The Growing Need For
Mentoring Senior Executives
By Ira S. Miller
Contributing Editor
irachemark@aol.com
points. Feel free to use them when selecting a
mentor for you or an associate.
In part one last month I shared three points:
1. Leaders are running so fast that there is less
and less time to mentor underlings.
2. A checklist for screening outside mentors.
3. Two case stories of successful outside mentoring.
The second of a
two-part series
exploring the topic
of mentoring.
This article will provide some tools for you to
decide how to best utilize outside mentors by:
•Distinguishing between mentoring pro-
grams and traditional executive coaching,
and
• Contrasting three mentoring programs to
help you better understand your choices.
My intention is to expose you to the elements
behind world-class mentoring. I will be using my
programs as examples to illustrate the above
The Difference Between Mentoring
and Coaching
A business associate and I were wrestling with
making this distinction a few years ago. We
talked over a few days and had a lot of coffee.
She then looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, “Ira,
what you do is applied wisdom.”
Brilliant! Seriously, that is a great place to
start to understand the difference between men-
toring and executive coaching.
True outside mentors relate to the leader,
their client, as a peer. The mentor probes, asks
questions, screens answers against years or perhaps decades of experience, and interacts with
the leader at a very practical level.
The critical skill is in knowing when to use
Socratic questioning, tell stories, reveal business
models, or just provide advice. Another absolute
requirement is the ability to tell truth to power
in a way that is constructive to the current situation. This is the definition of Applied Wisdom.
Executive coaches, on the other hand, ask
questions. All the answers need to come from the
leader, their client. This is because most executive
TABLE 1
28 | Coatings World
www.coatingsworld.com
January 2012
