Coaching and Mentoring

Organizations nowadays are not free of the burden of their employees making costly mistakes. Should they fall behind schedule on a particular project or if their current skills are not sufficient enough to compensate for an adjustment that is needed by a client that the company is servicing, then either the company will waste an opportunity or it will suffer a loss because their employees were not well-equipped to handle specific situations. And because of this, mentoring and coaching have become a very strategic manner in which organizations train and manage their employees. In such a setting, the atmosphere is more personal as opposed to a seminar and it is quite helpful as some cases have attested to it. The goal of mentoring is to be able to encourage an organization 's employees to further improve themselves and the skills that they have already mastered. It has been defined by Eric Parsloe as "a process that enables learning and development to occur and thus performance to improve. To be a successful a Coach requires a knowledge and understanding of process as well as the variety of styles, skills and techniques that are appropriate to the context in which the coaching takes place" (Parsloe, 1999) As with all professional matters , it is prudent to be able to know everything first before you act. This is also evident in coaching or mentoring as it constantly seeks to determine what are the different sets of skills and techniques that will benefit the client or the one who is being coached. A good mentor would be able to quickly gain a better understanding of his or her mentee if the person is aptly transparent with regard to his tendencies, capabilities and aspirations. This will greatly help the coach or the mentor assess how a particular employee will react to a specific situation and will therefore provide the guiding person an insight as to how a particular coaching or mentoring process should proceed. Several reasons are evident as to why coaching is

References: http://www.mentoringgroup.com/08_98_PG/ideas.htm http://humanresources.about.com/od/coachingmentoring/a/mentoring_boom_2.htm http://www.coachingnetwork.org.uk/ResourceCentre/WhatAreCoachingAndMentoring.htm http://www.mentoringgroup.com/08_98_PG/ideas.htm