- Mentoring: sharing your experience so the mentee can leverage it for themselves
- Coaching: asking questions that helps a mentee reach their own solution
- Sponsoring: promoting the mentee for opportunities that will help them grow
For example, if your mentee is discussion submitting a talk to a conference, here are the different approaches:
- Mentoring: “Here’s what I did the last time that I applied to talk at a conference…”
- Coaching: “What do you think you could include within your submission to improve your chances?”
- Sponsoring: “This looks great, I’ve recommended you to the team organizing this conference!”
You can typically use any of these approaches for any given scenario. And each person may be more comfortable with a specific type of approach. What matters is what will work best for the individual you’re working with.
Figure out which approach you typically take and get comfortable with all three, so that you can use the right one for the right situation. Also, let your mentee know if you’re trying something new.
Learning Resources
Articles
- Mentor, coach, sponsor: a guide to developing engineers
- Most managers don’t know how to coach people. But they can learn
- Sponsorship HBR Article
- 5 Things Allies Can Do to Sponsor Coworkers from Underrepresented Groups