Coaching vs. Mentoring

A therapist will explore what is stopping you driving your car.

A counsellor will listen to your anxieties about the car.

A mentor will share tips from his or her own experience of driving cars. [Emphasis mine - TS]

A consultant will advise you on how to drive the car.

A coach will encourage and support you in driving the car. [Emphasis mine - TS]

- From Excellence in Coaching edited by Jonathan Passmore

I don't remember how the idea to complement my new private business of coaching with mentoring occurred to me for the first time. Unlike coaching, which I studied systematically in three coach training programs, I've never studied mentoring in any formal setting. Actually, I'm not sure if mentoring is a skill one can learn formally unlike coaching. So after reading a few professional books on the theory and practice of mentoring I decided to jump into water. I spent the last four weeks mentoring three volunteers as an experiment. We had agreed to set as the goal finding their respective life missions on the basis of Hasidis life wisdom.

One of the major difficulties I've been experiencing as a new life coach is to resist the temptation of sharing my life experiences with my clients. In mentoring this is not only permissible but even desirable. Of course, this doesn't mean that I don't believe in the power of coaching, but having coached several people, I've also realized that there is a limit to what clients can attain through questions from the coach - they can't make a quantum leap from their present level of consciousness that has produced their problems to a much higher level of consciousness to solve them. In such a situation all they have to do in mentoring is to receive advice from their mentor who has experienced the same or similar problems and solved them.

To make a long story short, I seem to enjoy mentoring much more than coaching. I feel that the shift from teaching to mentoring is much smoother than that from teaching to coaching. After all, I had spent almost 30 years though in academic settings. I also feel that mentoring is more in tune with my personality than coaching.

But just as coaching has its limit, mentoring has its limit, too, though a different one. In order to benefit from mentoring clients must be prepared to understand and absorb what their mentor shares with them. Coaching, or at least the kind of coaching I offer, which is based on the teachings of Hasidism, is an excellent way to prepare them for the kind of mentoring I offer - to make them become aware, probably for the first time in their life, that they are not what they think they are and their life has been controlled by this illusion about themselves.

Realization through Contrast

"The words are no more than signposts. That to which they point is not to be found within the realm of thought but a dimension within yourself that is deeper, and infinitely vaster than thought. A vibrantly alive peace is one of the characteristics of that dimension." - Eckhart Tolle

If we lived in light or darkness exclusively, we wouldn't be able to fully realize light and darkness respectively. Some say this is the very reason why our soul descends to this "coarse" physical world (so that it may fully appreciate the Divine light).

Last week I experienced such contrast when I started to share with someone who isn't familiar with Chassidus what little knowledge (and hopefully wisdom, too) I seem to have learned since I was exposed to Chabad Chassidus about four years ago. Then I realized that I'm already deeply immersed in the world of these profound teachings.

This week I experienced another contrast when I started to read a book on the educational philosophy of the Lubavitcher Rebbe which turned out to be an academic book. In spite of this fascinating topic I couldn't continue reading this book past the first chapter. Then I realized that I've already developed some mental allergy to academic books on Judaism, which are generally concerned with intellectual knowledge about Judaism, while sforim are concerned with life wisdom of Judaism.

I wanted to know if this allergy of mine is specific to this particular book or to academic writings on Judaism in general, so I checked presentation summaries of several academic associations of Jewish studies. I was totally amazed to discover what I felt. I also checked similar summaries of a few academic societies of linguistics and had the same discovery.

When I was still in these two worlds until rather recently, I didn't know at all what I didn't know until I started learning Chabad Chassidus. Researchers of Judaism in particular have left me with a very strong impression that they might be confusing a "map" with a "territory". Again through this contrast I've realized that I'm not interested to occupy myself exclusively with such Jewish "maps"; I'd prefer directly experiencing a "territory" however tiny its part I can visit may be.

Unknown Unknowns

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. And... it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." - Donald Rumsfeld

Probably the most important (meta-)discovery through my exposure to the teachings of Chabad Hasidism, which I encountered through my totally unexpected transformation through my no less unexpected turmoil, is a whole world of things I didn't know I didn't know. This newly discovered "light" has made me realize so clearly that I was in the "darkness" and I wasn't aware of this very fact.

Since I made this discovery I've decided to share this "light" with other individuals and collectives I've come in touch with. The reactions I get from them are not especially encouraging; I have the impression that many of them don't understand what I mean, that is, they seem to remain unaware of what they don't know.

One of my main "battlefields" is Facebook, which is a kind of huge collective virtual mental prison. I'm giving up my hope, though I should never do so, of making at least my Facebook "friends" realize that what they think they are and what they think reality are actually illusions. It's even so painful to me to read what most of them post personally.

When I resumed my personal use of Facebook in order to start using it for business purposes three and a half years ago, I was naive enough to expect that I would be able to experience meaningful dialogs with at least several people. But I was totally wrong. Facebook has even worsened as a collective virtual mental prison in comparison with what it used to be when I first used it several years ago for a short period of time.

In spite of all these frustrations I continue to share public posts on Facebook though they receive few or now responses for a very simple reason. I write for what must be a small number of like-minded people so that they may not feel lonely. Such people seem to be exceptions even among what few "friends" I have on Facebook.