Military Review English Edition July-August 2015 | Page 56

or supervising members of another service will need to clearly understand how this affects the expectations they set for leader development responsibilities. These differing perceptions present yet another challenge to building the joint, interagency team. uncovering potential, eliminating developmental barriers, developing action plans and commitment, and following up. In the Army’s view, a coach helps identify short- and long-term goals, and discusses strengths and weaknesses in reaching those goals. Once again, mentoring one’s subordinates could involve all or only some of those steps. The difference is that mentoring focuses on what occurs outside the chain of command. A mentor probably would not supervise job-specific skills or tasks, but should look at the long-term development of the mentee through helping with self-awareness, uncovering potential, developing action plans, and following up. One method of following up is for the mentor to provide feedback to mentees on their progress toward their goals. Here again we see what may be an overlap in actions between developmental functions. Coaching The use of the term mentoring in the Air Force and Marine Corps may be more in line with the Army’s use of the word coaching. Confusion between mentoring and coaching often arises due to the perceived overlap of functions. Florence Stone, a scholar in this field, stated that, “one of the functions of a mentor is to coach the protégé or mentee. But whereas mentoring uses many of the same techniques as coaching, mentoring involves going above and beyond.”14 A mentor, using the Army definition, will not necessarily be in a position to observe the mentee’s daily performance and thus not be in a position to coach the mentee on task performance. However, the mentor should help the mentee develop a plan for professional and personal growth and to support the mentee in implementing that plan. Army doctrine in ADRP 6-22 descri