How do you know whether you need a coach, mentor, trainer or a consultant?
Being an entrepreneur is incredibly challenging, probably one of the hardest and yet most rewarding thing that anyone could do, there are days when you are on top of the world and then days when you wonder what the hell you are doing working yourself to the bone for little pay. One this is for sure that any entrepreneur could do with some support one time or another. One of the questions to ask is what modality of support is best for you at this moment? do you need a coach; a mentor; a trainer or a consultant? Or do you really need someone who can play in all four spaces…..
The subject of this blog is to explain what team ROCeteer think of as the specific description of each so you can best articulate to yourself the type of person you would like to support you.
Coach
- communication: asking quality questions that challenge, provoke, startle you to a new way of thinking
- compensation: paid relationship over a program
- coach mindset: you have everything you need you just need to unleash that potential and remove any hindrances to your own success
- coachee mindset: there is something holding me back, I know what I need to do I am just not doing it, I wish I could change my beliefs, I am not feeling motivated, I am not sure what to do next
Mentor
- communication: sharing stories of the mentors experiences
- compensation: typically unpaid
- mentor mindset: I have knowledge from my experiences that I am happy to share with people that would like to listen to my stories and hopefully get some value from them
- mentee mindset: I would love to get some insights from my mentors experiences.. I believe it will help me.. he/she has been there before
Trainer
- communication: sharing lessons, steps in a process, teaching people how to do things
- compensation: paid: webinar, workshop, book, online course
- trainer mindset: I have knowledge that I want to teach others and have them learn some specific skills
- trainee mindset: there is a specific skill that I want to learn and this person will teach me
Consultant
- communication: more about doing than communicating.. but certainly communicating the scope and cost of the engagement
- compensation: paid for an agreed scope of work with deliverables
- consultant mindset: I am happy to take over and do stuff for this person/company as long as we agree a scope, timeline and cost for the project
- consultee mindset: I am glad they are here doing this for me, I don’t have the time or inclination to learn how to do this myself
One way I usually explain this to people is through this analogy… Imagine you were stuck on a desert island and needed to get your own food, build your own shelter etc in order to survive… how would each of theses support modalities support you
The coach would test your mindset and ask appropriate questions to challenge and provoke you to be ready for the challenges ahead and believe in yourself and so motivate you and support your resilience. The mentor would sit down with you and share the stories from their past when they too were on a desert island and how they survived. The trainer would teach you how to build a hut, how to make fire, how to fish etc. The consultant would charge you to do all this for you.. to hunt, to build shelter etc.
Was YODA the ultimate in that he could be all four? he could ask amazing questions to get you to believe in yourself and drive change, he could teach skills, he could jump in and do if he needed to and he could also be a great mentor and share his previous experiences [would be good to find examples of all of them and have a separate blog?]