One of the most fascinating conversations on my recent trip to Jordan as a volunteer mentor with Mowgli involved the definition of the word “mentoring”… and started with confusion, as so many great learning experiences do.

As a well-trained and experienced coach, I’m used to asking lots of great questions to help people find their own ways to achieve results. That’s ‘coaching’ in my book. So I had been a little nervous about doing something called ‘mentoring’ with a young Jordanian entrepreneur.

“Mentoring must mean giving advice, based on my own experiences,” I thought. “And I’m not at all sure my advice will be useful or relevant in this new cultural context.”

But I was mistaken. That’s not what Mowgli meant by mentoring.

Given that Humpty Dumpty defintitions – the tendency of people to use words to mean what just they choose them to mean – are central to much of what I do,  I should really have been quicker to realise we were at cross purposes.

But instead I argued my corner with the facilitation team. Mentors advise, I insisted. Coaches ask questions. Instructors, trainers and teachers provide instruction.

Not so, said Simon Edwards. Mentors ask questions, perhaps tell stories, but aren’t expected to give advice or pull business plans to pieces. Coaches teach people to do things – such as fly planes. In Simon’s worldview, the work I think of as ‘coaching’ is called ‘mentoring’.

Once I understood, I could breathe a sigh of relief and get on with the job – whatever it was callled.

But there’s an important point in there. How terms such as ‘coaching’ are defined is more than an academic question, particularly when it comes to marketing. If your potential clients think a ‘coach’ is someone who offers training in a subject, no wonder ‘life coaches’ are treated with such derision! It’s as if they’re offering training… in life!

And it’s no wonder that people searching for ‘coaching’ look for an subject-area expert, rather than a generalist. Why would I go to a generalist ‘life coach’ when I could choose someone with extensive experience in, say, creating personal development products and marketing them online?

The way forward has to be to listen! What words – and what metaphors – do your potential clients use to describe what you do? Then use those in your elevator pitch, on your business card, and on your website… and watch the clients roll in.

  • If you’re in the ‘coaching’ business, what do you call yourself? How is that working for you? Please comment below.