Mentoring and Coaching
This domain tests whether you can separate coaching from mentoring, run a structured coaching conversation, and hold the boundary between development work and therapy. Items are usually scenario-based: a coachee stuck on a performance issue, a request for a mentor, or an ethical dilemma such as a coachee disclosing a personal crisis.
Coaching versus mentoring
Coaching is performance- and goal-focused, usually short-term, non-directive, and owned by the coachee: the coach asks rather than tells. Mentoring is development- and career-focused, longer-term, and the mentor does share experience, judgement and networks. Coaching assumes the coachee already holds the resources; mentoring assumes the mentor holds relevant experience worth passing on.
The GROW sequence
- Goal - what does success look like, specifically and measurably?
- Reality - what is happening now, what has been tried, where is the gap?
- Options - what could you do? Generate several before evaluating any.
- Will - what will you do, by when, and what support do you need?
Core skills
Open questions beginning with what or how; summarizing; reflecting the coachee's own language back; tolerating silence; and SBI feedback (Situation, Behaviour, Impact) that stays descriptive rather than evaluative. Contracting at the start covers goal, time, confidentiality and its limits.
Worked example
A coachee says: 'I'm hopeless at presenting to senior leaders.' A weak coach replies, 'Have you tried more rehearsal?' A strong coach contracts first ('What would make the next 30 minutes useful?'), sets a Goal ('At the next steering group you deliver the update without notes and land the ask'), explores Reality ('What happened last time? What did the audience actually do?'), generates Options (rehearse with a peer, cut to three slides, script the opening, get one director's feedback), then closes with Will ('I'll rehearse twice with Priya, record it, and send you the file Thursday'). The reasoning: each step moves from abstract complaint to observable behaviour, and the coachee commits to actions they named themselves, which protects ownership.
Traps that cost marks
- Giving advice inside a coaching conversation and still calling it coaching.
- Setting a vague goal such as 'be more confident' with no observable indicator.
- Skipping contracting and the limits of confidentiality.
- Drifting into therapy; refer onward when clinical issues appear.
- Ignoring organizational context - the coachee's manager, workload and incentives shape what is possible.