by Ntsoaki Sibiya
All of us want to accelerate our growth across landscapes of whatever our chosen craft is. When you are building yourself up, whether it be in business, sports, entertainment, or whatever your chosen craft may be, if you really want to accelerate your growth and development, and to take yourself to the next level of your capabilities, there are 3 kinds of people you need in your life. You need a Coach, a Mentor, and a Sponsor!
This is not an either/or scenario, you actually need ALL of them.
So, what’s the difference you may ask?
I am not going to give the scientific or academic understanding of what a coach is, for those people we default to your expertise and understanding. I am going to talk about how I frame what a coach is, what a coach can do for you in your own growth, your journey, and in your own next step and then I will talk about what mentors and sponsors can do for you.
What then is the difference across the board for these?
1. THE COACH
The coach is the person who is with you on the field.
This is the person who is (daily) giving you the things that you need to do. They are very task orientated on the set of things you need to do so that you can refine the level of performance that you are at right now and to ready yourself for the next level of performance. For example, a singing coach is literally with you as you are practicing your singing daily and they are coaching you through it. A fitness coach is literally with you as you are at the gym, coaching you through your fitness goals. So, any coach you might have, whether it’s a relationship coach, business coach, life coach, speaking coach. they are literally with you as you experience that relationship/business/life/speaking and they are coaching you through it.
Coaches reflect to you the things you are doing and whether or not those things are moving you in the direction of your desires. Coaches are fantastic, however there is a level of intimacy that you need to reach with the coach because they are so close to you. They are going to be giving you advice, feedback, insights, analytics, and outcomes that might be very difficult to swallow, so you need someone with whom you will have a pronounced level of chemistry, you need someone with whom there is a deep level of trust and a high level of intimacy so that you can trust this person, default to this person, believe and be believed by this person. It is important to be aware that not all coaches are the same. They may come across this way and some tend to follow a structured process that starts from point A-Z, others tend to be quiet experiential, they tend to be people who improvise in terms of how they practice their craft, attuning themselves to how you are and how you work or what you need done at the stage in which you are developing. So, as you look for a coach, ask for references and make sure to talk to someone who has a deep well of experience coaching others.
The other thing to understand about coaching is that coaching is very dependent on the level in which you are at, results will vary depending on the coach, therefore depending on the stage of your business career or life, you want to get a coach that is familiar with working with people at that stage. If you are at the early stages of your career, then you require a different kind of coaching to someone who is perhaps in middle management looking to advance into executive management and the boardroom. If you are at school level sports you require a different coach to someone who is in the professional level of sports, they are all trained by coaches, however the level of coaching is not the same.
So, you want to make sure that when you are dealing with coaches, you get someone who is dealing at the level you want to advance to and not the level you are currently on. Your coach should be able to acclimatize, understand and socialize on the level in which you are at, so that their feedback and advice can add value to you based on the challenges that you are facing. They should be able to deal with the issues that you are experiencing whether those issues are deep technical issues or issues on a humanitarian level. Therefore, make sure that you have a process of assessing the coach that they are, the level at which they have worked and get references at what they are able to do, then test and try (go on a few dates with several coaches and see which one works for you).
2. THE MENTOR
The mentor is the person who has walked the path that you are walking.
The coach is telling you what to do, the mentor will tell you why to do it. I always explain it to people this way, a coach is like having a road sign, the road sign will point you in a direction that will give you the facts and the facts are completely true. For example, The road sign will say if you are headed towards Johannesburg, this is the direction you need to take and the distance is 20 kms away. The sign is correct (that is the coach). The mentor is the road not the road sign.
The mentor has travelled that path, they know where every pothole and speed-bump is. There is a Swahili saying that says: ‘The old man sitting under a tree can see what the young man on top of a hill cannot see’. The man sitting under the tree is the mentor. They have been through the journey which you are about to experience. They see the nuances that you don’t even know are present on that journey. So, when you are choosing a mentor, you are looking for a number of things. The first thing you are looking for is credibility, are they credible at this specific thing you want them to mentor you at?
There will be moments when you are at a critical crossroads in your business, career, or person life, and you need to make a decision. In that moment you need credible advice, and therefore you will need mentorship from a person who has a winning track record in the direction you see yourself headed. So, ask yourself, does this mentor credible in their discipline or area of expertise?
The second thing you are looking for is experience, HAVE THEY DONE IT? Because theory is just that, theory. Practice is different. Theory is the map, practice is the drive, and what you are looking for here is the mentor who has actually taken that drive. They have been on that road, they know where all of the bumps and curves are, and they can talk you through those, they can mentor you through those.
In my life I have had several mentors and these are people whom I look to when I am lost, these are people who I go to when I am stuck at a particular stage and I don’t know what to do. These are people I bounce ideas off and go to when I have a particular challenge that I am dealing with and every time I have though that I have dealt with this issue it comes up again. Remember, if you deal with a problem once, the problem is the problem, but if you deal with the problem twice, you are the problem. Because what it then means, is that you have not put in place the necessary mechanisms, mitigators, systems, to ensure that the problem doesn’t occur again. Therefore, there is something that you need to change, reset, rebase, rethink, and reformat. You need to fundamentally restructure the nature of that problem.
And so, the role of the mentor is to help you see what I call, these negative loop cycles in life that keep you stuck. You want a mentor who is able to reflect to you, a mentor who is able to guide you, whose walked that path, who understands the landmines upon which you might come across on the road.
3. THE SPONSOR
What is a sponsor? A sponsor is the person who is in the room when your name comes up with people who can fundamentally shift your trajectory. A sponsor is someone who is in the room when the centers of power are discussing something from which you might benefit. A sponsor is someone who is in the room lobbying for you when you do not have the opportunity to be in the room or to lobby for yourself.
When you are looking for a sponsor, you are looking for someone who moves at a level in which you are not at yet and shouldn’t be at that level for the next 3-5 years of growth in your career, even if you were to get promoted 2 or 3 times, you still would not be at their level. That is how you know who your sponsor should be.
Your sponsor should speak for you, which means you bear the responsibility of communicating to your sponsor. Voluntarily communicate, tell them what’s happening, send them an email or call them to inform/update them about shifts and changes in your career growth or any press about you that is going to go out, you must notify them first. Your sponsor must never hear about you from a third source, they must always hear about you from you, because they are your sponsor, they are the person that protects you when you are not in the room.
This article is a functional article. It is about the things you need to put in place to make sure that the next level of your life is truly exactly that, IT IS NEXT LEVEL, it is exciting, it is growth, it is prospect, it is shooting for the stars!
Ntsoaki Sibiya is the Founder and CEO of Tsoabelo Security Solutions, a 100% black woman owned company that specialises in security & risk management services (guarding operations , installations of access control systems and cctv surveillance). The company was established in 2017 and is based in Pretoria, South Africa. Having worked in the security industry for almost a decade, she quickly found her passion for the protection and risk management industry. She embarked on extensive research into the industry’s process, context and content, which gave her insights into the workings of a security business, and the ability to form the blueprint for her own security company. Ntsoaki is a firm believer that a greater role for women in the security is necessary not only to rectify a social injustice, but more importantly, because there is an economic and business imperative to use the talents of women to solve the problems that the world faces. She refers to herself as “the portrait of a power woman” – who is purpose driven and passionate about creating empowering environments, and uses her knowledge and expertise to articulate the importance of security and risk management in all environments. www.tsoabelosolutions.co.za
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