Supporting employees and volunteers to; develop skills, grow in their role and move onto new jobs is rewarding. It also takes skill, and at times, can be tough. There are different ways to support people develop skills and grow in confidence. Two of these are coaching and mentoring.

Mentoring is: when someone with more experience offers advice and encouragement to someone with less experience. The advice is often around developing in your role or getting a new job.  

Coaching is: a partnership where the person being coached talks about what’s important to them and the coach helps them work out their own goals and solutions to maximise their potential. 

Here is a range of resources to help you coach and mentor others. 

What is coaching or mentoring?

• Listen to a coach explain the difference between coaching and mentoring here
• Use a poster to show the differences between coaching and mentoring here
• Find out how to lead a coaching conversation with a colleague here

Why convincing someone doesn’t work, and what does work instead?

• Listen to a coach explain why trying to convince someone just won’t work here
• Hear a coach share some tips on what you could try instead here

Didactic principles

• Listen to a teaching expert talk about the didactic principles for on the job training here

Language coaching

• Find out how to support people who are not native speakers or have language difficulties here

Coaching tools

• Find out how to discover people’s skills and strengths here