Establishing the contractual relationship

When people are thinking about being mentored or coached, they are really nervous about what could happen if they and their mentor or coach don’t get on. This, I think, is entirely natural. Becoming a coachee or mentee (I’ll call them ‘clients’ from now on) is stepping into a formal work relationship unlike anything that people have experienced before, so there is bound to be some nervousness lying underneath their curiosity. Yet there are key guidelines that helps guide these relationships.

Coaching & Mentoring (CAM) relationships are confidential, professional and have boundaries.

Confidentiality:

What gets discussed between coach/mentor and the client is not divulged to anyone else, and that includes the client’s line manager and the management chain above that. Clearly there are limits- if something criminal is divulged then confidentiality must be broken- but I have only ever heard of this in coaching/mentoring training events! With that proviso, the CAM conversations provide a place where the client with a place where they can discuss their concerns and aspirations knowing that their coach/mentor has their best interests at heart. Now, let me clarify that; there is a solid business purpose to this, founded in the belief that by developing its people a business can improve what it does and make itself more effective. So by having their client’s interests at heart, the coach/mentor is working on a business objective, albeit one that will have medium to long-term effects.

Professional:

The coach or mentor has, at the back of their mind, the necessity that the relationship is a business relationship, with the aim of improving business performance. But at the front of their mind they have their client’s development at heart. So the conversations between coach/mentor and their client are not ‘cosy chats’ to make people feel happy. They have a hard-edged purpose, to encourage and allow their client to think deeply about whatever the thing is they came to the coach or mentor to get. It may be that that is not, at first, clear. That’s entirely acceptable; the conversations will drive the client to clarify what they want and then for them to devise ways of achieving it. Which will, eventually, deliver improved business results.

Boundaries:

People do not live in silos. We come to work and bring our personalities and habits with us. So a coaching/mentoring conversation can move towards some quite personal subjects, especially when good rapport and trust is established (an essential element of the professional relationship). The coach/mentor is not a counsellor (unless they happen to have professional qualifications in that area beside their work-related skills). So the coach or mentor must know when the conversation is moving outside their capability, and draw the conversation back to business-related issues. I have seldom encountered this but still important to be aware of. To this end, it is good practice for the pair to establish a written contract of what the client wants; this helps focus the mind of both parties and is good professional coaching & mentoring practice.

Contracting for purposeful conversations

With this formal working relationship set up to address professional conduct, one of the most frequently asked questions about coaching and mentoring is ‘what actually happens in a session?’ The simple answer is that the coach/mentor and their client have a chat. Certainly there is a lot of talking. The important thing to understand is who does the talking. This is no ordinary conversation, it’s a coaching or mentoring conversation (think M&S food ads when you read that). That conversation has a whole lot more value and quality than a simple chat. For one thing, it’s a conversation with purpose. That purpose is to help the client achieve their goal, and that’s a conversation that few people will ever have really had.

Coaching & Mentoring (CAM) conversations are challenging, balanced and it has boundaries.

Challenging:

That’s not to say that it is necessarily an easy conversation. The coach or mentor will ask questions that may well be difficult for their client to answer. For example, if a client wants to progress but has spent many years in the same job at the same grade, there may well be a lot of barriers and beliefs that the client will have to identify and face before they can progress. I have had coaching questions put to me where I had to think really deeply before I gave my answer. The silence stretched to minutes and began to wish that my coach would let me off the hook by saying something. But no. They stayed silent and I felt I had to answer (after all, I had volunteered for this). However, having stumbled to an answer, this opened up a rich vein of conversation, where my coach asked more questions to explore my perspective. At the end I knew more about myself than I had before, and that was a big step towards achieving my goal.

Balanced:

Note the balance between questioning and listening by the coach here. Having asked the question, the coach says very little but allows their client space to think and talk. The coach listens more than they speak, asking open questions to encourage their client to expand and explain in more detail. The coach listens actively to their client- that requires concentration on what they are saying and how they are saying it. They give their client their full attention. This is not easy, because we all have a tendency to ‘zone-out’ as other thoughts intrude on our attention (“…did I lock the cat in by mistake?”). But, with practice, we get better at spotting the intruding thought and letting it go, choosing to send our attention back to our client. People that practice mindfulness may notice a strong parallel here.

Boundaries:

Underlying this asking and listening is the coach’s belief that everyone is the expert about themselves AND so has the ability to devise their own solutions. The coach’s role is to facilitate the creation of their client’s own solution.

The balance between talking and listening will be somewhat different in a mentoring situation, where the client is seeking the mentor’s experience. So, it is appropriate that a mentor spends more time talking, but the mentor won’t hog the conversation- there will be a genuine sharing of experience and views, as the client tests out their newfound understanding. Their mentor will encourage that, because that helps their client embed the learning.

Contracting in CAM

From my practice, it’s important to have a framework that establishes the type of CAM engagement the client will be having with me and what is involved in these sessions. Having this as part of the initial set up can help my clients to more confidently (and cautiously) participate in this type of professional services and support. Once established the conversations itself can be very wide-ranging. Importantly, I have found that there is usually plenty of areas to explore where my clients can learn about themselves and develop as a result. 

‘Epimetheus’ has had a varied career in teaching and the UK Civil Service, as a technical specialist and as a manager. He also spent 10 years as a volunteer mentor with undergraduate students.

He discovered coaching late in his career and has brought coaching practice into his management, and has been asked to establish a coaching culture into his small part of the UK Civil Service, the first step of which means establishing an internal coach/mentor programme. He is bringing his experience as a teacher, a technician, a mentor and a manager to bear to inform and improve his coaching practice. He is working towards formal accreditation as a coach.