Q: What is the difference between executive coaching, career coaching, life coaching and mentoring?  

Because they are forms of related helping practices, they possess some similarities. Furthermore, there is a seemingly endless list of definitions for each one of them which can be overwhelming to anybody. Consequently, OrgLeader offers the following descriptions in order to provide a starting point for understanding the practices.

In general, coaching involves partnering with clients in a thought-provoking process that motivates them to maximize their personal and professional potential. Coaching views the clients as the experts on their lives and work. In a business environment, coaching is used for leadership development purposes, and it focuses on the success of individuals in their jobs and careers. Executive coaching focuses on these elements with senior management in organizations. Furthermore, some components of life coaching and career coaching may be addressed during executive coaching engagements.

Career coaching helps individuals identify what they want and need from their careers. This enables the individuals to make decisions and take the needed actions to accomplish career objectives in balance with the other parts of their lives.

Life coaching primarily addresses personal concerns in order to improve the quality of life for individuals. This includes personal goals and priorities, work/life balance, healthy living and getting the most out of family and other relationships.

Mentoring involves a more-experienced person providing assistance and advice to a less-experienced person over a period of time. It can also entail teaching the less-experienced person how to perform a job or role. Mentoring can be thought of as guiding from one's own experience or sharing one’s experience in a specific area (e.g., industry, career stage, profession, etc.). While experienced coaches may mentor new coaches, coaches typically are not mentors to people
they coach.¹

Q: For what purpose do companies use leadership assessment services the most?

The most common uses of leadership assessment services are:

1. A company wants to fill an open executive position and needs thorough assessments of final candidates.
2. A company wants to facilitate the career growth of leaders and needs these individuals to understand the strengths they possess and the limitations that they need to address.
3. A company is trying to identify successors for key leadership positions and needs to assess the pool of candidates to determine their readiness.

Q: Why is a thorough leadership assessment so important for hiring executives?

There are two main reasons. The first reason is the failure rate of new executives, and the second reason is the cost to the companies who hire the executives who fail. More specifically, 58% of senior hires wash out within their first 18 months, and the subsequent cost to an organization for one executive failure can exceed a million dollars.²

Q: Do most companies have a sound process in place for succession management?

Although the majority of companies believe succession management is critical to their sustainability, this belief is not necessarily reflected by what they actually do. According to the Human Capital Institute, only 30% of organizations have a pipeline for future leaders. Of the 30% that have a pipeline, the actual implementation and preparation to give emerging leaders critical job experiences fail to meet expectations.

Q: What is the best tool to use to assess leaders?

There is not one best tool, because the assessment approach will depend upon a number of factors including the purpose of the assessment and what the company wants to assess. Consequently, the best approach is the one that reliably and accurately assesses the elements of interest to the company which then enables the company to accomplish the purpose of the assessment (e.g., hiring a leader, helping a leader grow and develop or identifying successors for key roles) in a more efficient manner.

Q: Is a competency model really as helpful to a company today as it was in the past?

A competency is a personal characteristic that differentiates performance in a job, role or situation.³ A competency model is a framework of competencies that can be used as a foundation for a company’s systems, processes and approaches related to human resources and talent management. Because competencies are measurable elements that are usually defined in terms of behaviors, a competency model can help hire employees and leaders, develop them, manage their performance and identify successors for crucial roles.

Q: When should leaders be thinking about change management?

People often believe that change management is only appropriate for large-scale solutions (e.g., launching a new compensation system or implementing SAP throughout a company). Although change management is crucial for large-scale solutions, using it solely for these purposes can be a costly decision in terms of time and money. Regardless of size and scope, almost any solution implementation should incorporate change management components. The reason is that key implementation issues will need to be addressed such as employee resistance to the solution, getting people to understand the value of it, helping them to comprehend how it will impact them, and ultimately trying to get them to buy into and support it.

Q: How is coaching different from therapy?

Coaching is different from therapy in a number of ways. Coaching is a practice that supports personal and professional development driven by the individual to achieve specific, actionable outcomes. These outcomes are linked to personal or professional success. In achieving these outcomes, coaching deals with the present but is oriented toward the future.

