Investing in People through Coaching and Mentoring (Part 2), By Segun Mojeed

My apology for the unintended absence of this column for almost two weeks. It was due to what we have come to know in this art as ‘writer’s block’ which may be due to jet lag and fatigue or just a happenstance. No excuses, I’m back! And I’m glad to report that the RCCG International Conference of Administrators and HR people at Stevenage were awesome. Delegates came from as far and near as Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, Nigeria, and the host country, United Kingdom. My wife and my number one supporter was present as the cheer leader. One other family member who made a long trip just to listen to me talk HR and give moral support is Dr Mrs Kemi Lawanson, Associate Professor, Department of Economics, University of Lagos. Great Akokites! This is family. We really appreciate you and your husband ma’am. Salute le familia! RCCG’s Assistant General Overseer (AGO) in charge of Administration and Personnel, Pastor Funso Odesola, declared the conference opened. Daddy, thank you for your gesture of goodwill towards me.

One very instructive takeaway for me as we kicked off the conference is that it was a good time to celebrate Nigeria on at least two, or may be three levels. First, RCCG is our own made-in-Nigeria brand which is occupied with spreading the gospel of our Lord Jesus all over the world, even taking the good news back to the land from where the gospel first came to us. Secondly, we got to the venue very early and long before the scheduled commencement time. We did this as it is customary of us in BezaleelConsulting, to give us ample time to check the venue set-up and ambiance, rehearse the slides and the embedded video clips, etc.

Lo and behold, we couldn’t get this done because as we were told, nobody resumes that early in this part of the world. It is their habit to start work, especially this kind (?) after that morning’s school runs. Naija I hail! For where? Nigeria never sleeps. Thirdly, needless to say that because the programme was billed to start at 9 o’clock, by the time I was doing my presentation being the first after the AGO’s welcome address, the video clips we play for fun and regularly in Nigeria during our seminars and training could not play in the UK. On my return to Nigeria, I have used two of those video clips, specifically last Tuesday at my half-day session with the CIPM’s Ready-to-Market (RTM) programme for young professionals coming into the HR profession. And the videos played well. Up Nigeria! Glad to be back home.

Let us resume the subject of coaching and mentoring. Coaching and mentoring is a pair of power-free two-way mutually beneficial learning for all involved. Coaching is mostly work related while mentoring is person-centred. One of my favourite definitions of coaching is that of John Whitmore who defines coaching as “unlocking people’s potential to maximize their performance. It is helping people learn rather than teaching them.”  On the other hand, one of my own coaches once tried to explain the mentorship process thus: “A mentor is like a sounding board, he or she can give advice but the mentee is free to pick and choose what he or she does.” He argues that the mentoring context does not have specific performance objectives.

With this argument, I slightly disagree. Mentoring objectives may not be specific work-related performance objectives as we have it in coaching relationships, definitely, a mentoring scheme without specific behavioural outcome is a nullity. Mentoring objectives are life-changing goals. For instance, ‘attitudinal restructuring’ as mentoring outcomes can be set in terms of performance targets that must be achieved for a mentorship programme to be considered successful. Leadership skills for young managers could also be a mentoring objective. I’m relying on extensive works done by the CIPD, UK and a bit of experience in noting some coach-mentoring differences and their complimentary characteristics.

Coaching directs a person to some end-results, the person may choose how to get there, but the coach is strategically assessing and monitoring the progress and giving feedback for effectiveness and results. Mentoring on the other hand is biased in the mentee’s favour guiding him or her with the mentor’s experience. Coaching is impartial, focused on improvement in job performance. The underlying intent of every coaching interaction is to build awareness, responsibility, and self-belief in the mind of the protégé or coachee. Coaches need not have first-hand experience of the coachee’s line of work. The coach can be an independent external professional with expertise in coaching, or a qualified internal coach.

Mentoring is customarily a planned pairing of a more skilled or experienced person with a less experienced person. In the workplace, line managers can use coaching techniques successfully in the management and development of team members while mentors ideally do not necessarily have line management relationship to the mentee. However, this is fast changing in the emerging work environment where the line of demarcation between coaching and mentoring is fast receding because both of these functions are now performed by line managers once they are trained in the art and the act. It is in fact now part of their job descriptions.

