Susanne Madsen shares how mentoring and coaching are quite different, yet both emphasize a distinct approach to helping people realize their full potential, and how serving as a coach will make you a better project leader. Our work environment has changed significantly and abruptly; have you considered taking on a role as a coach or a mentor to encourage others to stay engaged and productive?

Table of Contents

01:01 … Meet Susanne

01:44 … Coaching vs. Mentoring Definitions

03:05 … Are Project Managers Good Coaches?

04:08 … Who Should Mentor?

04:59 … Deciding on a Coach or a Mentor

06:25 … Good Coaching Skills

07:57 … Limitations of Internal Coaching

11:27 … Mistakes Made in the Role of a Coach

12:43 … Asking Good Questions

15:36 … Making Time to Reflect and Review

18:08 … Don’t Ask Why

19:49 … Enhancing Problem-Solving Skills

22:20 … Benefits of Becoming a Coach

24:54 … Can You Self-Coach?

26:15 … Choosing the Right Mentor

27:31 … Time Spent on the Relationship

28:52 … Who Sets Expectations?

29:33 … Benefits for the Mentor

31:03 … Organizational Coaching or Mentoring?

32:50 … Contact Susanne

33:47 … Closing

SUSANNE MADSEN:  So

when you study coaching, you become so much more conscious about your own

beliefs, about how you come across.  And

you just get better at building rapport and having conversations with others,

empathizing with others, and not just talking about yourself all the time. 

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome

to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  If you like what you hear, please leave us a

review on our website or wherever you listen to our podcast.  We always love hearing from you.  I am Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio

is Bill Yates.  Welcome, Bill.

BILL YATES:  Hi,

Wendy.  I’m excited about our

conversation today.  This is going to be

on a topic that I think a lot of project managers will benefit from.  I think there’s a lot of confusion, too,

about coaching versus mentoring.  So we

hope to really clarify for people, what’s the difference?  Are they the same?  And what advice do we have for both those who

want to be a coach or receive coaching; be a mentor or receive mentoring.

Meet Susanne  

WENDY GROUNDS:  Right, right, so I was thinking, let’s do a podcast on coaching/mentoring. And the more I looked into it, the more we realized those are two very different things, and so we hope that our guest today can elaborate and give us some clarity. So her name is Susanne Madsen, and she’s a project leadership coach, trainer, and consultant, and we’re very excited to have Susanne with us in the studio today.

BILL YATES:  It’s going to be outstanding, and so I’m going to be the one with the boring accent.  We have two wonderful accents, and then there’s me.

WENDY GROUNDS: 

Yes.  Susanne was telling us she

lives in the U.K., but she’s Danish.  So,

yeah, pick up some of that accent.  It’s

pretty cool.

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS: 

Susanne, welcome to Manage This. 

Thank you so much for joining us today.

SUSANNE MADSEN:  Thank

you for having me.  It’s a real honor.

Coaching vs.

Mentoring Definitions

WENDY GROUNDS:  Coaching

versus mentoring.  Could you give us a definition

of both of them and just how they relate to projects?

SUSANNE MADSEN:  Yes, and it’s good that we start with that because so many people use those two terms interchangeably. And I think we should say that there’s a lot of overlap, that both help us to relate to another person and help that other person move forward.  But we do that in different ways, whether we are coaching or mentoring.

So coaching, as a coach, we like to say that we don’t give advice, and that’s one of the big differences between the two. When we coach somebody, we like to help somebody move forward by encouraging that person to find the answers for themselves, and there’s a number of ways we do that.

With mentoring – and so I’m looking here at the black-and-white ...