I would like to explore coaching from a specific perspective. Does personality play a part in coaching? It does in selling. That’s for sure. It plays a part in managing and leading. Yep. So does it matter when we coach our team? You know, their personality. Yeah, kinda. I mean it does matter, just maybe not in the way we think.
Here is the decoder ring secret…it is incredibly difficult to coach personality or attitude. The key is to coach behavior. Personality does play a part. It spotlights a bit of the why behind the behavior and is a flag to identify behavior. It also helps the manager and the leader engage the behavior. It guides the customized approach necessary to speak to the person. Knowing the buttons and triggers makes the coaching more relevant and appropriate for the individual sales rep. That will be our series. Being aware of the personalities to align a proper coaching approach.
Part one is about two very strong performers…Spence and Kirk.
Headline: One is liked, the other…well, not so much.
Spence is not just a strong performer, he is a team favorite. He gets along with everyone. He does his job and does not have to be prompted. Customers really like his easy going style and genuine concern for their needs. Rep satisfaction scores are high. Out of the store, he is very particular in how things work out and everything seems to be perfectly in place.
Kirk is also a strong performer. He doesn’t connect well with the team, but can get along with anyone. He does very well with the customers. He is incredibly well respected and gets great scores in rep satisfaction. You have to remind him from time to time about operations; especially getting some tasks done that seem pretty obvious. He can be forgetful and is a hard worker. Out of the store, there seems to be a lot of drama.
So part one, what are you coaching exactly?
Isn’t that a dilemma? What is your coaching compass right now? You are first and foremost a sales manager and you drive sales performance. They are both giving you that. So what else? OK, operational tasks are critical. In some ways, more critical than sales. Think about it. Which is harder… upselling or taking the trash out? They can both upsell. One is not giving you consistency in one major piece of the job – ops. And what about Kirk’s drama? Does it matter? Maybe it does to him, and that’s it.
Listen, this is hard for some managers. You may like Spence for so many reasons and you may not really like Kirk so much at all. And yet they are both giving you what you need from a sales perspective. What are you really coaching?
Spence. Well, I would be challenging him in sales and praising him for his operational compliance. Kirk. I would challenge him in sales and let him know his operational behavior is not acceptable. Be sure to engage him and target where he needs to correct behavior. As far as the team liking one while the other isn’t as ‘liked’…that is not your issue. Unless the drama comes to work, back off.
We can’t like everyone and we can’t save everyone (see a previous post). We can only control what we can control. Our team will be whoever they are and we can only manage and lead so much in our retail four walls. Having favorites is highly problematic, and at the worst, it can exclude someone who ‘isn’t there yet’ or maybe doesn’t want to be.
Cheers