Your next 1:1 is in the diary. You want it to be useful. But first, you need to find something worth talking about. So you open a recording. Then another. You take a few notes, check last month’s feedback and wonder whether you’ve found a pattern or just caught someone on a difficult afternoon.
By the time you’re ready to coach, you’ve already done a lot of work. It’s a familiar frustration: you care about helping your team grow, and a good chunk of your energy goes into finding the starting point.
Give yourself a better starting point
Imagine opening your preparation with a few useful things already in view. A skill an agent is getting better at. A recurring difficulty worth exploring. The conversations that show you both.
You still listen. You still think. But now you have a reason to open that particular conversation, and a question to take into the room.
That’s the coaching experience we’re building around Teamlead Coach in Compass, Guidnce’s AI workspace. Help the team lead find a focus and the examples behind it, so they can spend more time thinking about the person they’re coaching.
Make it something you can work on together
Take a simple example. An agent explains the solution clearly, but customers keep asking what happens next. Looking across several conversations, you notice that the next step is there, while the timeframe is often missing.
That gives you something specific to explore together. Listen to a couple of examples and ask the agent what was happening. Were they rushing? Did they assume the timeframe was obvious? Was there even a reliable timeframe to give?
If it’s a skill to work on, agree on something the agent can try in their next conversation: explain who will follow up, give the available timeframe and check that the customer knows what to expect. They leave the session knowing what to practise. You know what to look for next time.
Leave room for the agent’s side of the story
That question about the timeframe matters. If the process gives the agent no reliable answer, asking them to communicate more clearly only gets you so far.
Bring those examples to the team that owns the process. Meanwhile, work with the agent on how to explain the uncertainty honestly. There may be something for both teams to improve.
People are more likely to find feedback useful when it reflects the job they actually have to do. Hearing their side helps you get there.
Notice when the work pays off
Keep a note of what you agreed and return to it in later, comparable conversations. Is the agent setting expectations more clearly? Where are they still getting stuck?
And when you find a conversation where they get it right, bring that one too. Let them hear the difference their effort is making.
The next 1:1 can pick up where this one left off. You have something to build on together, and the agent can see that you’ve been paying attention.
Let’s make more room for the coaching itself. Book a Guidnce demo to explore the approach with us.
CEO & co-founder
