Executive Coaching, Therapy, or Mentoring: Which One Do You Actually Need?

"Coaching is for people who are struggling, right? I mean, I have my issues, but I'm doing fine."

I have heard this from entrepreneurs at $5M ARR and from executives three years into a C-suite role, just as often as I've heard it from acquaintances over apéros. "Oh, you coach people? Like a therapist?"

It's easy to confuse coaching with therapy or mentorship, and that's why many people come into coaching with the wrong mindset. They assume coaching has the same goal as therapy, to fix what's broken. Or they expect a mentor, someone to tell them exactly what to do at every step of the way.

It's an easy mistake to make, but an expensive one. If you don't know the kind of help you're looking for, you'll end up wasting time and money on solutions that aren't suited for your needs. In that time, you could have started your path to genuine change and began making actual progress.

So don't let yourself make that mistake. Read this quick guide on which form you need, and why the difference matters.

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The main key to differentiating between the three is viewpoint.

Therapy looks backward. It tries to catalogue the patterns formed in your past, how they still affect you today, and what can be done to break them.

Coaching faces forward. Taking a moment to acknowledge where you are now, and what led up to it, it focuses all its energy on what you could become. The foundation of coaching rests upon that untapped potential. Past patterns are important to keep in mind, but they don't define you. What's important is the now, and how what you do today will prepare you for a better tomorrow.

Mentoring looks at both sides. A good mentor will share their past, their successes and their failures, in hopes that you will have a smoother path than they did. They can only speak from their own experience, but that experience might be ten times more valuable than any self-help book.

There's not one method that's better than the others. It comes down to you and your individual needs. I've had to recommend that clients seek licensed therapists in certain cases, and I've had to "fire" clients that might have done much better with a more firm mentor constantly hovering over their shoulder.

The real mistake is in choosing coaching when what you really need is therapy, or choosing therapy when you actually want a coach.

The decision is up to you, and it's not one that should be taken lightly. If you're unsure, ask yourself this simple question:

Where do you want to spend the next year looking? Your future, or your past?

Faith Chang is an executive coach and media training partner who helps founders, CXOs, and ambitious professionals voice their value, scale with confidence, and communicate with impact. Her clients have spoken at TED AI, CES, HLTH, SXSW, and VivaTech.