There are lots of ways to spend your investors' money, and here's another one. You can get some help. But who do you choose?
A Coach is someone who has an improvement methodology and works through it one-to-one with you during each of your sessions. For example, you might feel that you need to improve your leadership skills, so you get a coach who can help you with that. You follow their agenda. They may charge you per session or series of sessions.
A Mentor offers more of a listening approach to the thoughts that you bring along. They also normally operate on a one-to-one basis. You'll agree what you want to discuss from your own agenda, and your mentor will typically ask questions and prompt you to come up with your own solutions. Mentors will help you think through both day-to-day and the more strategic issues you're facing, but they are not there to offer advice or shoe-horn in their own solution. In my view mentors are effective because you more fully own the solution. Mentors may also charge you per session or series of sessions.
You typically bring in an Advisor (or Consultant) to make improvements on a particular area of your business and to work either with an individual in your team, or with a group. In my own advisory practice, I offer advice on product planning and customer engagement, so I may go into a company to help them create a more competitive product plan or establish a methodology for continuous cost reduction or a strategy for a new customer segment, for example. An advisor will lead that program until it is implemented and you may find that your own staff report to them for its duration. They will often charge you a day rate - you need to keep an eye on how much you're spending. You can choose from the very large advisory practices, like Accenture, McKinsey and Bain all the way down to the one-man bands, who tend to specialise on areas like finance, operations, marketing and development.
A Trainer is there to provide you and the relevant members of your team with the skills for a specific task. For example, if you introduce a new piece of analytical equipment into your laboratory, then your team might need training on how to use it. Training may be offered free as part of the equipment purchase or charged per training session.
I hear the words coach, mentor, advisor and trainer used interchangeably in many businesses, but it's important to distinguish between them so you can find the right support.
Note: You can find out more at the Association of Business Mentors and Enterprise Nation.
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