Have you ever noticed how the word “boss” is often used in a negative context? Very rarely do people use the word in praise; rather, you more often hear terms like “the boss is getting after me again” or “my boss is so demanding.” Perhaps Theodore Roosevelt summed up the reason behind this trend best when he said “People often ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
At face value, driving may seem simple. After all, you know where you’re going, and as long as your workforce is on board, everyone will arrive where you need to be together. Yet what if circumstances compel you to relinquish the wheel? Do the passengers traveling with you as you journey towards call center success know and understand the destination? Are they even aware of the route you’re taking? They are if you’ve made the decision to lead rather than simply drive.
Do You Know Where You Going?
Yet passing the vision of where your contact center may be going on to your employees requires that you first acquire it yourself. Do you have a destination that you are heading towards, or do your operations indicate that you are simply content treading water? Determining what your professional goals may be can turn your vision from a perceived desire to an achievable accomplishment.
How Do You Show Your Staff How to Get There?
Having a professional destination in mind helps in better leading your workforce towards improvements and success. It allows you chart a professional course by establishing the following five elements:
- A fundamental knowledge of what you’re doing : Too often, employees fall into the trap of doing what they do simply because that’s what they were told by their contact center manager. This can easily breed an atmosphere of content because they feel as though their only supporting his or her individual success. However, if you show them how what they’re doing supports your organization’s goals, your staff’s work becomes more purposeful.
- An operational framework : Once your workforce understands how the “why” gets them to where you all want to be, they then need to know the “how.” That comes by developing a framework designed specifically to help secure achievements rather than simply generating workflow.
- An achievable goal : Don’t allow your goals to simply be figurative; that makes it easier to justify not reaching them. Rather, establish a well-defined indicator of success that employees can see and experience once they reach help you to reach it.
- Continuous monitoring : It’s easy to get lost in your pursuit of an objective if you never assess where you currently are. Monitoring performance in relation to your goals allows you to become more engaged with your employees in your pursuit of success. Not only does it make plotting your course easier, but it allows you to identify areas where certain individuals are either struggling or over-achieving.
- An attitude of adaptability : Your plans will rarely go as you initially anticipated them. Thus, when new obstacles or opportunities present themselves, you need to be willing to adapt your operations if you see them leading you away from your objective.
Every employee at every of a company is on a journey, and like all journeys, each must have a destination. It’s up to you as a leader within your contact center to convey your vision of where your organization’s journey will ultimately end up, and what collectively must be done in order to get there. Doing so ensures that you’re not simply driving a group of uninterested people along the pathway, but rather leading an engaged group of travelers.