Why not Mentoring or Coaching for Employee Development

27 May 2025|blog culture leadership strategic-hr

Mentoring is most often defined as a professional relationship based on mutual trust in which an experienced, respected and enthusiastic person, shares his / her knowledge and experience with a less experienced colleague in developing his / her knowledge, learning, skills, personal and professional development. It is useful during development, transition, change and difficulties. I recall mentoring a Leader within an organisation and he developed in his confidence as a leader and assertiveness, which is the outcome he was looking for. It was a great outcome, over time, for both him personally, professionally and for the organisation.

Coaching is generally focused on improving specific skills and performance in a shorter timeframe, while mentoring is more relationship-oriented and focused on long term career development and leadership growth. Through talking to clients all the time, I find myself coaching them through difficult conversations such as dealing with conflict, performance management, redundancies, leadership and so on. Being able to provide my experience with difference examples of the situation they are in give them confidence as a starting point together with discussing different ways the employees could or would react and talking through how to handle that really helps. Debriefing the conversations and discussing where to next is always of great assistance and appreciated.

Whether mentoring, coaching or a combination of both. They both provide guidance for personal and professional development just with a different focus and approach. More specifically can assist with career advancement, job satisfaction, confidence and enhanced skills.

It’s not often I find Managers or individual employees using coaching or mentoring as an identified way to assist in employee development for their team members or themselves, as part of performance reviews or even outside that process really. We mostly hear about high level executives being coached or mentored rather than including it as part of their culture. So therefore, why not allow other levels within the organisation to access mentoring or coaching to maximise performance and productivity, to maximise retention, to aid in development whether it is as a result of succession planning or workforce planning processes or simply an identified need.

Behavioural Profiling can assist with the mentoring process adding insight which is valuable for both the mentor and mentee to use during the process. Depending on the goals for the mentoring process behavioural profiling can assist with acknowledgement of strengths and areas for further development and how to use them for their and the organisations benefit. Behavioural profiling can also assist in the alignment to role and / or career advancement, role played in a team to identify some areas. So, why not use mentoring and coaching more for not only Executives but all levels within the organisation.

At HR Business Direction we are keen to help maximum performance and productivity, so if you would like to discuss mentoring / coaching some of your team, whether that is your HR professional, Leaders or other team members, contact us here.

Leisa Messer BBus(HRM); GradDipIR; FCPHR
Managing Director | HR Strategist
leisa.messer@hrbd.com.au
07 3890 2066
hrbd.com.au