Coaching and mentoring in the 21st century is essential as it ensures that individuals develop and are provided with the necessary and crucial skills to provide a worthwhile contribution to all facets of life and society overall. Without coaching and mentoring, people would not be able to succeed and allow society to develop and cultivate the necessary skills for future prosperity. The most challenging component of coaching and mentoring is mastering a comfortable and highly effective coaching style and using it to strategically improve organizational and personal performance (Merrick, 2012). This essay will focus on the numerous coaching styles available and how they can be effectively utilized to improve group and individual performance.

The skill of mastering more consultative and developmental coaching styles relies on the development of effective relationships between clients and the coach or mentor. For example, in scenarios where an individual requires social and mental development, coaching styles need to be consultative and the coach needs to understand how to communicate with a particular individual and their respective characteristics and personality (Merrick, 2012). One of the largest challenges for coaches is learning how to adapt to differing personalities and dealing with conflict.

This leads onto the resolution of conflict and mastering coaching styles that can effectively deal with conflict and future challenges in social and professional settings. Coaches and mentors need to learn how to remain calm and master skills that will allow their clients to find a way through anger and conflict resolution (Merrick, 2012). The use of assertive coaching styles can provide a quick remedy, which alerts the individual towards their wrong acts and ways in which they improve their respective anger management. In turn, coaches and mentors can seek appropriate training on this through extensive experiences and knowledge management. By studying specific conflict ridden cases and scenarios where conflict has been effectively resolved, they can adopt a number of different techniques. For example, collaborative coaching styles can engage a number of different parties to assist the individual and these parties can include friends and family that the individual feels comfortable connecting with (Merrick, 2012).

The next appropriate and comfortable coaching and mentoring style that individuals need to master is technical expertise and knowing how to provide more technical advice where required. This applies to sport scenarios where games and professional sports consist of extensive skill, persistence, endurance and concentration (Merrick, 2012). Coaches and mentors need to master not only consultative and assertive coaching styles, but other styles that focus on engraining particular technical skill in their respective clients, customers and participants overall. For example, in baseball, coaches and mentors must know how to guide players towards using the right technique and adopting particular measures that may be uncomfortable or relatively unknown (Merrick, 2012).
Other components of mastering coaching and mentoring styles focus on the utilization of more strategic skills and also analytical skills. Coaches and mentors need to know how to cater towards the strategic requirements of individuals and organizations. This particularly exists at the higher levels of organizations such as within senior management. Coaches and mentors that provide advice to more senior managers need to have background knowledge in strategy and senior management. In a sense, coaches and mentors need to have extensive experience combined with the appropriate skills to strategically improve group and individual performance (Merrick, 2012).

In conclusion, this paper has effectively argued that coaches and mentors require a highly diverse set of skills and also qualifications that make them subject matter experts in areas of focus. The most significant requirement that mentors and coaches must fulfill is the improvement of individual and organization capabilities and overall performance. If this can be achieved, then mentors and coaches are invaluable and are continually required to provide assistance.

• Merrick, L. (2012). How Coaching & Mentoring Can Drive Success in Your Organization. HRU White Paper, Retrieved from https://hru.gov