What Exactly is Mentorship?
Mentorship vs. Therapy vs. Coaching
By: Deer Ponzi
As a mentorship-focused organization, the three of us at LifeWays have been pondering what exactly are the differences between mentorship, therapy, and life coaching? Ultimately, these are all just labels attempting to articulate relational modalities of human-healing and growth. We realized, unsurprisingly, that there are a lot of parallels, gray areas, and some notable distinctions. Below are some simple broad strokes that focus on the similarities and differences, at least as we currently see them:
A Short Introduction to Mentorship
Few things have been more impactful to my life than mentorship. I really did not have any formalized mentors until I was 29 but, thankfully, I had supportive people–a precious few of them older men–who embodied a mentorship-like relationship that made a huge impact on my life by believing in me. Authentic care and belief is at the core of all good mentorship: someone with a little (or a lot) more wisdom and skill under their life-belts that actively believes in you; wants to see you succeed in the ways that matter.
The deeper embodiment of mentorship came later when I met people who had a better grasp on the primal psychology of mentorship, and whose lives embodied an earth-centric and soul-centric way of living–ways that previous mentor-like relationships did not; ways I was hungry to grow into. From then on, I could not imagine my life deepening and progressing without the support of others more steeped in these ways.
I would argue that modern mentorship is a diluted version of the vital ancient role of eldership that was essential to our ancestors living in small communities and still exists today in some places. In those nature-based ancestral societies, there would have been/still are familial and communal systems bonded by rituals and shared survival that assigned either a family member or elder village member to a younger one. So vital are these chains of knowledge to the wheel of life, that many nature-based cultures such as the Dagara Tribe in Burkina Faso, initiate their boys into manhood in sometimes perilous circumstances. Some in the west would be shocked by such trials, but the universal rigors of such initiations were essential for the mutual survival of all community members amidst the intensity of the ancient world.
As such, those called to be mentors today do our best to support our mentees in helping them meet the many challenges of our massive modern communities. We use specific techniques and modalities for healing and growth that we have been taught and trained in, but we also offer our own life experience and wisdom gleaned from facing the trials and tribulations of the world. We intend to facilitate–from the Latin root “facilis,” which means “to make easy”–the healing and growth of our mentees.
Therapy:
One definition of therapy is “treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder” (1). There are, of course, a multitude of therapeutic modalities from psycho-dynamic therapy to somatic, cognitive-behavioral, art therapy, couples therapy, psychedelic, etc. and of various forms of body-therapy (massage, craniosacral, yoga, etc.).
Licensed Durango-local therapist Jo Young spoke to western clinical therapy’s foundational structure of diagnosing a patient using pathological patterns like depression, anxiety, bi-polar, etc. She also spoke to licensed therapy’s generally formalized setting: i.e., a 1 to 2 hour session in an office, and an emphasis on “where the patient wants to go” and working on that.
Soon-to-be certified therapist and LifeWays founder Chris Brown says this about therapy: “Often, therapy can seem like a sterile process. The current ‘medical model’ for therapy and mental health creates little space for clinicians to move beyond “problem-solving” for their clients. Therapy can be more about billing insurance and creating a treatment plan within 10 sessions, than it is about holistic care. A seated 50-60 minute session with your clinician to tackle ‘these problems’ can be powerful and connecting, but often mundane. This process typically requires diagnosis, treatment planning, and medication prescription. We often go to therapy looking for a quick-fix. In my opinion, therapy can be extremely helpful and necessary, but the larger healing journey doesn’t often fit into this timeframe or our current medical model.”
How Therapy is Similar to Mentorship
As a mentor, we listen to our mentee about their worlds, both external and internal. In that setting, we naturally play a certain role that our culture might identify as therapeutic. Mentors often try to help their mentees understand in a larger context what they are experiencing, and offer guidance to hopefully alleviate something distressing, notice an unhealthy pattern, or move towards something healthier and growth-oriented. Beyond listening, good mentors will suggest and teach concrete skills like mindfulness, meditation, body-movements, breathing practices, hands-on skills, creativity, etc. Therapists, depending on their modality, will offer very similar prescriptions but with more of a focus on western-centric pathologies.
The boundaries go gray when we think about an art teacher teaching a student how to paint. Naturally, if the student enjoys painting, they will find the activity therapeutic or “healing,” and thus the art teacher is operating in a therapeutic role, whether they know it or not. The primary goal though is supporting the artistic skill of the student. A trained art therapist might be doing basically the same thing, but utilizing art with the intention of addressing the pathologies they diagnose, and much less concerned with their patient’s artistic development.
How Therapy and Mentorship Differ
Beyond the obvious specific education required to be a licensed therapist, mentorship is not focused on a specific box of diagnosis, but rather receiving mentee’s “issues” as a holistic part of their life and as opportunities for growth towards who they want to be. Mentorship also meets mentees in their locales and/or takes them out into the world (or the wild, in the case of LifeWays), instead of a specific therapeutic setting like an office or clinic. Therapists can offer clinical mental health care and are often better trained to support patients suffering more extreme psychological challenges. If someone is in a state of psychosis, for example, it is very challenging to mentor them until they have at least reached some degree of stability.
