Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring

Natalie Lancer, David Clutterbuck, David Megginson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317429555
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

This is a fully revised and updated second edition of the successful Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring, also incorporating the best bits of its sister text Further Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring.

The book presents a comprehensive and critical overview of the wide range of tools and techniques available to coaches and mentors. With a strong academic underpinning, it explores a wide range of approaches, and provides techniques both for use with clients and to support professional development of the coach or mentor. Key features include:

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• Easy-to-use resources and techniques for one-to-one coaching;

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• Case studies throughout the text, helping to put theory into practice;

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• An overview of different theoretical approaches;

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• A dedicated section on 'themes for the coach' discussing coaching across cultures, evaluating your coaching and looking after yourself as a coach; and

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• Downloadable worksheets for each technique.

Techniques for Coaching and Mentoring 2nd Edition is an invaluable resource for professional coaches and mentors looking to enhance their practice, and for students of coaching and mentoring.

PART I INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS

• 1 Introduction

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315691251-2

The ideas and techniques in this book apply to mentoring and coaching equally. To avoid ‘clunkiness’, we use the word ‘coachee’ to be a catch-all for ‘coachee/mentee/client’ the word ‘coach’ to stand for both ‘coach’ and ‘mentor’ and ‘coaching’ to represent ‘coaching’ and ‘mentoring’.

Contextualising Techniques

It often happens that coachees become so enmeshed in the complexities of their issues that they are too confused to participate fully in the reflective process. They need a branch to hang on to, while they draw breath and steady themselves within the maelstrom of their thoughts and emotions. This branch provides a practical tool or approach that they can apply and gives them a lifebelt, so they can concentrate less on ‘what am I going to do?’ than on ‘what more do I need to understand?’

One of the keys to effective mentoring and coaching is to constantly develop your knowledge of different philosophies, tools and techniques, but not to hide behind them. Tools are devices that help us talk about issues, whereas techniques have a process attached to them, i.e. how to use the tool or a model in practice. Tools and techniques help your skills to come to the fore, and you may be able to dispense with them altogether as you reach ‘coaching maturity’ (see Part III, Chapter 22).

We suggest you work through the following questions to help you decide whether to use a technique in your context:

• Does the use of a tool or technique offer something that the to and fro of dialogue can’t, and/or does it get there more quickly than a normal conversation?
• Does it put ‘another party’ into the room – a piece of paper, a flip chart, or some other object that coach and coachee can interrogate?
• Is it easy to make clear to the coachee what is involved in using the tool or technique and how the process will go?
• Does it leave open the content of the exploration so that it does not represent a ‘queggestion’ – a suggestion disguised as a question?
• Is it possible to ensure informed consent from the coachee?
• Are our motives for using the technique about supporting the inquiry of the coachee, or are we being driven towards the technique by a desire to be seen to be clever, or (equally unhelpfully!) a desire to be seen to be helpful?

On deciding which tool or technique to use, ask yourself the following questions:

• Have you a good enough range of tools and techniques in your store cupboard so that you are not using a few too often, whether they offer a good fit with the coachee’s needs or not?
• Is it the simplest technique that will do the job?
• Have you tried it out on yourself or on fellow coachees or fellow supervisees?
• Are you responding to a recognised and acknowledged need or wish of the coachee?
• Can you adapt a tool or technique that you have used before so that it more closely matches the needs or wishes of the coachee?
• Does the tool or technique maximise the freedom of the coachee to come to their own conclusion about the issue and to have a say at all stages about whether to continue?

When using a tool or technique, we suggest that you:

• Explain the principles behind the technique. Are these agreeable to the coachee?
• Offer a brief, vivid explanation of the purpose, process, benefits and any downside risk of using the technique. Check again for acceptance.
• Set up and implement the technique collaboratively with the coachee.
• Simplify it, if that is what the coachee wants.
• Review it: Was it useful? Did it add anything compared with just talking about the issue?
• Write up your learning from the process in a journal. Think about whether the technique could be improved, or if you could develop your own technique around this issue.

