Leadership Academy — Week 5 Study Guide: Coaching, Mentoring, Managing, and GROW
A condensed summary of Week 5 for assessment prep — choosing between coaching, mentoring, and managing, plus the GROW model.
Part of the Leadership Academy series — a condensed study guide ahead of the assessment. Full detail lives in Session 5.
The core idea: three different jobs, easy to mix up. Manage — the task has a correct answer, or the situation is urgent; give direction and hold accountability. Coach — the person already has the capability, it’s just blocked; ask questions, don’t give the answer. Mentor — the person lacks knowledge or context you have; share your own experience and path. Performance problems: always manage first — coaching and mentoring can enhance performance, they can’t substitute for managing it.
The framework — GROW: Goal (what they want from this conversation) → Reality (the situation as they see it) → Options (possibilities, explored without judging yet) → Way forward/Will (the actual commitment — what, by when).
Mentoring specifics worth knowing: ideally monthly cadence, mentee owns the agenda, shouldn’t be a direct-reporting relationship, progress measured every 2–3 months against a defined purpose, and it can’t be assigned to someone by a third party — it has to be agreed between the two people in it.
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