[INTERVIEWER]: So do you feel that coaching or mentoring are effective professional development
tools? If so, why? If not, why not?
[RACHEL]: Yes to both actually. Although it's possible for them not to be effective and to take the
kind of why not first. In my experience, the least effective relationships are those that blur the line
between coaching and [Link] they're billed as coaching and actually somebody tries to
interpose themselves as a mentor really. [00:00:30] And that can just be unbalanced. It's not
necessarily what either party is expecting and those things can go wrong. But for me coaching I think
coaching works at any time in someone's career or life generally.
When they need Some kind of scaffolding, for something that they're facing, that they're finding
difficult to resolve, on their own. And it's helpful to have someone [00:01:00] else ask questions that
makes you think , makes you explore things differently. And it's confidence building actually to have
that sort of dynamic because you feel as those questions are asked and you formulate your answers,
you can feel the fact that you're, it's your own resources you're drawing on. So there's something very
satisfying actually about having it reflected back to you what your skills are and your competencies
are and that you can do this.
Coaching I think is really helpful, both as a formal sort of, this is a coaching [00:01:30] session, but
also as a style of management, so when you're working with your team to take a coaching approach,
resolving things in the team, I think is helpful. Mentoring is slightly different.
I think it is most helpful when somebody is taking a promotion. Or moving into a different kind of
professional sphere. And therefore, can really benefit from the kind of sharp and focused wisdom of
someone who's been on that path before. [00:02:00] And it's probably worthwhile having coaching as
well at that time but there's a real value in kind of picking the brains of someone more experienced.
Now, for example, when I became a director, I had two director mentors, one who was a DCS mentor
and one who was a DAS mentor, because I was really specifically needing, input at director level on
both those different domains.
[INTERVIEWER]: Okay, Yeah,So do you think that coaching and mentoring is embedded in this
organisation?
[RACHEL]: [00:02:30] No, not at all.(laughs)
[INTERVIEWER]: That was short.(laughs)
[RACHEL]: I could say a little bit more. When I was appointed as a director here, I was in the
process of completing my coaching qualification. And for that I needed to build coaching hours. And
so I offered people coaching
[INTERVIEWER]: I remember that.
[RACHEL]: So I could build my coaching hours. And people took that up and I think on the whole
found it helpful. And I certainly valued getting the coaching hours [00:03:00] and getting to know some
of my team in that way. But it was very clear that those people hadn't generally been offered anything
like it, experienced anything like it. And once I had completed my coaching hours from time to time,
people contacted me and asked, do you still coach Rachel?Would you be willing to mentor? And I
have coached and mentored people inside the organisation since that time. But it goes back to what I
was saying about opportunities not being evenly available, which is that those people sought me out,
asked the question, if you don't ask, you don't get, because I'm [00:03:30] interested in people's
career progression and was willing to do it, I took them on.
But I've got no sense that there are any other senior managers doing that. I've got no sense that you
can seek that elsewhere. And from time to time I've been asked if I can support or resource coaching
for other people when a particular line manager is interested in securing that for one of their members
of staff. And of course, where I don't have a budget for that, and where they don't have a budget for
that, if I'm not able to coach and no [00:04:00] one else is for free, then it doesn't get done.
[INTERVIEWER]: [Link], so last question. Would you like to see coaching and mentoring
become a formal process within this organisation?
[RACHEL]: My knee jerk answer to that would be yes. But my more considered answer to that would
be we should be careful what we wish for. And I say that because of the way that we formalize
processes in this organisation. So my worry would be that if we made it a [00:04:30] formal process in
this organisation, it would be mandated and measured, and if you didn't achieve certain things after
your coaching or your mentoring, then somehow either you would be marked down, or your coach or
mentor would be marked down.
So there's something about how we find a way, I think it should be, an embedded part of professional
development in every organisation that exists and I think it should be made available to people at
whatever stage of their career development they are on an equal [00:05:00] basis. But I do think there
needs to be a certain amount of pull you can't sheep dip everyone and coaching won't be right for
everyone at a particular point and mentoring even less likely to be right for people unless they're
making the kind of move I've described.