Damian Goldvarg, Ph.D., MCC has twenty years of experience in executive assessment and coaching, leadership development, talent management, facilitation, strategic planning and team building services. Through his work with multinational Fortune 100 companies, governments and community based organizations, Damian’s coaching and consulting services have realized extraordinary results for his clients.
Damian has a background in business and mental health with areas of expertise in emotional intelligence, communication, conflict resolution, behavioral interviewing, 360 feedback and time management. He is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) and received his Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from Alliant University in California. He earned his MS degree in Counseling from California State University, Northridge and received his BA in Clinical Psychology from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is also a Certified Coach Supervisor by Coaching Supervisory Academy. He is a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and was the 2013-2014 ICF Global President.
Norma Perel, MCC is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). She holds a degree in Psychology from the University of Buenos Aires. She received her coaching training at the Argentina School of NLP and Coaching, serving as supervisor, evaluator and mentor coach until 2015. She is a NLP practitioner, and she is founding member and Board Member of the ICF Argentina Chapter. She is currently responsible for Latin America continuing education webinars. She is a member of the staff of Goldvarg Consulting Group. As a trainer of trainers, since 2014, she coordinates, along with Damián Goldvarg, a virtual Mentor Coaching certification program for Latin America coaches.
The views and opinions expressed in guest posts featured on this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of the International Coach Federation (ICF).
Download Article 1K Club
Rey Carr
September 24, 2016 at 12:08 pm
Members of the coaching industry continue to blur the boundaries between roles through the increasing use by coaches of the term “mentor” as in “mentor-coach.”
Whereas in the past, coaches made an effort to
distinguish themselves from mentors (often writing short articles on the differences between the roles), now many coaches have added that role to their repertoire of practice.
For the most part, the addition of the ‘mentor – coach’ accolade to their resumes seems to be a way to elevate their skill status and promote and market their services to other coaches. The irony here is that acting as a mentor has been historically and is currently a free or completely volunteer service. Mentor-coaches have ignored or rejected this key element of mentoring and charge a fee to work with other coaches. In so doing they have again expanded the scope of their practice, added to the confusion about the difference in roles, and, rather than referring to their work with other coaches as supervision or consultation, have added the status, but not the accuracy of mentoring to their own scope of practice.
In the article by Goldvarg and Perel, they provide a definition of supervision in order to distinguish it from mentoring, and in so doing try to justify why a ‘mentor coach’ is not acting as a supervisor. However, very few people with experience as supervisors would agree with their definition of supervisor. They basically equate supervisor with a therapist. In addition, very few mentors would agree with their narrow definition of a mentor in that mentors often probe personal areas to determine their relevance to performance and outcomes.