who contributed to our survey exploring the differences between coaching and mentoring!

We were delighted with the response and the opportunity to hear the views of HR/L&D professionals from organisations as diverse as Associated Newspapers, British Energy, Bupa, Motability, RBS and Lloyds banking group, Lloyds Register, St Paul’s Cathedral, Coaching at Work magazine, CMI, Office Depot, several Universities and even the Crown Office! Many independent consultants and professional coaches took part as well – adding to the mix of perspectives.

The answers are shown below in bar chart format so that you can see for yourself how each question was answered. We will be conducting more in-depth research to follow this up and explore some of the views further so we may be asking for your further participation. We have been approached by a number of publications for articles about our findings so watch out for those! A more detailed analysis of the full research will also appear on our website – so check back regularly if you have chosen not to sign up for our newsletter.

The Highlights
The majority (88%) of participants believe that both coaching and mentoring provide a good return on investment with coaching getting slightly higher ratings than mentoring. There is a higher importance given for coaches to hold recognised qualifications than mentors and coaches in the participating organisations are either internal or a combination of internal and external – only 17% use solely external coaches. Mentors are predominantly internal with only 16% using external mentors solely.

Mentoring is most strongly associated with acting as a sounding board and supporting long term career development, whereas coaching is focused on clear outcomes and objectives and is seen as a fairly structured activity. Surprisingly the majority of participants see both mentoring and coaching being carried out effectively by ‘ a good line manager’ whereas classical mentoring is often described in the literature as something carried out most effectively when outside the individual’s ‘line’.

If you have any comments regarding the survey, we'd be delighted to hear from you.