The following questions are ones that we have found generative in developing techniques for this book, and in our own professional practice:

• What is the barrier I have encountered?
• How does it differ from issues I have tackled before?
• Why does the coachee find it difficult to deal with?
• Why do I find it difficult to help?
• Whose benefit is this approach for? Whose agenda does it address?
• What are the risks and dangers of this approach? Have I explored these with the coachee? What’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work?
• Is this approach really likely to move things along?
• Am I straying into areas beyond my competence?
• Have I exhausted my existing store of techniques?
• Have I engaged the coachee in thinking of new ways to tackle the issue?
• How can I capture the core of this approach so I can repeat it?
• How and when will I reflect upon the approach?
• How will I evaluate its effectiveness? (Can I obtain relevant feedback from the coachee?
  Is there some way of gaining third-party feedback? See Chapter 21 in Part III for further ideas.)

In addition to feeling comfortable with, adapting and developing your own range of techniques, we recommend building your own library of good coaching questions. We call them RHQs (Really Helpful Questions) because they oblige the coachee to pause and reflect, and examine issues, at a level well below the normal surface response. At the end of each chapter in Part II you will find relevant RHQs. Notice the predominance of ‘How’, ‘What’ and ‘Who’ questions, and the relative scarcity of ‘Why’. ‘Why’ takes us up into abstraction, whereas ‘How’, ‘What’ and ‘Who’ take us to the specific and concrete. Both, of course, are helpful in the right context. What is the emphasis in your own list?

Coaching and Mentoring

One of the problems practitioners in this field face is confusion of definitions: what one group describes as coaching, another would perceive as mentoring. This arises due to the complexity of coaching and mentoring and the plethora of different approaches. For example, there may be more in common between certain types of coaching and mentoring than between certain types of coaching.

The first recorded mentor was Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Athena took on the appearance of Mentor, a character in Homer’s Odyssey, to guide the young man Telemachus and his father Odysseus. Mentoring can be described as using one’s wisdom (the product of reflection on experience) to help another person build their own wisdom. Both mentoring and coaching mean different things in different parts of the world and have been used in markedly different contexts. For example, the US model of mentoring involves a one-way learning process where a mentor is a sponsor or advocate for a protégé, and is often an experienced individual in the same field.

In Europe, mentoring is usually associated with ‘developmental mentoring’ and is more of a two-way process. The focus is on helping the mentee develop their own high-quality thinking. The mentor has wisdom and experience, but uses them to help the mentee become courageous and develop their own wisdom rather than to impart knowledge. Similarly, some coaching is a process that is owned and directed by the coach whereas developmental coaching is non-directive. The coach will assume a questioning style helping the coachee to own the thinking and the learning/solutions.

In 2016, in the UK, there are greater similarities between developmental mentoring and developmental coaching than between, for example, sponsorship mentoring (the name given to the US-derived approach) and developmental mentoring and between traditional coaching and developmental coaching. The two can be thought of as being related to the context rather than the process, as Figure 1.1 shows.

Figure 1.1 Diagram showing the link between developmental mentoring and developmental coaching

In both developmental coaching and developmental mentoring, the coach uses their experience to craft powerful questions. Advice-giving is permissible, but not as a first resort and only in specific circumstances. The process of advising is primarily about providing contextual information, which the coachee does not have, so the coachee can make better-informed decisions. (A common complaint about ineffective coaches is their over-rigid adherence to never giving advice.) Much of the learning occurs in the reflections of the coachee/mentee between or long after sessions. Coach and mentor both have a duty of care towards the coachee/mentee. We will discuss this duty of care in the next section.

Sponsorship mentoring is hierarchical. The mentor’s influence and authority is important. The learning is mainly one way, from mentor to mentee. The mentor may be a sponsor, directly intervening to influence the career of their protégé, and is sometimes the mentee’s line manager. Transactional/instrumental (hands-on) help and direct advice play a large role. However, developmental mentoring is different as both parties’ experience is valued and both work to minimise power distance. The mentor helps the mentee to think and develop personal wisdom and to grow in self-efficacy. Learning occurs in both directions.

Developmental mentoring and developmental coaching are powerful because they focus on the individual and their own aspirations, in their timescales. They encourage people to raise their horizons, reinforcing belief in their own potential. They bridge the experience gap between generations. The focus of their conversations is on the quality of the coachee’s/mentee’s thinking and it can open up new worlds for the coachee/mentee.

