At the end of a leadership course, it means a lot to hear participants say, “I’ve got some work to do.”
Not because their intentions aren’t already good. But because they have identified some gaps they can address on their way to becoming better leaders.
This article is part of our Team Leader Resource Series — a collection of practical articles to help Team Leaders grow their skills, shift their mindset, and elevate the way they lead.
The higher you go, the more your problems are behavioral. — Marshall Goldsmith
“We love Customer Service”
When I ask Team Leaders to share about themselves and their organizations at the beginning of a leadership course, they often say, “We love Customers.”
I believe them.
Interestingly, by the end of the course, these same leaders say, “I’ve got some work to do.”
Because there’s often a gap between wanting to serve Customers well and creating the conditions that allow frontline professionals to do so consistently.
After 25 years of teaching leadership, I’ve come to believe that much of a Team Leader’s job is closing gaps.
Not dramatic gaps. The kind of gaps that can make you a better leader tomorrow than you are today.
The smaller but important gaps between aspiration and execution.
Here are four that I see repeatedly.
1. Do I know what good looks like?
One of the first realizations is that we aren’t as clear as we thought about what good looks like.
Team Leaders aren’t typically involved in establishing measurement practices around productivity and quality — that remains a critical senior leadership responsibility.
But they are responsible for knowing what those measures and practices are, why they matter, how they connect to overarching goals, and how to talk about them with their people.
- What exactly is being measured?
- Why does it matter?
- How was the standard determined?
- How would you explain it to a new employee?
- How would you defend it if someone challenged it?
I’d also include attitudes and behaviors as part of what good looks like.
What attitudes are listed in the job description or discussed in performance reviews?
How often do we talk about professionalism, accountability, initiative, or teamwork in a meaningful and rigorous way?
There’s a lot of vague and aspirational talk about productivity, quality, and attitudes.
What’s often missing is clarity and logic.
Because if Team Leaders don’t know what good looks like, then how can they possibly help their people reach it?
2. Where does my time actually go?
Another realization comes when we examine where our time actually goes.
Team Leaders are always busy. But the question is busy doing what?
In leadership courses, I ask Team Leaders to do an exercise to identify where they spend time across a typical week.
We look at activities such as developing staff, supporting staff, administration, personal development, and everything else that keeps them busy.
The exercise isn’t particularly complicated. But the conversations it generates are powerful.
Most Team Leaders tell me that developing people is important. They talk about coaching, development, and helping their team members succeed.
Then they compare those priorities against where they actually spend their time across a 40, 50, and even 60+ hour work week.
Often what they discover is a gap between what they value and where they invest their time.
The exercise is also an eye-opener for Contact Center Heads, Team Managers, Heads of CX, and even Human Resources.
These are the people who have the ability to redesign the role itself.
If we truly believe in developing the people that work for us, we need to create sacred time around doing that.
Which means understanding where our time goes and making intentional choices about where to spend it.
3. Do I think standards and support are opposites?
Some Team Leaders discover they have been treating standards and support as competing priorities.
The thinking often sounds something like this:
- If I’m too supportive, people won’t take accountability seriously.
- If I’m too demanding, people won’t want to work for me.
As a result, some leaders lean heavily toward standards. They believe their people should already know what to do.
Their support slips — especially in the quantity and quality of conversations they have with their people.
Others lean heavily toward support. As they lean into building personal relationships with their people, they allow standards to slip.
They find reasons that people can’t perform.
- “They’re Gen Z.”
- “They haven’t been here long enough.”
- “That’s just the way they are.”
Both approaches create problems.
People need to know what is expected of them. High standards tell people what good looks like.
But they also need coaching, guidance, encouragement, and the opportunity to succeed. Support helps them get there.
One without the other rarely produces the results we want.
When we begin to see standards and support as complementary rather than competing, we stop choosing between them.
And that can make us better leaders.
4. Do I think that providing a score is the same as development?
Scores are important.
They help us understand performance, identify patterns, and create development plans.
But perhaps the biggest realization is that scores themselves don’t develop people.
I’ve noticed that with increasingly sophisticated (AI) dashboards, there’s a corresponding Team Leader belief that we don’t need to have so many conversations with our people anymore.
That belief manifests as:
Our people can (should) read the data themselves and know how to make the appropriate decisions about how to improve their score because they already know our standards.
But a score by itself doesn’t improve anything.
A quality score of 75% doesn’t tell someone how to become an 85%.
A performance rating of ‘meets expectations’ doesn’t tell someone how to ‘exceed expectations.’
More information doesn’t automatically lead to more learning.
But it does mean that the Team Leader role continues its rapid transition into that of coach.
When presented with dozens of data points, we must ask ourselves:
- What is this person doing right and am I regularly recognizing it?
- What is most important for this person’s success right now?
- Is the result I see here a people issue or a systems issue?
- What’s achievable in the short-term? What’s going to take longer?
- Do we have the necessary support resources in place to help this person?
- What’s my overall game plan for this person?
The data may identify the opportunity, but development still happens through coaching, conversation, and accountability.
Because if providing a score was enough, we’d all be improving much faster than we are.
In closing
The mood at the end of these courses is always optimistic, happy, and engaged.
Each of these gaps is both relevant and addressable, even in a world where technology seems to change on a daily basis.
And perhaps my favorite thing to hear, even as participants are signing off, is this:
“I’ve got some work to do.”
Thank You for Reading
I regularly share stories, strategies, and insights from our work across Contact Centers, Customer Service, and Customer Experience. If this resonates, I’d love to stay connected.
You can drop me a line anytime, or subscribe on our site.
Daniel Ord
[email protected]
www.omnitouchinternational.com
