Are you a collaborative leader?

It was obvious from watching Congress recently try and fail to lead us out of the U.S. debt mess that the word “collaborate” was not in their vocabulary.

In the Julyl/August issue of the Harvard Business Review researchers Hermina Ibarra and Morten T. Hansen, discuss the need for leaders to transition out of ‘command and control’ mode and become more inclusive, cooperative and collaborative.

According to the authors, there are

4 Keys to Being a Collaborative Leader

1. Connect people and ideas outside the organization to those inside.
“To connect their organizations to the wider world, collaborative leaders develop contacts not only in the typical areas – local clubs, industry associations, and customer and supplier relations – but beyond them,” write Ibarra and Hansen.
2. Leverage diverse talent.
Back in the days when “command and control” was in vogue leadership was a matter of getting everybody to toe the line. Not any more. Mining the creativity and talent of a a diverse workforce comprised of different ages, races, genders and cultures leaders requires a leader who is not only open to ideas other than their own, but actively solicits them.
3. Model collaborative behavior at the top.
“Depoliticizing senior management so that executives are rewarded for collaborating rather than promoting their individual agendas is an absolute essential,” according to the authors.
4. Keep teams from becoming mired in debate.
The downside to creating a collaborative culture is that the process of gathering ideas and input can go on way too long. Leaders need to recognize when it’s time to “end the discussion and make the final call.”

“Leaders today must be able to harness ideas, people and resources from across boundaries of all kinds,” according to Ibarra and Hansen. “That requires reinventing their talent strategies and building strong connections both inside and outside their organizations.

Make it a great week!

Barbara Burke

Copyright 2011 Barbara Burke. All Rights Reserved.

Three years is too long to wait.

Statisticians have estimated that in a lifetime of 70 years, the average person spends at least three years waiting.

Waiting is an inevitable and even necessary aspect of human life. We wait in line at the grocery store, for red lights to turn green, and for movie trailers to finally stop so we can see the movie we paid to see.

And we wait on hold.                        

I’d like to suggest that a we all do a better job of respecting the value of our customers’ time. 

12 Actions You Can Take
to drastically reduce customer hold times

1. Expand your reps’ authority to make decisions without having to track down a higher authority.
2. Create a robust on-line knowledge base that can be accessed quickly and easily.
3. Update the knowledge base to make sure it always has the most current information.
4. Train your reps on efficient use of the knowledge base. Consider it a core competency.
5. Coach reps on call control techniques, i.e. managing the conversation with the customer.
6. Don’t tolerate reps putting customers on hold so they can chit-chat with their neighbors.
7. Don’t rely on newbies to “learn on the job.” It’s not fair to customers to sit on hold while a newbie gets the right answer.
8. Listen to your customers. If your customer sat surveys reveal a trend in complaints about having to hold while working with a rep, pay attention.
9. Have a sense of urgency yourself. Walk the talk.
10. Train your reps to always give the customer the option to hold or receive a call back.
11. Make sure that managing hold time during the call is included in your call quality criteria.
12. Get internal departments to be more responsive. Too often when a rep puts a customer hold so they can ask another department a quick question, no one is available to help.

At your next team meeting, raise awareness of the importance of respecting the customers’ time by making it a topic of discussion.

Make it a great week!

Barbara Burke
Copyright 2011 Barbara Burke. All Rights Reserved.

It’s not the new hire’s fault for being unprepared and under trained.
There is plenty of blame to go around.

Yesterday I called my phone company, Quest (soon to be CenturyLink), to inquire about their Internet service. Had I not wanted to give David, the young agent I was working with, a chance, I would have asked to speak to a supervisor much sooner. But, after 48 minutes on the phone during which I was put on hold no less than six times so he could ask his supervisor a question, I finally threw in the towel.

When the supervisor (or someone posing as a supervisor) picked up I calmly explained my frustration with having to go through such an arduous process to try to do business with them. Instead of an apology I got an excuse, “It’s not his fault. He’s new.”

The supervisor was right. The rep wasn’t to blame. There is plenty of blame to go around.

10 Reasons Why

your new hires are ill prepared to do their job
and what you can do about it

1. Poor job fit.
Hire people who have similar traits to the high performers you have now. If roses thrive in your environment, don’t hire petunias. Look for the very best roses you can find.
2. Poor planning.
Recruiting new hires (that are a good fit) takes a certain amount of time. Training takes a certain amount of time. Short cut either one and it will come back to bite you.
3. Misaligned training curriculum.
Too often curriculum suffers from “In a Perfect World” syndrome by teaching processes and procedures the “right way” when it’s really the wrong way.
4. Releasing them before they are ready.
Just because your new hires went through training doesn’t mean they are “trained.” Test new hires at each stage and don’t pass them on until they meet or exceed the standard.
5. Lack of accountability.
Trainers should regard the call center supervisors as their “internal customers.” As with any service relationship trainers should be held accountable for delivering on their customers’ expectations.
6. Settling for the status quo.
Just because new hire training has always been this way doesn’t mean it has to be in the future. Say something. Do something. Don’t settle.
7. Training stops short.
It isn’t enough to send new hires through the initial round of new hire training. Include regular 90 minute sessions on soft skills for all new hires in the first 6 months.
8. Treating new hires as just another newbie who may or may not make it.
Remember that every new employee comes to the job excited about working for you. You have an obligation and a responsibility to do everything you can to help them be a success.
9. Excessive turnover.
High turnover doesn’t have to be the “cost of doing business.” Do an audit to determine root causes. It’s well worth your time. Turnover is the hidden killer.
10. Supervisors don’t speak up.
If you are a supervisor who is tired of “babysitting” new hires and training them on skills they should have learned in the classroom, stop complaining. Talk with your fellow supervisors and organize a campaign for change.

As much as I’d like to believe that CenturyLink will do a better job than Quest, I have my doubts. That’s the promise AT&T made to us when it morphed into Quest.

Make it a great week! 

Barbara Burke
Copyright 2011 Barbara Burke. All Rights Reserved.