How well do you understand the differences between coaching, training, mentoring, feedback and counseling?

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you understand the differences between coaching, training, mentoring, feedback and counseling?

• Extremely well — they’re all very different skills and disciplines 20%
• Very well — I can distinguish them fairly easily 40%
• Well — some of them seem the same with some minor differences 29%
• Not well — they all seem to be focused on the same thing 9%
• Poorly — they’re just words and it’s all semantics 2%

Know the difference in development techniques. It’s good to see 60% of you reporting you know the clear difference between coaching, training, mentoring, feedback, and counseling. For those who don’t, spend some time learning. Each technique has appropriate (and inappropriate!) uses. Coaching is asking questions to help the person come up with their own solutions. Training is showing an individual or group a skill and getting them to repeat it until proficient. Mentoring is sharing your personal experiences to help them glean insights they can use to resolve their challenge. Feedback is discussing an specific incident or behavior with the goal of changing that behavior in the future. Counseling is for deeply personal issues like addiction or mental health challenges and should only be done by licensed practitioners. Know the difference and deliberately select the right technique before a development intervention. It’ll increase your odds of successfully improving their performance.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.