Practical Leadership; Skills and Behaviours

I had to phone my TV programme provider last Friday night. Some of the channels that I normally watch weren't available. It's happened before. I rang at twenty past eight and got through at one minute to nine. The procedure is that the agent asks some questions and then, when he has done his diagnosis, he sends a signal to my viewing card and the channels come back.

Friday was different. The agent told me that he had to transfer me to the technical team. I told him that this had never happened before but he stood his ground. While he was getting some information, I asked him what time he was working till. 'You're my last customer, I'm off at nine,' he told me. I became suspicious. 'Could I take a note of your name?' I asked. 'We don't give names,' he replied. 'I'II just put you through to the technical team,' he continued, 'there isn't a queue so you'll go straight through.'

Nineteen minutes later, after listening to music, I finally got through. I started to speak and the member of the technical team put the phone down. A brilliant way to get rid of a queue of customers. I rang again and exactly the same happened. The problem didn't get resolved until I got through next day.

Now, having worked in a number of different call centres and observed what goes on, I actually believe that most people don't go to work to do a bad job. So, given this, the questions I would ask are: 'What do organisations do to people to make them act like this? What targets or measures do they impose? What example do their managers or team leaders set?'

I thought back to a few years ago when I worked in the area office of a bank. I used to visit the branches on a regular basis. We had two branches on the same high street in a medium sized town. When I walked into one of the branches the staff were full of energy. They would be discussing the latest sales campaign or customer service initiative. When I walked into the other branch, however, the staff would be miserable and complaining of staff shortages and high workloads. The interesting thing was that both branches had similar numbers of staff and customers.

It some became apparent that the difference between the branches was the quality of the managers and team leaders in place and the leadership skills they exhibited.

There is a growing body of evidence to show that effective leadership has a strong impact on:

- Job satisfaction and employee motivation
- Reduced absenteeism
- Employee retention.

According to the Hay Group, for example, as much as 30 per cent difference in business performance can be attributed directly to the way managers treat employees.

Over the last few years, I have spent a great amount of time with call centre employees. Part of the process involves speaking to agents in groups and on a one-to-one basis to find out what is going on in their workplace. One of the questions that I always ask is 'what makes you respect team leaders or supervisors?' The answers invariably fall into three groups:

Does the leader operate to the same standards that they expect of their team:
- Do they readily speak to customers?
- Do they do what they say?
- Do they bad mouth employees in other departments?

Do they treat employees the way they expect staff to treat customers?
- Do they respond to emails from staff promptly?
- Are they there when staff need them?
- Do they always do their best for their employee?

Do team leaders / supervisors work as a team?
- Do they all work to the same standards?

Time and time again what comes from staff is that it is the real 'softer' human relation type skills and behaviours that are truly important in team leaders and supervisors. Staff talk about the importance of being valued by their team leader for contributions they make, being listened to attentively and having the feeling that their superiors are concerned for their well-being.

This has implications for the way that organisations develop their team leaders and supervisors to enable them to perform to maximum levels. Moreover, it has implications for the way that leaders in the workplace look after their own self-development and the areas that they should focus upon.

The Real World Group has developed a model based on Transformational Leadership that shows the key areas that a leader must operate in to be successful:

-Personal qualities and core values: being honest and consistent and acting with integrity.
-Engaging individuals: showing genuine concern, being accessible, enabling, encouraging questioning.
-Engaging the organisation: supporting a development culture, inspiring others, focusing team effort, being decisive.
-Moving forward together: supporting a development culture, networking, resolving complex problems, facilitating change sensibly.

Some organisations realise the importance of equipping team leaders and supervisors with the full range of 'softer' skills that are needed and put a lot of investment in this area. Unfortunately, these organisations are the exceptions with the majority overlooking these areas of development, generally leaving the new leader to their own devices.

Those organisations that focus on this kind of team leader support often arrange for development programmes to be delivered in conjunction with local universities or colleges. The programmes involve structured development that includes class room lectures, distance learning and group and individual assignments. By working through case studies with colleagues, and considering the impacts of their own behaviours on their teams, the team leader can effectively transfer lessons learnt back to the workplace.

We will continue our discussion of this and related topics in future Lenses.