The ideas of improving one’s performance have become essential in a social context where achievements and growth are the direct indicators of personal success. For this reason, the notions of coaching and mentoring, which were primarily used in sports, have now become integrated into a variety of professional development programs. One of the most widespread tools used in terms of mentoring is the TED talks aimed at displaying one’s story or idea in order to provoke an inner response and desire to grow. Considering such a tool, one may assume that using TED talks in terms of coaching and mentoring is a beneficial technique when applied to promote creativity and mentorship frameworks.
Primarily, it is important to define the phenomena of coaching and mentoring. Researchers define coaching as “unlocking a person’s potential to maximise their own performance” (Kamarudin et al., 2020, p. 291). Thus, coaching refers to a process of making a person use the maximum of their resources in order to improve overall self-perception and performability. Mentorship, on the other hand, stands for an act of facilitating and assisting another person’s development (Kamarudin et al., 2020). Hence, the primary difference between coaching and mentorship is that the former is more likely to obtain tangible goals to achieve, whereas the latter is more focused on the establishment of a proper relationship between the mentor and the mentee. Considering this information, it may be outlined that the introduction of TED talks within these two contexts has different intentions and learning outcomes.
When it comes to coaching, using TED talks serves mostly as a source of external motivation and role model following. Considering the fact that TED talks are frequently used as an example of one’s complicated success story, it may be necessary for the coachee to receive a proper amount of external motivation in the process. Such an approach becomes extremely efficient when regarded through the prism of the achievement motivation theory presented by McClelland (Anderman, 2020). According to the theory, every person is motivated by the need for achievement, affiliation, or power, with all these factors being predetermined by one’s cultural context (Anderman, 2020). Thus, by using this theory, it would be reasonable to assume that using TED talks helps find the examples of achievement that enable one’s motivation and growth.
On the other hand, the importance of TED talks in terms of mentoring is more focused on observing the patterns of achievement outlined by the speakers. Thus, one of the most commonly used mentoring techniques, the GROW model, serves as a foundation for a majority of TED talks. According to this framework, performance improvement comprises the notions of goal, reality, options, and way forward (Kamarudin et al., 2020). Thus, when introducing a TED talk, it is of paramount importance for the mentor to secure a thorough discussion of the speaker’s goal outlined at the beginning, the reality they faced in the way, the opportunities and options they embraced, and the paths they paved on the road to a successful outcome. In such a way, a mentee would be able to reflect on the constituents of success and outline personal milestones throughout the journey.
Having taken into consideration the aforementioned arguments, it may be concluded that TED talk as an educational tool is, by all means, beneficial in terms of coaching and mentoring. However, in order to secure efficiency, coaches and mentors are to recognize the goals they are willing to pursue in the process. Thus, when coaching, TED talks could become beneficial when used to motivate coachees to reach for new heights and learn from people’s mistakes. Mentoring, on the other hand, could use such a tool to showcase the ways in which people might reflect on an achievement.
References
Anderman, E. M. (2020). Achievement motivation theory: Balancing precision and utility. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61. Web.
Kamarudin, M. binti, Kamarudin, A. Y. binti, Darmi, R. binti, & Saad, N. S. binti M. (2020). A review of coaching and mentoring theories and models. International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 9(2), 289–298. Web.