Coach, Mentor or Consultant? Choosing the Right Support as a Group Practice Owner

If you've ever typed "business coach for group practice owners" into Google, you've probably noticed that the words coach, mentor and consultant get used as if they mean the same thing. One person calls their program coaching, but it turns out to be a course. Another calls themselves a consultant, but spends most of the call asking you questions. It's confusing, and when you're already stretched thin, it can be confusing or even frustrating because it usually means you either buy the wrong kind of support or you don't buy any at all and keep trying to figure it out alone.

I’d encourage you to consider what it is that you actually want and need right now, so that you can get the most out of your time and finances.  So ask yourself…"What's the difference, and which one do I actually need?"

It's a fair question, especially because most of us came into ownership as clinicians. We know therapy, and we know clinical supervision. Nobody sat us down and explained the different kinds of business support to be looking for, so let's do that now.

What Coaching Is (and What It Isn't)

The International Coaching Federation describes coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.¹

I like that definition because of the word partnering. A coach isn't there to hand you a manual for your practice. A coach is there to help you get clear on what you want, notice what's getting in the way, and decide what you're going to do about it.

That's why a good coach asks so many questions. "What do you want?" "What would you need in order to feel okay with this?" "How does that feel?" Those questions can be frustrating when you're tired and you just want someone to tell you the answer... I get it. But the answers you find through this type of support are the ones you'll trust at 9 p.m. when an associate sends you a text that makes your stomach drop.

Coaching isn't therapy, even though it can feel familiar to those of us who do therapy for a living. Coaching looks forward and focuses on action, while therapy goes deeper into history and healing. It also isn't clinical supervision, which is about your clinical work and comes with its own professional and regulatory responsibilities.

In my mind, coaching is an investment in yourself and your business, so answering the questions above are meant to move both of those forward so that you can feel congruent and solid in how you show up and the decisions you make.

What Mentorship Offers

A mentor is someone who has walked the road a few steps ahead of you and is willing to share what they learned along the way. Mentorship tends to be a longer relationship, and it's more about the perspective you want to have and what your personal experience is than structured goals. A mentor might say, "When I opened my second location, here's what I wish I'd known," and then let you decide what to do with that.

When I talk about the Connection Map, one of the roles I encourage every owner to have in their support network is a Two-Steps-Ahead person. That's a mentor role. It's someone who has lived the thing you're about to live, so they can tell you what's around the corner before you get there.

There are definitely times when coaching can have some of this approach, because you want to know that the person who is coaching you has lived experience and can help you problem solve.  But mentorship is much more about reflecting back, sharing of past experiences and resulting knowledge than looking forward.

The risk with mentorship is that you can end up borrowing someone else's path. What worked for their practice, in their province, with their personality, might not fit yours at all. After having worked with over 400 group practice owners, I believe there are over 400 ways to run a group practice, and a good mentor knows that and holds their advice loosely.

What a Consultant Does

A consultant is hired for their expertise, usually to diagnose a problem and recommend (or sometimes implement) a solution. If you need your contractor agreements reviewed, your scheduling software set up, or your bookkeeping cleaned up, you probably need a consultant or a professional in that area rather than a coach. Consulting is most useful when the problem is technical and the answer already exists somewhere outside of you.

So Which One Do You Need Right Now?

Here's the nuance most articles miss... it's rarely one or the other. Most group practice owners need a blend, and the mix shifts depending on where you are in your business.

When you're just starting a group practice, you usually need more teaching and mentorship. You're learning how contractor splits work, what belongs in an onboarding package, and how other Canadian owners have structured their contractor relationships.

Once your practice is up and running, coaching typically becomes more valuable. You've got most of the systems in place, and now the questions are about you. How do you want to lead? How many people do you want to manage? Do you want to grow, or do you want to stay small and solid? Nobody else can answer those questions for you.

And when you hit a specific technical problem, that's when you bring in a consultant or specialist, get it solved, and move on.

Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular make a similar point about leaders who coach their teams. They describe coaching as a range, from directive (sharing knowledge and telling) to nondirective (drawing out the other person's thinking), and they argue that the best leaders move between the two depending on the situation.² I think the same is true for the support you choose for yourself.

Where am I looking for someone to give me the answer, when what I need is the confidence to trust the answer I already have?

A Scenario You Might Recognize

Picture a group practice owner with six associates. One of her contractors has been showing up late to team meetings, is behind on notes, and has started making comments about the split. The GPO has been stewing about it for months, so she buys a course on managing contractors, and it gives her a great template for a performance conversation. She still doesn't have the conversation.

The template wasn't the problem. She knew what she needed to do. What she didn't have was the confidence to do it, or a space to sort through her fear of losing the associate and the income that comes with them. That's coaching territory. A template is a tool, and tools matter, but they don't make the decision for you.

Why Won't a Coach Just Tell Me What to Do?

This is the question I hear quite often, so I want to answer it directly. One of the things we know about therapy is that we aren’t supposed to provide the answer for our clients, and we think that is the difference between counselling and coaching.

Sometimes I will tell you what I'd do. I've built two group practices and made plenty of mistakes along the way, so I share my experience when it's useful. I just don't want you to run your practice my way. I want you to run it your way, with more clarity and a lot less second-guessing.

If someone always gives you the answer, you'll need to go back to them every time a new problem shows up. If you learn to find the answer yourself, you start trusting your own read of a situation, and the next hard decision gets a little easier. That's the shift I care about most.

How to Choose the Right Support

Before you sign up for anything, it helps to ask yourself a few questions:

•      Is my problem technical, or is it about my confidence and decision-making?

•      Do I need someone who has done this before, or someone who can help me think it through?

•      Does this person understand the Canadian context, including contractor relationships and provincial regulation?

•      Will this support help me trust myself more, or will it make me more dependent on someone else?

It's also worth asking these questions of the person you're considering to see how they work. A good coach, mentor or consultant will be clear about what they offer and what they don't.

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to do this alone, and reaching out for support in whatever form that takes is a sign that you're taking your role as a leader seriously. The key is knowing what kind of support fits the season you're in, so you're not paying for answers when you need clarity, or paying for clarity when you need someone to fix your spreadsheet.

If you're not sure which kind of support you need, let's talk. You can book a free 15-minute call and we'll look at where you're at and what would help most right now. I'd love to hear what's going on in your practice.

References

1.     International Coaching Federation, definition of coaching, coachingfederation.org

2.     Herminia Ibarra and Anne Scoular, "The Leader as Coach," Harvard Business Review, November/December 2019