Free · Certificate included

Coaching and Mentoring Volunteers

Develop your volunteers’ skills and confidence through coaching, not commands.

30 min Beginner 7 modules Pass 80%

For: Volunteers leading other volunteers

What you’ll learn

Tell coaching, mentoring, and managing apart — and know when each fits
Run a coaching conversation with the GROW model
Shift from telling to asking with powerful, open questions
Give developmental feedback with the SBI model that motivates instead of deflates
Mentor volunteers and grow them into your next leaders

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Course outline

1
Coaching vs. mentoring vs. managing
When a volunteer is stuck, the fastest thing you can do is tell them the answer.
5 min Quiz Interactive
2
Why coaching beats telling
If telling is faster, why coach at all? Because the goal of a volunteer leader is not just to get today’s task done — it’s to build a team that can think for itself.
4 min Quiz
3
The GROW model
The most widely used coaching framework in the world is GROW, developed in the 1980s by Sir John Whitmore with colleagues Graham Alexander and Alan Fine, and…
6 min Quiz Interactive
4
Asking instead of telling: powerful questions
Coaching lives or dies on the quality of your questions.
5 min Quiz Interactive
5
Listening like a coach
Great questions are wasted if you’re not really listening to the answers.
4 min Quiz
6
Developmental feedback with SBI
Coaching and feedback go hand in hand — but feedback is where good intentions most often go wrong.
5 min Quiz Interactive
7
Mentoring volunteers into leaders
Coaching grows a volunteer’s thinking in the moment; mentoring grows a person over time.
4 min Quiz Interactive

Sources & further reading

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