Managers, Mentors, Coaches & Sponsors

Domain: Personal Development - Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Managers, mentors, coaches and champions are all different roles in the workplace that can serve you in different ways. While these are relatively common and well known terms, they are often and mistakenly used interchangeably. Today, we are going to clarify the differences between each of the roles with the hopes of providing a little clarity.

Managers

This one is pretty straight forward. It's your boss. They have some level of formal authority over your work and responsibilities. They are generally responsible for organizing the work to ensure you and the rest of the team deliver results.

It's worth noting here that this is the only role we are talking about today that you do not volunteer for. Unless you're an entrepreneur or CEO, you have a boss. And even CEO's are accountable to a board.

We'll do a deep-dive at a later date of the multiple reasons why your boss should not be your mentor, coach or champion.

Mentors

A mentor provides you with guidance based on their knowledge. The knowledge in question can take the form of different domains. It could be technical knowledge, industry knowledge or a deft understanding of company culture/politics.

Typically, a mentor is more focused on your long-term career development. Because the guidance is long-term and may cover different topics over time, the outcomes are typically harder to measure.

Since a mentor is providing guidance based on their knowledge and experience, it can sometimes be beneficial to have multiple mentors for different knowledge areas.

Coaches

Coaches are similar to mentors; however, they tend to focus on more specific and shorter-term goals. Because of this focus, their outcomes are typically more measurable.

This is also why professional coaching is a growing industry while professional mentoring is much more rare. It is expected that your work with a coach will yield noticeable results and it is therefore more common to pay a professional for that service.

Sponsors/Champions

The main distinction between a mentor or coach and a champion (or sponsor) is that the champion also strongly advocates for you, especially when you are not in the room. While they are likely meeting with you and providing coaching and/or mentorship, they are also pulling strings with other leaders to get you the right opportunities that will help you further your career. It's possible for someone to have a champion working for them long before they even realize it.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement.

This week’s action items:

1. Identify whether you have individuals acting as mentors, coaches or champions in your professional life.

2. Make the distinction of who is acting in what capacity.

3. If you don't have a mentor, coach or champion, begin thinking about who you would like supporting you in this capacity.

4. Consider the option of having different mentors for different domains in your life.