The difference between coaching and mentoring.

Most senior leaders ask me for a mentor and end up needing a coach. Or they ask for a coach and quietly wish I'd just tell them what to do.

Both responses make sense. Mentoring offers the relief of someone who has been in your seat, who can say "yes, I did that, here's what happened next." It shortens the learning curve. It steadies the nerves.

Coaching offers something less comfortable. A person who hasn't been in your industry, doesn't want your job, isn't trying to hand you a map. Someone whose only role is to notice what you've stopped being able to see in yourself.

After 23 years of this work, here is what I've come to believe. Mentoring is invaluable when the question is "how do I do this thing?" Coaching is the right call when the question, often unspoken, is "why do I keep being the person who does it this way?"

At very senior levels, the second question tends to be the one that matters. The technical answers are usually already in the room. What gets in the way is more interior. An old assumption about authority. A relationship to being needed. A long-standing pattern with conflict, or with rest, or with being seen.

A mentor will sometimes spot this. A coach is trained to stay with it, even when you'd rather move on.

Neither is better. They do different work. But if you've already had three mentors and you still feel like you're meeting the same problem in a new suit, that is information worth taking seriously.

If this lands, message me. I work with a small number of senior leaders each year.