The coaching groups and the mentoring programs both pursue the basic aim of career development.

The FLP coaching groups are led by professional coaches who have thorough experience and knowledge of the academic context. Coaching groups meet for a defined number of meetings, and each participant can benefit from an additional individual coaching session.

The mentoring programs provide a form of career development support that is less pre-structured than the coaching group. The mentor supports and gives advice. Mentor and mentee/peer may or may not work in the same field.

In literature, mentoring is described as more driven by a developmental perspective, centered on the exchange of personal experiences in a given field and advice based thereupon. Whereas coaching is described as more “task-oriented”, “short term” and “performance driven”. Even though mentors are not professional coaches, mentors still use coaching methods in order to support mentees in achieving specific goals.