Mentoring and coaching
The Trust offers mentoring and coaching programmes to help colleagues grow and progress.
What is mentoring?
Mentoring is a relationship between two people with the goal of professional and personal development. The mentor is usually an experienced individual who shares knowledge, experience and advice with a less experienced person, or mentee. Mentees are matched with dedicated mentors from our mentor pool. Mentors support the individual and professional growth of our mentees to help them achieve individual and professional goals.
What are the benefits of having a mentor?
A trusted mentor can help you:
- Gain valuable advice: Mentors can offer valuable insight into what it takes to get ahead. They can be your guide and "sounding board" for ideas, helping you decide on the best course of action in difficult situations. You may learn shortcuts that help you work more effectively and avoid "reinventing the wheel."
- Develop your knowledge and skills: They can help you identify the skills and expertise you need to succeed. They may teach you what you need to know or advise you on where to go for the information you need.
- Improve your communication skills: Just like your mentor, you may also learn to communicate more effectively, which can further help you at work.
- Learn new perspectives: Again, you can learn new ways of thinking from your mentor, just as your mentor can learn from you.
- Build your network: Your mentor can offer an opportunity to expand your existing network of personal and professional contacts.
- Provide insight: Your mentor can offer valuable knowledge and experience of operating and working at the Trust.
- Advance your career: A mentor helps you stay focused and on track in your career through advice, skills development and networking
What is coaching?
Coaching is based on the principle that an individual is ultimately responsible for their lives and the results they are getting. If we acknowledge that we are responsible for something, it follows that we have power and influence over it.
For example, if you are not getting the results that you want at work, a coach may encourage you to:
- Understand the situation more clearly
- Develop new ideas or approaches for such situations
- Take constructive action that gets you the results you want
A coach will not tell you to go and do something specific, nor will they do it for you. Central to the philosophy of coaching is a belief in the potential of the person being coached to improve their performance and develop their own solutions.
Coaching opportunities at LGT
The Trust provides dedicated coaching support to improve colleagues’ opportunities for career progression within the Trust. A key aspect of this is career crossroad conversations, job interview preparation, or development based on feedback from previous interviews.
To support staff in this area we offer short coaching sessions with our internal coaching community to help you prepare for future opportunities. This support can also be made available to help staff who are new to roles and are looking for some support to help them settle in and be effective quickly.
Benefits of coaching
Recent research points out the huge benefits of coaching, particularly at times of change. People might see a coach to support transition into a new role, to achieve their goals, or to explore new ways of approaching issues.
Common benefits people experience from coaching include:
- Better performance
- Improved sense of direction and focus
- Increased knowledge of self and self-awareness
- Enhanced ability to relate to and influence others
- Stronger motivation
- Improved performance effectiveness
- Increased resourcefulness
- More confidence
Coaching available at LGT
LGT coaches are all trained, and many have completed an ILM coaching skills programme. They have experience in developing people and helping them to develop their own skills.
| Mentoring | Coaching |
| Ongoing relationship that might last for a long time | Relationship generally has a set duration |
| Can be more informal and meetings can take place as and when the client needs advice, guidance or support | Generally more structured in nature and meetings are scheduled regularly |
| Will share ideas and what they have done | Will help you identify your own solutions |
| More long term and takes a broader view of the person | Short term and focused on specific development areas/issues |
| Mentor is usually more experienced and qualified that the mentee, often a senior person in the organisation who can pass on knowledge and experience and open doors to opportunities | Coaching is a more equal relationship and generally not determined by the level of experience the coach has of the mentee's role. This professional distance can help to provide a thinking partnership with a different level of challenge and support |