Coaching and Mentoring in Nontraditional Contexts

Although much coaching and mentoring is conducted in the business context, new contexts in which coaching and mentoring techniques are being applied are opening up. Below we illustrate several contexts with case studies.

Maternity mentoring and coaching

The difference between mentoring and coaching is highlighted in the maternity context. Maternity mentoring predates maternity coaching by at least a decade. Maternity coaches are usually externally resourced professionals, who help mothers returning to the workplace to cope with the multiple problems and stresses of this transition. Their perspective is perforce generic. When they are most effective, they tend to have a strong counselling or therapeutic background.

Maternity mentors are typically women in the same organisation, who have been through the same transition. They are able to provide context, be available as needed (and hence more flexible in the support they offer) and keep the mother up-to-date with what is happening in the organisation, while she is on maternity leave. They are also a much cheaper alternative. Maternity coaches and maternity mentors may sometimes work together, but this is not common.

Case Study

Mentoring Case Study – Royal Society of Chemistry (UK)

With over 51,000 members and a knowledge business that spans the globe, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is the UK’s professional body for chemical scientists, supporting and representing members and bringing together chemical scientists from all over the world. In 2014, the Cambridge offices of RSC commenced a maternity mentoring pilot. This case study is a reflective account of the mentoring support received by one of the pilot mentees.

Gemma's experience

“RSC as a business is very supportive of flexible working and, following my formal request to return to work part-time, I was pleased to be offered a brand new role working three days a week. I knew that I would be warmly welcomed back, yet I found I was dreading the actual return to work. My departure had been sudden. I finished work unexpectedly for health reasons, without a formal close down and without a mentor. I had had a blast on maternity leave. I loved being with my baby and loved my new lifestyle. Two to three months before I was due back, I found the ‘Sunday night’ feeling creeping back.

On my first day back, people were so welcoming, yet I felt like the whole world had changed. Physically I was working in a different place, there was a new management structure and a new manager. So despite being with the business for six years, I remember getting to the front door and taking a big deep breath asking ‘Who am I in this workplace? What am I doing?’ I had never had to think consciously like this before. Throughout the first day, I found myself looking at the clock wondering ‘Can I go yet?’ I was simply not feeling myself – the professional self, the confident self, the ‘I know what I’m doing’ self.

I think I’d completely underestimated coming back to a brand new role (new to me, new to RSC), working part-time (my work had never been restricted by my hours before) and working for a new boss who had been at the same level as me prior to my maternity leave. I gave myself a month to adjust and feel better, but I knew that things weren’t right, so I approached the Training and OD Manager to ask if she might consider mentoring me. The relationship was born.

The mentoring support helped me to clarify what my issues were. I thought it was because I didn’t want to leave my baby, but I think the issue was more about my relationship with myself at work. I had been away so long, I had lost my confidence. The mentoring guided me through and took me on a new journey to return.

I am a mentee who thrives on tools and models. Specifically, some of the tools which worked for me included:

• Making a list of my strengths before I had the baby and strengths I brought back to the workplace when I returned from maternity. When I analysed it, I was more organised (because I had to be with a toddler!), actually more confident when making decisions (both for myself and the whole family), and much more self-aware (I noticed more about myself and work now). I recognised many issues were concerned with a lack of self-belief.
• I was asked by my mentor to write a letter to myself. Of all the things we did, I procrastinated over this the most, yet as I got into it, it was like giving myself a stern talking to. It was brilliant, so therapeutic, and it enabled me to draw on the things fundamental to me, my beliefs and context. I know this is at the heart of what I do and who I am.
• Coaching cards: We used a variety of coaching cards. They were a great preparation tool; ‘Which ones speak to you today, and can be explored through the mentoring? Over time, themes tended to come out.
• Mapping the network: The business is in constant change. It was really useful to prioritise this, to focus on who are the immediate people to contact, why that relationship might be important and what I wanted to get out of it. This tool also illustrated that I didn’t have to reconnect with everybody immediately and helped me to prioritise the key relationships I should re-develop.
• Writing a plan of your ideal day: This taught me a lot and made it ...