The Difference Between a Mentor, Sponsor, Coach, Strategist: Why They Matter In Achieving Your Career Goals
You may be wondering what the difference is between a mentor, sponsor, coach, consultant, and strategist and which one you should choose for your career. In this episode, I am breaking it down for you and showing you how each of them can help you achieve your goals.
In This Episode, You Will Learn About:
Differences Between Mentor, Sponsor, Coach, Consultant, & Strategist
How To Find The Right One For You
What To Ask To Achieve Your Goals
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You may be wondering what is the difference between a mentor sponsor, coach consultant, and strategist. That sentence alone can sometimes feel like a mouthful and which one you should choose for your career. In this episode, I'm gonna break down each of them for you and show you how each one can support you in achieving your goals and how to find the right person for you.
What is a Mentor
The first one I'm gonna start with is a mentor. If you are looking to get promoted within your organization, a mentor can be a great resource to align yourself. A mentor is somebody who is experienced in their role. Typically more experienced than the mentee. They offer guidance. They share advice based on their own experience.
So if you are looking to be promoted into a particular role within your organization, choosing somebody that's in that role could be an incredible, valuable mentor to have questions you might ask them:
What does a typical day-to-day look like?
What are some of the challenges that you run into?
What's been your biggest learning lesson since you've been in this role?
If there was advice that you could give yourself in year one, what would that be?
What advice do you have for me when it comes to developing these skills to move into this role?
A mentor is somebody that can provide guidance. And do not only ask somebody to be your mentor, also look at the possibilities of what it would be like for you to be a mentor to somebody else.
What does that mentorship look like? Maybe it's having a call every week, maybe every other week. Maybe once a month. Here are some tips when it comes to choosing a mentor:
Somebody who's been in their role for a couple of years
Somebody who's highly respected within the organization
Somebody who is willing to mentor.
Somebody who's been a mentor in the past or is mentoring several people.
You can choose somebody that is either inside the organization or maybe they're in a similar role within another industry. And they might be able to provide some perspective on how other industries approach that same role.
What is a Sponsor?
A sponsor is somebody who's got social equity. There's somebody who is respected in their industries, respected within the organization and they can advocate for you. And what I mean by “advocate for you” is when the time comes to get promoted, who's gonna be the person in that room that's gonna help influence or make the decision of whether you are the right candidate behind closed doors? Who's gonna be that sponsor who also helps with networking? Networking is extremely important when it comes to developing and accelerating your career.
What is a Coach?
So a sponsor is somebody that you can have in addition to a mentor; the third one is a coach. We see the word ‘coach’ thrown out a lot. And sometimes when we think of ‘coach’, we think of somebody that coaches us in our sports. And yes, that is an example of a coach. There are also examples of coaches when it comes to our career coaches, or when it comes to life coaching, mental wellness coaching, and business coaching. Coaches take a holistic approach by encompassing all areas of your life. Even beyond your career. A coach looks at somebody and asks:
Who do you get to be?
What are your career goals?
What are your personal goals?
What are some of those roadblocks that you might run into that may be holding us back from achieving those goals?
They look at the whole person. A coach is somebody that asks a lot of questions to help you develop the tools for you to be deciding what's best for you. They also provide a non-judgmental approach. When it comes to choosing a coach, whether it's in your career or especially in business, here's one rule of thumb that I've always looked at because I have several coaches. I actually have five depending on which area of my business and within my life the skills I wanna develop. And I take that same approach when I look at choosing a coach. I look at my coach:
How long have they been doing what they're doing?
What successes have they had?
What are some of the successes of their clients that they've had?
Do they have a coach?
I've learned that having a coach, especially in business is extremely valuable. Somebody who's 2, 3, or 5 steps ahead that can provide guidance on what works, and what doesn't come up and generate ideas. I have learned so much over the past two and a half years in growing my business. Strategies to build publicity strategies, to generate lead magnets, to build email campaigns, to develop the skills that I want to grow in the personal areas within my business, and always provide value for clients.
So I take the same approach when I'm looking at somebody. Who is a coach? I wanna make sure that not only are they successful in what they do, their clients are successful, but they're also continuing to invest in their development to get them to the next level because whatever they learn, they're gonna be sharing with me as well. It becomes that ripple effect of knowledge and expertise.
What is a Consultant?
A consultant provides expertise in the relevant industry. So there's a particular industry that you're in and you're looking to grow your business in that industry. A consultant might provide guidance. Now, if you're in sales, a consultant might be able to help you. If they've been an expert in that industry, they can share market insights. They might be able to share different strategies of what works, what doesn't work, and provide an overall overview of the market beyond the immediate organization that you are.
For example, my background's in medical sales for the past 10 years; I have been in medical aesthetics, and I work with some of the top organizations in medical aesthetics. Having that approach on a consultative approach, understanding what's gonna best support the sales reps in the organization, and looking at not only their organization but what the entire medical aesthetic industry looks like—where is the direction of the industry going, where is the market trends, what are some of the new products that are out on the horizon? —that's where a consultant comes in.
What is a Strategist?
Then there is the strategist. This can be a fun one. The strategist is somebody that helps you formulate and implement a strategy through setting goals, actions to achieve your goals, and executing the set plans.
In previous episodes, you've probably heard me talk about accountability and that 80% of us don't achieve our new year's resolutions or give up on our new year's resolutions by February. This is where a strategist helps in providing a strategy as to what's gonna get you to where you wanna go in your created plan and also implement something and hold that accountability to get you to where you want.
While all of these have their unique skill sets or unique approaches to helping you achieve your goals, sometimes depending on somebody's experience, their background, knowledge, and the different organizations that they're working with, they might overlap a little bit. Sometimes a coach, depending on their experience, can also be a consultant and a strategist because they have experience specifically in the industry that you are working in.
A mentor can also sometimes be a coach because again, they have that industry experience. They've possibly been in the leadership role that you are trying to promote. Also look at aligning yourself with mentors, coaches, and strategists within your organization and outside your organization. I really wanna highlight the outside of your organization. And the reason being is having a safe place where you can talk about some of the challenges that you are experiencing, whether you're in a toxic work environment, you're maybe kind of having some conflict with either a team member or even your manager. What I've learned from experiences, even though sometimes we think that we have a very deep trusting relationship and even though we think that sometimes there's confidentiality, I've learned over time from seeing some of the mentor-mentee relationships in an organization is that sometimes, we say things in passing and the intent may not be to hinder the relationship, but it's hard sometimes for us to remain completely confidential when we're working and know the people within the same organization.
When you're looking for somebody who could provide guidance, choose somebody who is completely out of your organization, and sign a confidentiality agreement. Somebody that you can be vulnerable with. Somebody whom you can have a safe space where you can talk openly and honestly about some of your challenges. That person can provide either questions or guidance on how to move through them, taking the right steps to move in that direction. Each one of these is extremely valuable. And if there's one thing that I've learned that I wanna leave with you today is that deciding you matter and deciding you matter by building the skillset. So you want to get to the next step in your career, invest in yourself. And when you invest in yourself and you learn different skill sets and you get guidance on how to achieve your goals, that in itself builds confidence because you're adding knowledge and skill sets to your expertise. And that will help you get to where you wanna go.
Again, remind yourself that you are in the driver's seat of your career. If there are specific roles that you want to apply to, if there are specific promotions that you want to go for, if you wanna start a business, it starts by deciding that you matter. And deciding that you matter means investing in your own personal development to help you in achieving your goals.
