Episode 109 – Mentoring and Coaching – Supporting Professional Growth

Susanne Madsen shares how mentoring and coaching are quite different, yet both emphasize a distinct approach to helping people realize their full potential, and how serving as a coach will make you a better project leader. Our work environment has changed significantly and abruptly; have you considered taking on a role as a coach or a mentor to encourage others to stay engaged and productive? Table of Contents 01:01 … Meet Susanne 01:44 … Coaching vs. Mentoring Definitions 03:05 … Are Project Managers Good Coaches? 04:08 … Who Should Mentor? 04:59 … Deciding on a Coach or a Mentor 06:25 … Good Coaching Skills 07:57 … Limitations of Internal Coaching 11:27 … Mistakes Made in the Role of a Coach 12:43 … Asking Good Questions 15:36 … Making Time to Reflect and Review 18:08 … Don’t Ask Why 19:49 … Enhancing Problem-Solving Skills 22:20 … Benefits of Becoming a Coach 24:54 … Can You Self-Coach? 26:15 … Choosing the Right Mentor 27:31 … Time Spent on the Relationship 28:52 … Who Sets Expectations? 29:33 … Benefits for the Mentor 31:03 … Organizational Coaching or Mentoring? 32:50 … Contact Susanne 33:47 … Closing SUSANNE MADSEN:  So when you study coaching, you become so much more conscious about your own beliefs, about how you come across.  And you just get better at building rapport and having conversations with others, empathizing with others, and not just talking about yourself all the time.  WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on our website or wherever you listen to our podcast.  We always love hearing from you.  I am Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates.  Welcome, Bill. BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy.  I’m excited about our conversation today.  This is going to be on a topic that I think a lot of project managers will benefit from.  I think there’s a lot of confusion, too, about coaching versus mentoring.  So we hope to really clarify for people, what’s the difference?  Are they the same?  And what advice do we have for both those who want to be a coach or receive coaching; be a mentor or receive mentoring. Meet Susanne   WENDY GROUNDS:  Right, right, so I was thinking, let’s do a podcast on coaching/mentoring. And the more I looked into it, the more we realized those are two very different things, and so we hope that our guest today can elaborate and give us some clarity. So her name is Susanne Madsen, and she’s a project leadership coach, trainer, and consultant, and we’re very excited to have Susanne with us in the studio today. BILL YATES:  It’s going to be outstanding, and so I’m going to be the one with the boring accent.  We have two wonderful accents, and then there’s me. WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  Susanne was telling us she lives in the U.K., but she’s Danish.  So, yeah, pick up some of that accent.  It’s pretty cool. BILL YATES:  Yes. WENDY GROUNDS:  Susanne, welcome to Manage This.  Thank you so much for joining us today. SUSANNE MADSEN:  Thank you for having me.  It’s a real honor. Coaching vs. Mentoring Definitions WENDY GROUNDS:  Coaching versus mentoring.  Could you give us a definition of both of them and just how they relate to projects? SUSANNE MADSEN:  Yes, and it’s good that we start with that because so many people use those two terms interchangeably. And I think we should say that there’s a lot of overlap, that both help us to relate to another person and help that other person move forward.  But we do that in different ways, whether we are coaching or mentoring. So coaching, as a coach, we like to say that we don’t give advice, and that’s one of the big differences between the two. When we coach somebody, we like to help somebody move forward by encouraging that person to find the answers for themselves, and there’s a number of ways we do that. With mentoring – and so I’m looking here at the black-and-white ...