Coaching and mentoring are both professional development tools used to support and benefit an employee. This not only leads to better outcome for the employee being mentored or coached, but also for the organisation that they work in. Coaching and mentoring are both vital development tools for communications and marketing professionals at all stages in their careers. Despite being used interchangeably, both have different processes and objectives.

What are the key differences?

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Qualifications: Coaches often have a coaching qualification to hand and have been trained to provide specific developmental support. Mentoring, however, does not require training. A mentor is someone with more marketing or communications experience than you in your sector or industry, who is able to depart their learnings.

Time: Coaching has a fixed time frame, whereas a mentoring program can run from a month to several years. This is because coaching has structured sessions in place to actively work on several points of development. These points have been pre-determined by both the coach and the one being coached. Mentoring is relationship based, and like all relationships, this takes time to build. The longer the mentoring relationship, the better it can be. 

Process: Although a coach may be certified in communications, digital or marketing, they will not necessarily talk about personal experiences. Some may draw on k