October was a month of celebrating business mentoring and a time for us to stop and reflect on why mentoring is so important to UK businesses.  I should start with a full disclosure, I am a fellow of the Association of Business Mentors, so it would be surprising if this blog article was anything other than a focus of the wonderful benefits mentoring brings. 

What Is mentoring and how is it different from coaching?

Let’s start with what mentoring is.  If you want to spark a lively discussion between a group of mentors, ask them to define the difference is between coaching and mentoring.  Those of us who have undertaken academic qualifications will be able to pontificate for an extended period about the nuance between the skills. 

For me, mentoring is a skill that incorporates coaching.  I think all qualified mentors have coaching skills however, I do not believe that all coaches are mentors.  Mentoring requires a degree of subject matter expertise.  I can mentor a person in running a business.  I do not have the skills to mentor a sports person (unless they want to learn how to play tennis very badly, but that is another blog entirely!).   

Why experience matters in mentoring

Mentoring comes in many shapes and sizes and mentors work with startups to large corporates.  I mostly work with business leaders who have grown their business to employ a team and would like support to move to the next stage of business growth. 

It is rare for someone to come to me with a mentoring challenge that is not first addressed by working with the person on an individual basis.  Time management, lack of confidence and/or a loss of belief in their own abilities, a team that is not fully behind the leader, uncertainty around decision-making and stagnation are some of the more common personal challenges that I regularly find leaders are facing. 

By working with leaders in a coaching capacity and helping them to rediscover their ‘mojo’ it becomes much easier to then support them through mentoring.  Mentoring is where I share my knowledge, experience and expertise.  That might come through drawing on my own experiences of growing and exiting a business, from my academic studies or knowledge I have acquired through mentoring.   

From personal barriers to business breakthroughs

The importance of leaders re-discovering their self-belief, their driver, or just simply themselves, cannot be understated.  I have been in their shoes.  I know how hard it can be to keep turning up when the problems seem insurmountable, when the business is growing the profit is not, when the staff team are functioning but not performing. 

Through mentoring, leaders can reconnect with why they started their business.  It can reignite passion.  It can drive courageous decision-making.  And it is here that business growth is found.   

By Tanya Petherick, ABM Fellow