Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Mentoring and coaching as part of a human resource development strategy: an example at Coca-Cola
Foods
David J. Veale
Article information:
Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by 272120 []
For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service
information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please
visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.
[ 16 ]
Definitions
Coca-Cola Foods views coaching as an interaction that has the purpose of enhancing
performance. By providing goals, techniques,
practice and feedback, the coach helps the
person increase competence and the probability of success. Coaching can occur down the
hierarchy, up it or laterally. In coaching, the
relationship is not of utmost importance,
rather the agreement that the coaching is
valuable is the critical element.
Mentoring, on the other hand, achieves its
purposes primarily through building a relationship. The mentor is usually someone
higher up in the organization, someone
who has experience and knowledge about
whos who, whats what, and how
things get done. It is a formal relationship
structured around the developmental needs
of the mentee. In most cases, the mentor
and mentee are from different departments
so that there are no direct reporting relationships involved.
The processes Coca-Cola Foods uses for
facilitating mentoring and coaching in the
organization are very different, as are the
goals and outcomes expected. We will review
each separately and then summarize by comparing and contrasting the two developmental approaches.
Mentoring
Mentoring at Coca-Cola Foods is the creation
of a formal relationship between two people
of different departments and status in the
organization.
The goals of the mentoring relationship are
to help the mentee understand the organization and their role in it better. With the help of
someone more experienced in the organization, the mentee learns more about the culture, mission and context of how things get
10
[ 17 ]
Some caveats
Types of coaching
Coaching
Coca-Cola Foods considers coaching a
method for increasing accountability, renewing commitment, and facilitating continual
learning. The expected results are more
highly skilled people who perform better and
have better working relationships. The oneon-one discussions with ones boss talking
about performance enhancement wires-in
accountability. A coaching process which
involves people discussing their performance
in relationship to business goals is a process
for building commitment. Since coaching
usually involves goal setting and feedback, an
environment is created which enhances continual and purposeful learning.
While the coaching process can facilitate
the above outcomes, the style and perceptions
of coaching may subvert the intention of the
coaching and create less accountability,
learning and commitment resulting in worse
[ 18 ]
The advantages of
coaching are many and
varied. Information is
provided directly, is relevant
and usually done in the
context so it can be applied
immediately. For the coach,
it may lead to such an
increase in skills that they
can delegate some of their
work to a coachee. The
disadvantages really reside
with the individuals involved
[ 19 ]
Summary
Coaching is a relationship activity designed
to increase performance. Generally, coaching
is informal and occurs between the boss and
the employee(s). Mentoring is a more formal
process, based on a one-on-one relationship
with someone distant in the organization.
While a mentor can use all of the coaching
types, their purpose is broader in scope than
that of a coach. Coca-Cola Foods believes that
both processes are an important part of its
human resource development effort and that
human resource development is a key to
building competitive advantage and to the
creation of a high-performing organization.
As stated previously, the struggle at CocaCola Foods has been to maximize and/or
optimize HRDs contribution to business
success. Because there is a great deal of evidence regarding the important contributions
which mentors make to career success, and
because Coca-Cola has tied both mentor and
coaching programmes to business goals, it
would seem that Coca-Cola Foods approach
is in line with both the scientific evidence and
with recent proponents of achieving competitive advantage through people (Pfeffer, 1994).
References
Bartlett, R.C. (1995), The mentoring message,
Chief Executive (USA), March, pp. 48-9.
Burgess, L. (1994), Mentoring without the blindfold, Employment Relations Today, Winter,
Vol. 21, pp. 439-45.
Burke, R.J. and McKeen, C.A. (1989), Developing
formal mentoring programs in organizations, Business Quarterly, Vol. 53, pp. 69-76.
Burke, R.J., McKeen, C.A. and McKeen, C.A.
(1991), How do mentorships differ from typical supervisory relationships?, Psychological
Reports, Vol. 68, pp. 459-66.
[ 20 ]