I have a simple explanation to outline the differences between mentoring and coaching and this differs from most of the published work and ‘expert’ opinion.

Taking coaching first. If we use the sporting analogy which has always resonated well with my mentees; the vast majority of sports have people in charge of coaching/management who have been players, captains and very much involved in the sport concerned.

Sir Alex Ferguson for example, probably the most successful soccer coach ever previously played for Dunfermline and Scotland. As manager at St Mirren, Ferguson transformed a Second Division team into the 1977 First Division champions. He further enhanced his reputation at Aberdeen, where he guided the club to three top-flight titles, four Scottish Cups, and triumphs in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Super Cup. And then at Manchester United he incredibly lifted more than 30 trophies.

Eric Gagne was a fierce US baseball player and his ‘lights-out’ pitching set a record when he nailed down 84 consecutive saves for the Dodgers in the early 2000s. Since his last pitch in the Majors in 2008, he's coached the French national team and served as a pitching coach with the Rangers' Arizona League affiliate in 2018.

Sir Steven Redgrave CBE DL retired British rower, won gold medals at five consecutive Olympic Games between 1984 to 2000. He has also won three Commonwealth Games gold medals and nine World Rowing Championships golds. In 2018 he was appointed performance director for Chinese Rowing Association ahead of Tokyo 2020.

All of these leading sports stars have had extremely successful careers before using their experience to coach.

And this is, in my view, what best describes what we do when we coach others. We use our experience and our expertise to guide, steer and navigate others to the best approaches to a range of opportunities, challenges and problems. This for me is coaching. So, when a mentee says to me; 'well what would you do'? or 'what would you suggest?' I may put my coaching hat on (and say so too) and provide some guidance or advice based upon my experiences and expertise.

I say may, I may.

I am in fact generally very reticent to do this because from experience, I have found that for the vast majority of people a different approach is far more effective and this approach has the potential for people to really own their development, resolution and improvement. This approach is what I call mentoring.

Simply put, mentoring for me is about facilitating outcomes for individuals and teams. It is based on the belief and reality (in my experience) that most people can self-solution very well and have the answers to most challenges within them. I believe that great mentors in fact try to bring zero content to the discussion; they do not dip into their expertise and experience overtly.

Let’s take an example. I mentored the headmaster of a large independent boys’ school for over 5 years. What did I know about teaching, schools or education beyond by own youthful experience? Not much.

In theory I could of course have coached based on my experience of leadership, management, strategy and organisational development...I've got years of business stuff to dip into. But no, this approach, although helpful, would not have achieved the best outcomes.

Mentoring for me is about enabling the individual, through non-content questioning, to understand their challenges, develop options for paths of potential resolution and then move to action and progress.

So why do I believe mentoring (as defined like this) is so much more powerful? It’s simple; if people develop their own ideas and solutions, they are hugely more committed to taking them forward to implementation. You know the feeling, if it's your idea (and not someone else’s) you are simply more committed.

And this for me is how powerful real mentoring can be, enabling and facilitating individuals and teams to generate their own agenda for action. And then real change happens!

Mentoring v Coaching; they are not the same.