Mentors will often provide direction and advice and should ‘open organisational doors’ for mentees. Coaches would ask ‘powerful’ questions and not offer or give advice thereby allowing the coachees to find solutions by themselves. Effective coaching is intended to help the coachee to learn by ‘finding out’ rather than by ‘teaching’.  By engaging with an experienced coach, the coachee will develop insights leading to empowered knowledge and enhanced effectiveness. Mentoring involves helping mentees to develop their career, skills, expertise, and lives often drawing upon the experiences of the mentor in the process.

The Good Mentor*. Being a mentor provides an amazing opportunity to help someone else grow and develop in areas other than work and career. Mentoring could be in any area of life endeavours. The good news is you don’t have to be a Methuselah to be a mentor. It is not about your age. Do you have quality experience that others can learn from? Then, don’t shy away from the mentoring challenge. Just look around you, in your community, your worship centre, your school, etc; the harvest is plenteous! People are yearning to be mentored. The foundation of mentoring is sharing knowledge and counselling from your own experiences gained from travelling various routes of life to getting to where you are right now.

It is, therefore, a privilege to share with you the following not-too-hard steps to becoming a good mentor. The first, and probably the simplest, is leading by example. Being a positive role model, practising what we preach is a crucial foundational principle of an effective mentoring relationship. You can’t afford the “do as I say, not as I do” albatross if you are keen on results-oriented mentoring.

Another success tip is that you just must be available, making yourself a consistently available resource, a sounding board. Make time for your mentee, reaching out by all means – WhatsApp, FaceTime, emailing, lunch dates, etc. These things do not come easy, they take intentionality and resilience. Regular communication enables personality knowledge. You get to know your mentee’s strengths and development areas. This knowledge confers on you the cheerleading role, motivating you to encourage your mentee in the areas she/he struggles. Celebrate their accomplishments, verbalise your support, let them know you believe in them. Go back memory lane, how were you helped? May be you are one of the Homo sapiens specie that are self-made, that were never helped. What can you glean from your own development path that you can use in mentoring? Look inward, you have it in you.

As usual, there are development areas in every mentee, offer constructive criticism and feedback in right doses and measures. Focus your criticism on the behaviour or the activity and not on the individual. Be supportive even as you do this. Lastly, we must constantly challenge our mentees. We must never create the impression that ‘life is a bed of roses’. Encourage them to expand their capabilities through continuous learning, accepting more responsibilities, paying attention to details, volunteering, and seeking opportunities. By challenging them, you are encouraging them to develop skills and abilities that would be relevant when there are new opportunities in the future.

Today’s Last Line: Watch that your fart, it may become too expensive! Come to think of it, growing up, farting wasn’t common place as we see it today. In the days of yore, even your silent releases are eventually traced to you from the ‘aroma’ oozing out from your corner. Some mischievous adults would even move so close to smell your bum. Ha! That was child abuse. So, we were most of the time discreet in our releases and grew up being discreet with it even till date for some of us. But not so for our children. Now, they seem to know better, they do it with a smile and point fingers at, and sometimes away from the culprit. However, farting anyhow may lead to legal battles. As reported by the Evening Standard, one of London’s free evening newspapers, under the headline: The £20,000 Pounds fart? A Tesco worker has sued his employers after a colleague broke the wind in his face. Atif Masood is demanding the sum claiming the farting with its smelly environment aftermath amounts to “bullying”. The jury was still out before I left that environment.

Acknowledgement/Sources of Resources for this article/Notes:

1. * In my writings and in our classes, Mentor and Coach are used interchangeably as we call the more experienced person who lends a hand in the grooming or growing people process. We have also adopted mentee, coachee and protégé interchangeably for the one who is being coached, mentored or who is under tutelage.
2. * ‘The Good Mentor’ courtesy Smart Tips by Soundview Executive Book Summaries soundview.com
3. Clip arts and snippets from the Internet for embellishment.
4. A compendium of over 25 years of manuscripts of my thesis and lecture series in Talent Management and People Matters (unpublished yet) courtesy BezaleelConsulting Group Library bezaleelconsultingrw.com
5. Free London Evening Standard of Thursday 18 October 2018.