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Exploring career mentoring and coaching
Exploring career mentoring and coaching

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Exploring career mentoring and coaching

Introduction and guidance

Exploring career mentoring and coaching is a free badged course which lasts 8 weeks with approximately 3 hours’ study time each week. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete another week’s study.

You’ll start this course by considering the differences and similarities between mentoring and coaching. Then, you’ll focus on developing your own self-awareness, an important skill for those wishing to gain the most from mentoring or coaching interactions. As you progress, you’ll understand how these approaches can enhance career development. You’ll explore the key skills and attributes of a good mentor or coach and learn how choosing the right individual can maximise the relationship. Along the way, you’ll consider whether you could become a mentor or coach yourself and reflect on how that might benefit your own career.

After completing this course you will be able to:

  • recognise the difference between mentoring and career coaching, and analyse how each can enhance your career development
  • understand the importance of self-awareness and how to develop your own
  • choose a mentor or coach with confidence
  • get the most from your relationships with mentors or coaches
  • reflect on your own experience and consider whether you could become a mentor or coach yourself.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each week, you can find a link to the next week. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course. Alternatively, use the week links at the top of every page of the course.

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.