The Coaching Swingometer

By Paul Archer

My first role as a Trainee Manager for a bank in the 1980′s exposed me to the traditional hierarchical management style that predominated.

My manager’s office stood high above us and overlooked our working area. He had huge internal windows which enabled him to glare at us all day without leaving the sanctuary of his room.

How things have changed and rightfully so.

Today, successful managers operate a coaching style, continually developing their teams and unleashing their people’s ability and skills.

Coaching is particularly effective at developing people, discarding the reliance on classroom training and putting development on the job, where it belongs.

One barrier I have witnessed in many companies I’ve worked with, is the manager’s confusion as to what is coaching and how coaching can be used as the ultimate tool for developing people.

Everyone has their opinion but most agree that pure coaching is where the team member has all the answers, has the ability and once made aware, determines their own solutions. This fits very well in a text book, but not so well in a bustling, stressful, deadline oriented retail customer facing environment.

Here, we want more flexibility, indirect and direct coaching. Let me show you in the Coaching Swingometer.

Made famous by the BBC, their election Swingometer found out how vote swings between political parties could affect the outcome of the General Election.

Presenter Robert McKenzie with the swingometer on election night, 1964 © BBC

In the same way, our coaching Swingometer can plot the person you’re coaching and can help you decide the variety of coaching that should be used given the situation you’re facing. Let me explain.

Below is the Coaching Swingometer.

On the left side of the Swingometer is direct coaching or push coaching, which is tell mode coaching, more one to one training than coaching.

Suitable when the team member wants some help or guidance or needs to be shown how something works or how to speak with a customer or handle an irate customer.

As we move to the right we let go as coaches, encouraging more responsibility and awareness with our team member, helping them to decide their next steps.

We use feedback tools to help the team member develop, we support their decisions, use tools such as GROW and head towards indirect coaching or pull coaching.

The Swingometer can swing during one coaching session. For example a team member comes to you asking for some help on handling a particularly irate customer in the foyer.

It’s so easy to brush them aside and go and pacify the customer yourself.

But good coaching empowers the team member by unlocking their ability to handle the situation.

You might start your instant coaching session by giving them some pointers and ideas, and follow up with a question as to how they’re going to handle the customer, what are they going to say and empower them that way.

Another example is a new programme on the system. You start by doing some one to one training in the branch with your team member, showing them how it works, demonstrating.

Then you might follow up with some mock exercises and ask how they’re going to use the system to help them give a better service to our customer.

You might be conducting and 1:1 with a team member to determine their learning goals for the following quarter. Here you would go straight to the right hand side of the Coaching Swingometer and operate the GROW model in a purely indirect fashion, so they completely own the decisions they make.

My manager back in 1983 hadn’t even heard of coaching let alone any other style of management. To a degree neither had we, the team members. But teams have changed in the 2010’s; the majority of people working in customer facing retail environments are Generation Y’s and late Generation X’s.

These generations know about coaching or its components and seek out an inclusive, empowering management style. They were brought up by parents who involved them in all family decisions and need this culture to continue in the workplace.

These generations have all the information at their fingertips they could dream of, so probably know more than their manager, they want to be able to use it practically and continually learn and develop on the job.

Our teams have changed so must we, and the Coaching Swingometer can help you determine the style of coaching you operate for any eventuality in a customer facing environment.

Paul is an international speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. His expertise and experience is in selling and sales coaching, his books and articles focus on rapport selling which puts the customer at the heart of the sale. Visit his website http://www.archertraining.co.uk/Sales_tips.htm to sign up for his Weekly Sales and Coaching Tips or visit his blog at http://www.paularcher.com where you’ll find his unique style of weekly blog posts for you to enjoy. paul@paularcher.com

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