Mentorship cares very much about community. As shared above, the roots of mentorship are communal, and while that isn’t to say that individual therapists don’t care about their communities (I know many who care very much), it is to say that therapy is often an individual experience independent of that person’s community. Naturally, a healthier human will become a better community member, but a more local mentor (though not all mentorship is local) is going to be from and also work with the community the mentee resides in.
Life Coaching:
According to Betterup.com, the life-coaching/coaching industry has exploded. “According to the International Coaching Federation (ICF), there are about 71,000 coaches worldwide.” (2) Most of us can probably agree that the general idea of “life coaching” has now become more accepted, if not fully understood.
So what exactly is a non-sports “coach?” BetterUp at it again, saying: “A life coach is someone who counsels and encourages clients through personal or career challenges. A life coach helps guide clients to reach their ultimate goals.”
A whole host of coaching certification programs have sprung from the invisible soils of innovation, both to the bane and benefit of others. We like certifications in our culture–whether or not they are actually valuable–and so most people these days like to see that their coach has gone through some sort of structured system. Coaches can be 25 years-old and they can be 65+ years-old, though arguably with vastly different vaults of life experience.
In my limited “being-coached” experience, coaches guide you towards a more positivist and goal-specific personal transformation framework. If you just had a particularly challenging argument with your spouse, it’s unlikely you would bring that to your professional business coach (vs. your therapist or mentor), who is focused on using their coaching framework to move you towards specific business goals. Different from therapy, coaches can’t and shouldn’t diagnose you. If you have anxiety, your life coach wouldn’t (presumably) assign you the clinical definition of anxiety disorder, but would rather use their particular coaching framework to help investigate that anxiety or perhaps work through it towards a specific growth-goal.
How Coaching Is Similar to Mentorship
In many ways, mentors are like coaches and coaches are like mentors. Neither specifically requires a certification, but there is often a framework they are operating from. We at LifeWays have a foundational curriculum/framework that we integrate into our individual mentorship sessions, as well as our guide trainings (link), wilderness immersions like WWH (link), and our summer programs. Our framework has its roots in mindfulness and meditation; therapeutics; nature-based map of the psyche, yoga/somatics, adventure, ceremony, self-reliance and wilderness skills. Similar to coaching, mentorship helps our mentees identify some of the areas they want to grow in life and/or become a healthier, more-balanced, and empowered version of themselves. If a mentee says they want to eat healthier, a mentor can help them with that to the best of their ability; if they say they want to feel more confident in themselves, a mentor will support them in that, similar to a life coach.
In working with a man from our WHWW who is seeking greater access to his unique masculine vitality, mentors can become a kind of “masculinity coach.” We are using some specific frameworks to help meet the mentee where they are at and help support them towards a specific masculine-centric goal.
Similar to a coach, a formal mentor isn’t age-specific, but usually skews older than at least who they are mentoring. A 17 year-old can have a 23 year-old mentor, and that 23 year-old mentor can have a 45 year-old mentor, and that one a 62 year-old mentor, and so forth. We must all learn from all ages, and so this isn’t to say that we are and should not always be learning from those younger than us.
How Coaching Is Different from Mentorship
Specificity. Many coaches are goal/area-specific and will likely have a lot of experience in that one specific area, probably more than a more general mentor might have. While an overall “life-coach” may support you in general ways to improve your overall life, many coaches are niche. I have several friends who are niche-coaches: professional development, sex, spiritual and somatic. Naturally, improving some area of your life like your body/somatic-self is going to bleed positively into other areas of your life, but going to a body-coach is going to be very specific to improving your body using body-centered modalities and goals.
Coaches having gone through a good training program will also likely have had some communication/interpersonal skill development to help facilitate an experience with their clients, and some more informal mentors may not.
A mentor is also more of a generalist. For example, I’ve met up with a mentee expecting to do some meditation and go exercise, only to find they needed to apply for a job and had no transportation all week. So I pivoted to meet the greatest need of the moment, and we went to pick up applications, supporting him logistically and also coaching him on how to best apply. We did some meditation at the end, but not as much as I intended, and I held him accountable to workout instead the next day when I wasn’t with him. He ended up getting one of the jobs, which set him up for success in many ways down the road.
Bring Nature Into All Of It!
This article has been meant to be a more generalized inquiry into mentorship, but we believe that all therapy, mentorship, and coaching should be eco-centric; that all healing and growth-specific modalities, however similar or different, must include a reverential relationship with the earth– both in the embodiment of the individual mentor, therapist, and coach–as well as their offerings. Without this nature-based relationship, we don’t believe the level of healing and growth will be deep enough to sufficiently encompass the more-than-human world that we so desperately need to heal and protect at this moment of history.
- https://www.betterup.com/blog/life-coaching
