Executive coaching vs mentoring, consulting and therapy
Executive coaching, mentoring, consulting and therapy are four different relationships, and the cleanest way to tell them apart is to ask who owns the answer. A mentor gives advice from their own path; a consultant owns the answer and hands it over; therapy works with the past and healing; executive coaching works with the present and performance, and the leader keeps every decision.
This page is for a senior leader who has been offered one of the four, or all of them, and wants to know which one fits what they are facing. It is also for the person who has to justify the spend and wants a definition that holds. Each section answers one question, and the table at the end puts the four side by side.
What is executive coaching?
Executive coaching is a structured, confidential development process in which a qualified coach works one-to-one with a leader to enhance performance, develop leadership skills and reach specific business goals. Unlike consulting or training, it works by guided self-discovery and actionable strategies, not by handing the leader an answer.
That is how we define executive coaching, and the last clause is the one that separates coaching from everything else on this page. Our coaches bring a method, grounded in neuroscience, emotional intelligence, psychology, neuro-linguistic programming and Gestalt practice, and an operating record; what they do not bring is a conclusion. The leader reaches that, which is why it holds.
How is mentoring different from coaching?
A mentor is someone further along the same path who tells you what they did. A coach may have walked a comparable path, but the coach's job is to help you see yours, not to walk it for you.
The distinction is easy to miss because the best coaches often have the record of a mentor. Anna Maria Casas Rudbeck held CFO positions at Ascom, Nike and Sage before she coached; Boris Carl ran a consulting firm in Japan and a digital business in the United States. That experience is what makes the questions sharp. It is not offered as instructions, and a leader who wants instructions should ask for a mentor and say so.
How is consulting different from coaching?
A consultant is engaged to produce an answer: a strategy, a structure, a diagnosis, delivered as a recommendation the organisation can accept or reject. A coach is engaged so that the leader produces the answer, and stays the person who owns it afterwards.
Ricardo Matamala is the clearest example among our own coaches, because he has done both at scale. He has over thirty years as a consultant in strategic planning, cultural transformation, talent management, competitiveness and leadership, and co-founded OCC Solutions, a firm that has worked with over 500 companies across Latin America. As a consultant his firm delivers measurement and recommendations to an organisation; as a coach he works with one leader on what that leader will do. Same expertise, opposite ownership of the answer.
How is therapy different from coaching?
Therapy treats; coaching develops. Therapy works with the past, with distress and with healing, under a clinical duty of care. Coaching works with the present and the future, with performance and with decisions, and assumes a leader who is well and wants to lead better.
The two can look alike from outside because both are confidential conversations in which someone listens hard. They are not interchangeable. A coach who sees that a leader needs the former refers on, and a leader who is in pain rather than in a decision should be told so plainly. Our process is built for the second case: a chemistry meeting, an assessment, stakeholder interviews, a development plan, sessions, a review and a path forward, explained in how executive coaching works, every step pointed at how the leader leads on Monday.
What about leadership coaching, training and team coaching?
Leadership coaching is executive coaching by another name when the client is a senior leader; we use the two words for the same work. Training teaches a skill to a group; coaching works one leader's situation. Team coaching is coaching applied to a leadership team as a unit, which is a different engagement with a different aim.
We offer executive team coaching alongside its one-to-one work, to build alignment, communication and accountability across an executive team, and Boris Carl coaches both individuals and teams. The test for which a leader needs is simple: is the thing that has to change inside one person, or between several?
Which one does a senior leader need?
If the problem is a missing skill, training. If the problem is a decision the organisation needs made for it, consulting. If the problem is the leader wanting to hear how someone else did it, mentoring. If the problem is distress, therapy. If the problem is how the leader sees, decides and leads, and the leader has to own what changes, coaching.
Most senior leaders arrive with a mixture, and the chemistry meeting exists partly to sort it. Our coaches work with C-suite executives across multiple functions on the last of those five, and the situations are concrete: a new role, a team that has to work as one, a presence that has to carry a room, a strategy the leader has to own. The coach's job in each is the same: to widen how the leader sees before the leader decides.
The four side by side
| Executive coaching | Mentoring | Consulting | Therapy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who owns the answer | The leader | The mentor's experience | The consultant | The clinician's care plan |
| Works with | Present and future, performance | The mentor's path | The organisation's problem | The past, healing |
| Output | A leader who decides and acts differently | Advice | A recommendation | Treatment |
| Confidential | Yes, by written agreement | Informally | To the organisation | Yes, clinically |
| Fixed length | Usually six to twelve months | Open | Per project | Per need |
Three senior coaches.
Senior Partner, North America
Senior Partner, Europe
Senior Partner, Latin America
Common questions
Is executive coaching the same as leadership coaching?
At senior level, yes. We use both terms for one-to-one work with CEOs and senior leaders; our process is the same seven steps under either name.
Can a coach also be a mentor?
A coach can have a mentor’s record, and the best usually do. In the engagement the roles stay separate: the coach asks, the leader answers, and advice is given only when asked for and marked as such.
How long does executive coaching take compared with consulting?
Most of our coaching engagements last six to twelve months, with sessions every two to four weeks. A consulting project runs to its deliverable; a coaching engagement runs to the leader’s goals.
Talk to a senior coach.
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