By comparison, therapy deals with healing pain, dysfunction and conflict within an individual or a relationship between two or more individuals. The focal point is often a) resolving difficulties arising from the past which hinder an individual's emotional functioning in the present, b) improving overall psychological functioning, and c) dealing with current life and work situations in more emotionally-healthy ways. Therapy outcomes often include improved emotional well-being. While positive feelings may be a natural outcome of coaching, the primary objective of coaching is on creating actionable strategies for achieving specific goals in one's work or personal life.⁴

360 degree feedback: An assessment process that involves collecting input from multiple sources (e.g., boss, peer, direct reports, customers, etc.) using a survey or structured interviews.

Action learning: An instructional method that brings together a group of people with varied levels of skills and experience to analyze an actual work problem, develop an action plan and implement it. Action learning is a form of learning by doing.

Behavioral interviewing: An assessment technique used to learn about an individual’s past behavior in particular situations. This type of interviewing assumes that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior in circumstances that are similar in nature.

Blended learning: An instructional approach that combines different teaching methods (e.g., in-person classroom training, simulations, online modules, etc.) into an integrated solution.

Career coaching: A practice in which individuals work one-on-one with a coach to identify what they want and need from their careers. The individuals can then make decisions and take the needed actions to accomplish career objectives in balance with the other parts of their lives.¹

Change management: A systematic approach for handling the people side of change by applying tools, processes, skills and principles to achieve desired outcomes.

Competency: A personal characteristic that differentiates performance in a job, role or situation.³

Competency modeling: A method for building a framework of competencies for an organization.

Conflict management instrument: A tool that measures modes of handling disagreement (e.g., Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument).

Critical thinking instrument: A tool that measures reasoning skills possessed by an individual (e.g., Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal).

Decision style instrument: A tool that measures how an individual uses information and makes judgments (e.g., Decision Styles assessment).

Emotional intelligence instrument: A tool that measures how well people manage their own emotions and those of others as well as motivate themselves and others. This includes concepts such as self-awareness, self-control, empathy, optimism (e.g., Emotional Quotient Inventory).

Executive coaching: A practice in which senior-management clients work one-on-one with a coach in a thought-provoking process that motivates the clients to maximize their personal and professional potential. The clients are seen as the experts on their lives and work. It is used for leadership development purposes, and it focuses on the success of the clients in their jobs and careers.¹

Experiential learning: An instructional method where knowledge and skills are obtained through observation, simulation and participation.

Leadership development program: An educational offering designed to build leadership skills that is delivered on a regular basis for an organization.

Leadership style instrument: A tool that measures modes of leading people (e.g., Inventory of Leadership Styles).

Life coaching: A practice in which clients work one-on-one with a coach to address personal concerns in order to improve their quality of life. This includes personal goals and priorities, work/life balance, healthy living and getting the most out of family and other relationships.¹

Management simulation: A learning intervention for developing leadership skills that involves participants role-playing leaders in an organization.

Mentoring: A practice in which a more-experienced person provides assistance and advice to a less-experienced person over a period of time. It can also entail teaching the less-experienced person how to perform a job or role.¹

Off-site: A leadership meeting that takes place at a location different from where meetings normally occur in order to remove participants from their daily routines and center their attention on specific issues.

Organizational assessment: The process of diagnosing the functioning of a department, division or company in order to determine what is working well and what could be improved.

Organizational climate instrument: A tool that measures employee perception of the work environment
(e.g., Organizational Climate Survey).

Organizational development: A profession devoted to the improvement in organizational functioning via designed solutions that are applied using methods from the behavioral sciences.

Personality instrument: A tool that measures personal characteristics and individual motivation (e.g., Hogan
Development Survey).

Structured interview: A fixed-format assessment technique in which all questions are prepared ahead of time and organized in the same way for each person assessed to ensure precision and reliability.

Succession management: A process used by an organization to ensure leadership continuity in crucial positions, retain and develop human capital for the future and encourage individual advancement.

Survey design & administration: The creation and implementation of custom assessment questionnaires.

Talent acquisition: An organizational process that addresses the strategic recruitment and hiring of employees.

Talent development: An organizational process that addresses the growth and skill-enhancement of employees.

Talent management: An organizational process that addresses the complete cycle of recruiting, hiring, developing, advancing and retaining employees.

Team development: An approach that deals with the formation of teams and improving their functioning.

Sources:
¹Executive Coaching Forum; International Coach Federation; International Institute of Coaching; Professional Coaches, Mentors
  and Advisors association
²The First 90 Days by Watkins and Fortune magazine
³Competence at Work by Spencer and Spencer
⁴International Coach Federation