Welcome
Are you a coach, a mentor or both? No matter what your role, my take is you can be both if you know the difference and when to flip. Read on for leadership insights on how to hone your coaching and mentoring skills to ninja-like levels. I'm also sharing a sneak preview of a new program we're starting exclusively for professional coaches along with some updates on what I'm doing, what I’m writing and some stuff I love.
Please read, enjoy and share!
Are You a Coach or a Mentor (or Both)?
One of the elements I love the most about our leadership development programs like Next Level Leadership® group coaching and Developing Leadership Presence is the peer coaching. In both of those programs, the participants are expected to pair up with a peer colleague and spend 20 minutes a week coaching each other.
That might sound complicated, but it's not. What I want them to do is to take ten minutes each to ask their partner questions that get them off the dance floor and onto the balcony. One of my favorite ways for them to do that is ask each other three questions:
- What’s the most important meeting or conversation you're going to have this week?
- If that meeting is a wild, full-on success, what happens at the end?
- How do you need to show up to make that full-on success likely?
The beauty of that coaching model is that they don’t have to know each other’s business to help each other. In fact, I prefer that they not work in the same function, because I want them to draw the insights out of each other, not just give each other advice.
Coaching is a brilliant way to go when you want to help someone develop and act on their own insights. Mentoring, on the other hand, is a great approach when you want to share experience and knowledge that can help the other person leap frog their learning curve. The most effective mentors know that they have to go beyond saying, "Here's what I think you should do." Instead, they talk about times when they faced situations similar to the protégé’s, how they thought through the situation, the approaches they tried, what worked and what didn't and what they learned from all of that. The ninja level mentors then flip into coaching mode by asking things like,
- What's the same or different about your situation?
- What have you tried so far?
- What else could you try?
- What are your next one or two steps?
- How can I help?
So, if you know the distinctions, you can be both a coach and a mentor. I find myself toggling between those roles in my work. When you think about it, you probably do in yours as well. They’re not mutually exclusive roles; they’re complementary roles.
The Conduit
I expect to play both coaching and mentoring roles when our new program for professional coaches, The Conduit, launches next month. I'll be sharing what I've learned over 15 years of building a leadership development business and then coaching the Conduit members to develop and act on their own insights. I can't wait to get started. Click here if you want to learn more about how we'll apply both coaching and mentoring in The Conduit.
Stuff We Love
 “The less you know about a field, the better your odds. Dumb boldness is the best way to approach a new challenge.”
That’s my new favorite Jerry Seinfeld quote from a recent New York Times article about Seinfeld and his internet show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I love the show and I love how the article describes Seinfeld’s approach for learning how to do new things.
 Mindset
Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? How about the people you lead or love? Fixed or growth? If you care about maximizing potential, it's vital that you know the answer to that question and what to do about it. Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success explains it all. I’ve been reading it lately and can’t put it down.
Fun Home
 The last bit of stuff I love this month is that my best friend since third grade, Michael Cerveris, is on deck with his sixth Tony award nomination. Michael is the male lead in the new Broadway hit musical, Fun Home. I got to see the show and Michael when I was in New York this week. They’re both phenomenal and he deserves to win!
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