Many times as a Software Engineer you might have realized you grown your toolset of skills and feel you deserve a promotion. However, during the promotion cycle, your manager gave you feedback that for you to get promoted you need to grow others around you. This statement might have puzzled you, since when has your performance as an individual contributor had anything to do with other people? It is called the Individual Contributor path for a reason, no?

While you may excel in your technical skills and abilities, it’s important to remember that most software engineering positions involve working with a team. Collaboration between developers, product managers, and designers can lead to better products and make you a valuable member of the team.

Teamwork Series

We can define Software Engineering as the union of people, processes, and products to enable the continuous delivery of value to our end users. There can be no promotion if the team does not grow with it.

“Teamwork” is a series of posts where I will be sharing my learnings from topics surrounding working with teams like Team Cohesion, Coaching and Mentoring, Delegating and Sponsoring, and others from the perspective of an Engineering Manager. These tools will allow you to support and lead your tech team grow with you.

Mentoring and Coaching

In this post, I want to talk about the differences and practical approach to mentor and coach. Even though they are similar, they are situational depending not only on the person you are working with but your own experience and needs of the individual. We can define mentoring as the act of sharing your experience and knowledge with someone to create a learning environment. On the other hand, coaching is the act of guiding someone with open question to find the answers to their own questions.

My learnings

During early times as an engineering manager at Pivotal, I had the opportunity to meet Lara Hogan, author of the book Resilient Management. In this book, she talks about the different tools you have as a leader to help your team grow.

This book and her working sessions helped me understand the difference between mentoring and coaching, and the difference between being encouraging and being direct when it comes to the interactions you have with reports about their work. In this post I will focus on the first part, mentoring and coaching.

What is mentorship?

The goal of mentorship is to bring a different perspective to the subject of a topic you have experience with. Usually you explain by example what you did in their position and what was the tradeoff you observed and let the subject absorb and assimilate the situation they are in with your story.

In order to mentor you need experience in the field of the mentee’s problem. If this is not a possibility, you might need to find someone in the team that could mentor the person.

What’s coaching?

Coaching is when you navigate the subject in their own thoughts and help them ask the right questions so they map the path from the problem to the possible solutions. You create the environment so that the individual can get the right information from their own experience.

This is why if you are an expert of the domain you might lean the questions to your past experiences and deviate from the individual experience and thoughts. It is easier to coach when you do not know the domain of the person you are coaching.

What to keep in mind while mentoring and coaching

When mentoring and coaching, it is important to keep in mind the following key points:

Feedback. Providing feedback is an important part of coaching and mentoring. You should provide constructive feedback that helps the individual improve and grow.

Empathy. It is important to be empathetic when coaching or mentoring someone. You need to understand their perspective and be supportive of their goals and aspirations.

Goal Setting. Coaching and Mentoring are about helping the individual set and achieve their goals. You should help them identify their goals and come up with a plan to achieve them.

Accountability. You should hold the individual accountable for their actions and help them stay on track with their goals.

Trust. Building trust is crucial when coaching or mentoring someone. You need to create a safe and supportive environment where the individual feels comfortable sharing their thoughts and experiences.

Coaching Key Points

When coaching someone, particularly in a professional setting, there are several key points to pay attention to ensure the process is effective and beneficial for the individual being coached. Here are some crucial aspects to consider:

Active Listening. This is the most important aspect of coaching. You need to listen to the person you are coaching and understand their perspective. This will help you ask the right questions and guide them in the right direction.

Open-Ended Questions. When coaching, you should ask open-ended questions that encourage the individual to think and reflect on their experiences. This will help them come up with their own solutions and ideas.

Mentoring Key Points

Mentoring is different from coaching in that it is more about sharing your experiences and knowledge with the individual. Here are some key points to consider when mentoring someone:

Sharing Experiences. Mentoring is about sharing your experiences and knowledge with the individual. You should provide guidance and advice based on your own experiences.

Role Modeling. As a mentor, you should be a role model for the individual. You should demonstrate the behaviors and skills that you want the individual to develop.

Support. Mentoring is about providing support and guidance to the individual. You should be there to help them navigate their challenges and achieve their goals.

A Practical approach | The Framework

Like most problems of two variables, we can create a 2x2 table to help us understand when to use mentoring and coaching.

You know the domain You don’t know the domain
The individual knows the domain Mentor/Coach Coach
The individual doesn’t know the domain Mentor Coach

You don’t know the domain and the individual knows the domain

The advice is to coach. This might the best situation for bias since you are not an expert in the domain they need help with.

Even if the coachee is more knowledgeable in a certain area, a coach can still facilitate growth and development by asking powerful questions, providing feedback, and helping the coachee explore new perspectives and solutions.

You know the domain and the individual doesn’t know the domain

The advice is to mentor. You can share your experiences and knowledge with the individual to help them grow and develop in the domain they are not familiar with.

You can provide specific guidance, share knowledge, and offer advice based on their expertise, which is particularly beneficial for someone less experienced in the domain.

You don’t know the domain and the individual doesn’t know the domain

The advice is to coach.

When both parties are less experienced in a specific domain, you can still effectively support the individual’s development through goal setting, accountability, and facilitating self-discovery, rather than direct knowledge transfer.

You know the domain and the individual knows the domain

In this scenario you are advice to utilize advanced mentoring or coaching and peer mentoring.

In scenarios where both parties are highly experienced, the relationship can focus on advanced or niche topics by coaching or mentoring the details, with the possibility of mutual learning (peer mentoring).

Conclusion

Mentoring and coaching are both important tools for helping individuals grow and develop. They are similar in many ways, but they are also different and should be used in different situations. By understanding the differences between mentoring and coaching, and when to use each, you can effectively support the growth and development of the individuals you work with.

In the next post, I will be talking about the importance of Delegating and Sponsoring in the growth of your team.

References