Coaching/Mentoring – the difference!
Mentors in either a formal mentoring program or informal relationship focus on the person, their career and support for individual growth and maturity while the coach is job-focused and performance oriented.

A mentor is like a sounding board, they can give advice but the person is free to pick and choose what they do. The context does not have specific performance objectives. A coach is trying to direct a person to some end result, the person may choose how to get there, but the coach is strategically assessing and monitoring the progress and giving advice for effectiveness and efficiency. Mentoring is biased in your favour. Coaching is impartial, focused on improvement in behaviour.

In summary, the mentor has a deep personal interest, personally involved—someone who cares about you and your long term development. The coach develops specific skills for the task, challenges and performance expectations at work.

Role
Mentoring is a power free, two-way mutually beneficial relationship. Mentors are facilitators and teachers allowing the person to discover their own direction.

A coach has a set agenda to reinforce or change skills and behaviours. The coach has objective/goals for each discussion. In a previous  study, the top four words chosen to best describe their mentor’s dominant style were—friend/confidant, direct, logical, questioner.

Relationship
Even in formal mentoring programs the person and mentor have choices—to continue, how long, how often, and focus. Self-selection is the rule in informal mentoring relationships with the person initiating and actively maintaining the relationship. As an example: If I’m your mentor, you probably picked me. In an organisation your coach hired you. Coaching comes with the job, a job expectation, in some organisations a defined competency for managers and leaders.

Source of influence
The interpersonal skills will determine the effectiveness of influence for both coach and mentor. The coach also has an implied or actual level of authority by nature of their position, ultimately they can insist on compliance. A mentor’s influence is proportionate to the perceived value they can bring to the relationship. It is a power free relationship based on mutual respect and value for both mentor and person. Your job description might contain "coach" or you might even have that job title—it’s just a label or expectation. Mentor is a reputation that has to be personally earned; you are not a mentor until the person says you are.

Return
The coach’s returns are in the form of more team harmony, and job performance. The mentoring relationship is reciprocal. There is a learning process for the mentor from the feedback and insights of the person. For example, the ability to look at situations from a different perspective.  For example - You may be a Generation X and the mentor may be in their 60’s.

Mentors need not be an all-knowing expert—such a position could be detrimental. In various studies the most significant thing about the mentor was that they "listened and understood me" and, "built my confidence and trust in myself, empowered me to see what I could do."

Conclusion
Coaching and Mentoring are not the same thing. Results and experience support the conclusion that mentoring is a power free, two-way mutually beneficial learning situation where the mentor provides advice, shares knowledge and experiences, and teaches using a low pressure, self-discovery approach.