MENTOR or COACH ?
A Mentor and a Coach meet each other in the waiting room of their client.
The Mentor challenges the Coach with a question:
"In a tree, there are 4 birds. If a hunter shoots 4 shots, and if he has 1 chance out of 2 to reach his target, how many birds probably will remain in the tree? "
The coach thinks a moment and said, "One chance out of 2 with 4 birds, so 2 ? ".
"The idea is interesting and I like it. I appreciate your effort. However, when the hunter shoots, the noise scares all the birds and none of them remains. This is a fact and I am speaking from experience. It is good to learn from experienced of others in order to avoid such mistakes. By the time, maybe one day you could be a Mentor. "
The Coach thinks a moment and then says:
"I also have a question: on the terrace of a café, three women are tasting ice creams. The first one licks her ice cream, the second one melts it in her mouth, and the third one bites it. Which one of these women is married? "
The Mentor doesn’t loose his composure. He thinks of a trap, but it is senior so he’s supposed to know. In other circumstances he would went through hoops, but the Coach insists (this is the least of his drawbacks). Therefore the Mentor risks an answer, but firmly: “these 3 women are married".
And Coach to say: "The idea is interesting and I like it, but the answer is: the one who has a wedding ring.”
A Mentor is...
the one that has gained enough experience
to be credible and pass on his knowledge to less experienced persons.
A Mentor is a kind of guide: a preceptor. In etymology, Antonomasia Mentori is the preceptor of Telemachus (and friend of Ulysses). A preceptor is a person responsible for education and training of a child from a noble or wealthy family.
Thanks to his experience, open to a wide field of concrete examples and possibilities, he will be able to teach on the most appropriate decisions in relation to the context, and to be able to avoid mistakes. Today, this role will be all the more important and essential that we are fostering the juniors in recruitment.
The term of ‘Coach’ comes from the Hungarian 'Kocsi' and means "car carrying passengers."
The carrier or the transporter who accompanies travelers from point A to point B; the destination is chosen by travelers. The Coach is then not a guide, but a person who facilitates 'the journey'. His first skill is not his knowledge but the accuracy of his perception, his curiosity and his ability to manage the most unlikely situations.
The Coach...
knows the posture of 'not knowing';
he can ignore his own experience, and offer extremely precise framework fostering
the emergence of the most appropriate solution
(matching with the target).
In short,...
The art of coaching is to ensure the security and logistics of the "journey" in uncharted territory (and the more it will be chaotic, the more effective he will be).
The Mentor knows the roads and the passes for having already traveled through. He knows the shortcuts that save much time. In contrast he is less comfortable facing unpredictable situations; like this story above with ice-cream: sometimes the experience can disrupt the vision, especially when the imagination is obliged to fill the gap.
Clear enough?
So COACH or MENTOR?
Are you more sensitive to art or to ingenuity?
Do you prefer the ice-cream in cone or in pot? :-)
I hope you enjoyed this moment
