Devloping Leaders – Conclusions

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Contact centre (business), Customer service, Employee retention, John Adair, leadership, Leadership Development, Performance-Management, team leader

team leader (Photo credit: kairin)

Here are my conclusions from the seven blogs previously published on leadership development in contact centres:

◾A regular observation in contact centres is that team leaders are the most important people in the centre. However, leaders in these roles often receive little or no development, either before their appointment or when they are in place
◾In many cases the job of the team leader has become more complex. The lack of development of team leaders can have harmful impacts on contact centre performance; including customer service, performance management, employee morale and staff retention levels
◾Senior managers in contact centres should check the effectiveness of team leader development within their own areas of influence. They can do this by reference to the principles outlined in these blogs which are based on John Adair’s work. They should assess their own contact centres’ position in each area
◾By way of reference, the principles that Adair highlights are in the areas of selection, training, mentoring, giving leaders ‘the chance to lead,’ leadership education and senior manager buy-in
◾Finally, there is a need for the contact centre, within the wider organisation, to have a clear strategy for team leader development. This should be reviewed regularly to make sure it is consistent with what is required from the role holder.

Developing Leaders Part 7 – Senior management buy-in

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Call centre, customer, John Adair, leadership, management, team leader

Leadership (Photo credit: glennharper)

We have been discussing how organisations, and particularly contact centres, should develop new leaders given the importance of front-line and team leaders in any operation.

A key part of any leadership development strategy is that senior management support it and show they support it. John Adair makes the following point:

‘Where the top strategic leader is not involved in or committed to the work of developing leadership, in my experience, you may as well forget it.’

Senior managers must play an active part to make the strategy work.

If it is part of the leadership development process that team leaders have regular one-to-ones, mentoring and appraisals, then the person at the head of the organisation must engage in these processes with their direct reports. Moreover, it does no harm at all for the senior manager to discuss the importance of growing team leaders in their communications and have a presence on the agenda on development programmes, such as training events.

This will be difficult given all the other responsibilities senior managers have but the return from supporting the leadership development strategy will be worth the effort.

Developing Leaders Part 6 – Strategy for leadership development

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contact centre, Human resources, John Adair, leadership, Leadership Development, Strategic management, team leader

Strategy (Photo credit: stefan.erschwendner)

Growing leaders is a strategic priority for a successful business. John Adair writes:

‘Effective leadership, I believe, is too important for the present and future success of the business to be left to the human resources department. It is a core activity to grow leaders.’

To develop a strategy for team leader development, or review one that is in place, there are questions that need to be asked:

• Is there sufficient focus on selecting the right team leaders?
• Are the results of the selection processes built into subsequent development programmes?
• Do newly appointed team leaders receive training covering the skills they will need to successfully lead?
• Are there processes for mentoring new team leaders? Do line managers effectively mentor their team leaders?
• Is there a balance between training and ‘in role’ development; such as appropriate project work or secondment?
• Are there any opportunities for team leaders to develop outside of the organisation? For example, completing external courses.
• How is the overall leadership development strategy evaluated for effectiveness?
• How do senior managers in the organisation play a part in showing they sponsor the strategy?

Developing Leaders Part 5 – Education for leadership

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Adair, Business, contact centre, Customer service, development, Education and Training, Human resources, John Adair, leadership, management, motivation, teamwork, training

University College London (Photo credit: stevecadman)

We are discussing John Adair’s framework for developing leaders as described in his book ‘How to Grow Leaders.’ Adair’s fifth principle is about education for leadership.

Senior managers can take steps to develop and grow new team leaders. These may include selecting the right people, giving them training and providing them with chance to take on extra responsibility in the workplace.

There is a missing factor and Adair identifies this as the process of education for leadership:

‘Although the two overlap, often considerably, there is a useful distinction between training and education. The former focuses on the systematic development of skills with a specific role in mind. The latter is more to do with the whole person and encompasses areas such as values, attitudes, beliefs and ethics.’

I previously discussed an organisation that sends their new team leaders on a two-day course when they are first appointed to understand the principles of leadership and effective communication. Their approach to new team leader development is wider than this, however.

Developing Leaders: Part 4 – The chance to lead

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Adair, Business, Education and Training, John Adair, leadership, management, team leader

Leader and Followers (Photo credit: ervega)

The fourth stage of Adair’s framework involves giving inexperienced team leaders the chance to lead. This means presenting new leaders with a set of progressive challenges so they grow within their role.

In ‘How to Grow Leaders’ Adair writes that ’leaders grow by facing and surmounting even more difficult leadership challenges. If organisations want to grow leaders – or at least create the conditions necessary for growth – they can do no better than to give potential leaders the chance to lead.’

Day-to-day experience needs building upon. In contact centres with flat structures, plans need to be carefully worked out to make sure new leaders are presented with challenges and are supported along the way as part of their development.

