Coaching and mentoring are development methods to support you to reflect, identify and achieve your goals. Both are valuable in enabling you to improve working relationships, enhance your performance, develop your capability and manage your career. These development methods also enable you to transfer your learning back into the workplace. Coaching or mentoring partnerships aim to complement rather than replace the support of a line manager.
“Coaching and mentoring can be effective approaches to developing employees. Both have grown in popularity, with many employers using them to enhance the skills, knowledge and performance of their people around specific skills and goals.”
– CIPD, March 2019
Coaching and mentoring partnerships support you to develop your skills and knowledge for both your professional and personal life. They provide powerful learning tools to support you in a way that is both timely and specific.
Coaching
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) defines coaching as ”developing a person's skills and knowledge so that their job performance improves, leading to the achievement of organisational objectives. It targets high performance and improvement at work. It usually lasts for a short period and focuses on specific skills and goals”.
St George’s coaching programme offers members of staff the opportunity to access coaching as an additional means of supporting personal development and advancement. Coaching offers individuals an opportunity to reflect on work-based issues on a one-to-one basis with an experienced coach. It is for individuals who are serious about improving their performance and changing the way they do things.
Mentoring
THE CIPD defines mentoring as ”a relationship in which a more experienced colleague uses their greater knowledge and understanding of the work or work environment to support the development of a more junior or inexperienced member of staff”.
Mentoring has long been accepted as a powerful personal development tool. St George’s mentoring programme offers members of staff the opportunity to work with an internal mentor over an agreed period of time.