When the coach is much younger than agent

W30

When the coach is much younger than agent

D4 — Delegating

Primary: Bring the Right MoodStuck at entry

This session creates the space for your coachee to see how they can connect more effectively with their customers. Your role is to help them observe what is happening — not to tell them what to change.

1. Diagnosis

Agent is older/more experienced and does not engage with their younger coach.

2. Behaviour Observations

What you might see or hear that points to this pattern.

You feel that the agent is holding back from the conversation and is not really saying what they are thinking.
The agent plays the game that coaching is great for younger staff but not for them.
The agent is resigned to not changing and sees coaching as just another initiative that will pass.

3. Session Objective

The objective is to give the agent the space to use the half hour coaching session to think about new things. Coaching is not training — the coach does not need to have more skills than the agent. Letting the agent see that they have control over the topics and the discussion but that it is important that they try something new is sufficient.

4. Session Tactics

How to prepare for and structure the 45-minute call review.

Start with a clearing of the air: 'X, you have much more experience than I do and I appreciate that. I don't have anything to teach you.' Wait for a response. Next: 'We have the opportunity to listen back to some calls and see are there some different moves we could make — your best coach is yourself.' Look to get the agent to agree to try new things and listen to calls from the customer's perspective. Pay particular attention to writing down possible experiments — get volume.

5. GROW Experiments

Experiments the coachee might choose to try. These are offers, not prescriptions — the coachee selects what feels right for them.

Experiment 1

Focus on the trigger for the experiment. Experienced agents do a lot from 'muscle memory'. If they are going to do something differently they need to look for the precursor action that they or the customer makes before they act. Finding the trigger allows a new action to be taken.

Experiment 2

Ask the agent to pick the experiment from the observations you and they made. Be careful that the agent picks something that will require them to do something actually different. Spend time on the REALITY box — unless the agent acknowledges something needs to change, they will not change.

Behaviour Tags

Experienced but resistant to change