There is limited evidence that organisations do this successfully. There are too many pressing issues that make the plans hard to put into practice.

Some team leaders gain experience by working on projects or in other departments as part of their development.They may also undertake some aspects of their line managers’ role or represent them at meetings. However, it’s rare to find a team leader who has a clear development plan that is being actioned.

Process and customer service in contact centres

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Business, contact centre, customer, leadership, Performance-Management, process

Whiteboard (Photo credit: Arenamontanus)

I worked as part of the team that developed firstdirect, the telephone bank. The bank launched in 1989 and it was a pretty creative project at the time.

One of the things I remember was the time spent developing processes for the contact centre.

Every customer scenario was examined with meetings running late into the evening. Hour after hour mapping out what if situations and processes to deal with them, referring to the extensive customer feedback that was available. I seem to recall that process meetings started at 1pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays and often went on till after 9pm. Hard work when you had a 90-minute commute home across London.

Processes were comprehensive, nicely documented and targeted to meet customer requests. Systems were developed that supported process delivery. A comprehensive induction for staff was in place over several weeks and understanding the processes and their background was a key part. There was then a lot of effort improving the processes in practice. Everything was under strict change control.

I cannot recall working for an organisation since that gave such a prominence to process.

Some contact centres struggle because processes don’t work effectively. There are many unnecessary hand offs between staff and departments. Advisors know what they are doing for the customer won’t work because there will be a failure along the line.

Developing Leaders: Part 3- Line managers as leadership mentors

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Business, contact centre, Human resources, leadership, Mentorship, Senior management, team leader

Giving advice (Photo credit: taylorpad212)

All new team leaders need one-to-one support from line managers as leadership mentors. They benefit by discussing situations they are finding in their day-to-day environment and working through ideas with a more experienced person.

It would be interesting to survey senior contact centre managers to see where they place ‘mentoring direct reports’ in their list of key responsibilities. Recent research by Contact Babel found that a low-level of support in practice:

‘Team leaders generally receive little coaching and development from their superiors, as many contact centres have flat structures, and senior management has to try very hard to make the time to develop team leaders, without taking them away from the teams for too long.’

The problem has also become more acute in recent years given that line managers often work in distant locations.

Developing Leaders: Part 2- Training

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Adair, Business, Education and Training, John Adair, leadership, management, team leader

Classroom (Photo credit: hpeguk)

We have been discussing the lack of development newly appointed team leaders often receive. John Adair writes about this in his book ‘How to Grow Leaders.’ Adair describes a framework that can be used to strengthen the level of team leader development.

Adair is clear that ‘an organisation should never give a team leader role to someone without training.’ He goes on to comment about how much training to give newly appointed team leaders:

‘The answer is not much. All that such nominated operational leaders need before they take up the appointments is the opportunity to recalibrate: that is, to widen the diameter of their thinking about leadership and to relate it to the specific needs of the organisation at this juncture of time.’

There are few reasons to train newly appointed internal team leaders in the technical aspects of their role. In most cases they will have the knowledge needed and can easily fill in any gaps. There will be some advanced administration tasks or similar responsibilities, but these are learnt quickly in the workplace.

An organisation, which I grew to know well in the emergency services sector, has an effective approach to training for newly appointed team leaders.

Developing Leaders: Part 1- Selection

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Communication, contact centre, development, John Adair, leadership, team leader

A recruitment agency shop window near Holborn, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Research shows senior managers believe that team leaders are the most important people in contact centres. However, in reality, team leaders often receive very little preparation for the role and hardly any development once they get started.

John Adair sets out a framework for team leader development in his book ‘How to Grow Leaders.’ The framework is discussed in my recent blog of 23 February 2013.

Adair discusses the selection of team leaders as a starting point.

Clearly careful selection of team leaders makes their subsequent development easier. Surprisingly many managers don’t give this the attention they should; appointing those with the most technical expertise or the ‘next in line.’

Call coaching….and really improving performance

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Business, Call centre, contact centre, customer, Customer service, Performance-Management, team leader

Listen, Understand, Act (Photo credit: highersights)

Here’s a good way to use call coaching to improve performance and provide better customer service.

Thinking about a contact centre I used to work in. There were 400 advisors. Advisors had 2 calls coached per week; either by their team leader or contact centre coach. That was over 700 calls per week (on the assumption not everyone was there all the time).

Team leaders and contact centre coaches got together on a Friday morning. They discussed the following about the calls they’d heard:

• Where customers had complained, what was the issue?
• Where had there been repeat calls (where the customer had to ring back about the same issue), what has caused them?
• Which aspects of product knowledge had agents struggled with? (often the features of a new product or a rate / price change)
• What had caused customers to be put on hold?
• What technology problems had they seen in their side-by-side coaching?