Journal · Alternatives
Coach, mentor, peer: three different jobs
A coach works on you. A mentor tells you what they did. A peer works the problem with you. The mismatch between what you needed and what you booked is usually the disappointment.
What is the difference between a coach, a mentor and a peer? A coach improves how you operate, usually without domain answers. A mentor has been further down your road and shares their experience. A peer faces comparable decisions now and engages with the specific problem as an equal.
The coach
Works on the person: how you lead, communicate, handle conflict, spend attention. Good coaches deliberately withhold domain answers, because supplying them undermines the work. If what you need is a view on whether to change your pricing, a coach will, correctly, hand the question back to you.
The mentor
Has done a version of what you are doing. Enormously valuable for pattern recognition and for reducing the sense that this is unprecedented. The limits: their experience is one sample, it is a few years old, and the relationship is asymmetric, which quietly makes it harder to say the stupid thing out loud.
The peer
Faces comparable decisions at comparable stakes right now. No hierarchy, so nothing to perform. Rarest and hardest to arrange, because your peers are as busy as you and the good ones are not obviously available.
Most disappointment with advice is a casting error, not a quality problem.
Which one for which problem
- "I keep avoiding difficult conversations." Coach. That is a pattern in you.
- "I have never done a Series A." Mentor. You want the map from someone who has walked it.
- "I cannot tell if this decision is right." Peer, or a method. You want the reasoning worked, not the person worked on.
Where a method fits
It sits in the third slot, imperfectly. It has no lived experience and never will. What it has is availability at the moment you need it, deliberate composition for what your thinking lacks, and a record that carries across decisions. On the specific job of working a decision, those three are worth more than they sound.
Five Peers editorial note. Sources named in the text.
The third job, at the moment the decision is in front of you.
Compose my board