Leadership at ALL levels
March 2010
Tanya Phillips – VP Operations

LEADING from the front: Agenda
 What IS leadership all about?
 Why is leadership SO important?
 Understanding the world we live in TODAY
 Our industry TODAY
 What do we need to do to excel?
 Building a leadership culture
 Leadership a framework
 Our role as leaders
 In summary some thoughts to ponder

Leadership vs. Management
What is leadership ALL about?

MANAGEMENT
• Planning and budgeting
• Organising and staffing
• Controlling and problem solving
• Makes an organisation run efficiently
• Strong focus on TASK

LEADERSHIP
• Creating vision and strategy
• Communicating vision/strategy and getting
buy in
• Motivating action
• Helps an organisation grow, evolve and
adapt to changing circumstances
• Strong focus on PEOPLE

Leadership vs. Management
• Leadership is about:
– Creating something new
– Seeing things others don‟t
– Seeing possibility
– Taking risks
– Trusting
– The ability to provide a positive alternative
• Management is about:
– Operating effectively in defined boundaries
– Mitigating risks
– Problem orientated not solution orientated

The winning process is:
75-80% Leadership
20-25% management
Not the other way around!

One is not right and the other not wrong….
• Because the rate of change is increasing, leadership is a growing part
of managerial work. Far too many people in positions of power still fail
to recognise or acknowledge this most important observation
• Increasingly, those in managerial jobs can be usefully thought of as
people who create agendas filled with plans (the management part) and
visions (the leadership part), as people who develop implementation
capacity networks through well-organised hierarchy (management) and
a complex web of aligned relationships (leadership), and who execute
through both controls (management) and inspiration (leadership)
John P Kotter

Why is leadership important?
Understanding the world we live in
today

Why is leadership important?
What TOP companies have in common
 Leadership at all levels
 Self directed teams that “hum”
 Inculcating a culture of diversity
 Clear performance measures
 Capacity to Change
 A really effective HR strategy

What makes World Class
Call Centres World Class?
 Outstanding leadership
 Strategy aligned with Corporate
 Focus on People Development
 Strong Technology support

The world we live in TODAY
• Globalisation
– First time ever we‟ve lived in a global world with a
global economy
– Vertical chain of command vs. collaboration across
boundaries
– The world is digital, virtual, mobile and personal
– Information is not power – anyone can get it
– Authority can be challanged
– Barriers of distance, time, wealth can be broken
– Individuals are EMPOWERED

Our Industry TODAY
• Self service adoption (online and IVR) has changed the profile of calls
handled „live‟ in a call centre
• Consequently FCR is reducing and AHT increasing
• The front line skill needed to deal with the complexity has shifted from
“productivity agents” to “quality agents”
• Given the increased emphasis on quality, we need to shift our focus
towards efforts to increase staff retention
• More than 60% of frontline staff report that they find their current job
satisfying, but more than 30% of these satisfied staff members are
either neutral or intend to leave their current company within a year
• Improving agents‟ job opportunities (or VISIBLE career pathing)
generates the greatest impact on staff intent to stay ( by up to 49%!)
• Staff motivation and effective coaching are also leading drivers of
intent to stay and have a more significant effect than paying people
more.

What do we need to DO to EXCEL?
• Develop a leadership culture in our call centres
• Link our call centre strategy to that of the business
• Implement effective performance management
programmes
• Focus on staff retention policies and programmes
• Develop and grow our people – VISIBLE career pathing
Companies of the future will help employees find their life purpose and
make sure that their work is consistent with and demanding of that purpose
-Martin Rutte, Chicken Soup for the Soul @ work

So, how do we this?
A leader is anyone who feels called to make a
contribution. So a leader could be a mother, a
community builder, an artist or a CEO.
Meg Wheatley

Developing leadership at all levels
• The KEY to leadership is unlocking the potential in
others
• Leadership is not about power, position, title, how much
money you make – anyone can chose to lead. The key
word is CHOICE
• Anyone in any position can make a difference
• There is dignity in all work
• What happened to you when somebody took a chance
on you?
• Focus all your energy on being the best you can be
NOW.
• Learn as much as possible
• Bring all of yourself to the job
CAPABILITY. COLLABORATION. CHARACTER

Leadership: A FRAMEWORK
The FIVE Pillars of Leadership:
VISION
COMMUNICATION
TRUST
EMPOWERMENT
SELF MANAGEMENT

Our role as leaders
• Lead don‟t manage
• Asking the right questions is more important that having
all the answers – move beyond SME
• The meaning of work
• Demand the best from your people – I do
• Start a community
• Be part of a learning organisation
• Continuously improve – don‟t stagnate, change before it
becomes necessary
• Bring ALL of yourself to the job - The person at home is
the same person at work
• Have real and honest conversations
• Keep it simple – we are running call centres not putting
people on the moon
• Have FUN – get excited, enthused and energetic

Thoughts to ponder …
• We live in a world that wants us to do more with
less
• The only constant is change
• Our only hope is to leverage the people in our
organisations and unleash the talent
• To succeed we need to keep our people
• To do that we need to focus on being leaders
and developing a leadership culture around us
• You can make a difference
The choice to lead is the choice to serve – Peter Senge