Coaching Your Staff For Retail Success

As a jewelry store owner or manager, you wear many hats, but the role most closely linked to your store's success and growth is that of coach. Coaching moves your staff toward improved performance and creates the environment and opportunity for individuals to become empowered and achieve results. To be an effective coach, you must mentor, counsel and, if necessary, confront each member of your staff.

Mentoring is sharing the culture of your business with your staff. Mentors identify potential within individuals to take on increased responsibilities. They also help develop and fine-tune skills, techniques and behaviors. A good mentor treats staff members as equal partners and has a genuine interest in their success. A goodmentoralsodefines corporate philosophy, policies and procedures, and helps employees develop career plans and goals based on performance and accomplishments.

Counseling is tantamount to problem-solving. Counseling is most appropriate when one of your staff comes to you for advice or assistance, experiences a setback or serious disappointment, shows a decline in performance or doesn't improve or change poor behavior. You may see the need to initiate counseling when a problem begins to develop. An effective counselor is a good listener andagoodcommunicator who shares personal insights. These insights help employees developabroaderunderstanding than they could have developed on their own.

Confronting occurs when problems discussed during counseling sessions are not resolved. In confronting, a manager discusses with an employee actions that will occur if poor behaviors continue. The actions are usually disciplinary and may result in termination of employment. Confronting is appropriate when an individual does not change behavior after counseling has made clear the expected levels of performance, when an employee negatively impacts the team's performance or attitude, or when an employee is not able to perform to minimum standards.

Effective coaches are even-tempered,articulateand respectful of their employees' feelings. Along with acting as strong leaders dedicated to the company and its goals, successful coaches focus on what it takes to do better in the future and not what went wrong in the past. They expect the best from their staff and encourage their staff to draw out the best within themselves.