How to be a successful TL??

[Lyenal]

Hi friends,
I'm 21yrs old. I'm in the call center industry for the past 2 yrs.I worked as telemarketter,Tech support exec.worked for many projects with UK,USA,Aus.then i'd been promoted as a accent and soft skills trainer.I did free lancing too.in all these professions I was successful.I was a good caller and I developed many new good callers.
But now i'm working as a team leader which is really challenging.The complaint is i'm being very soft to the agents.wen i was a caller i wanted my TL to be soft and kind,they were(some of them)i performed well too.
but here i dono why i'm not able to get control of my agents.(hope there r lot of differents bet. controlling students and the employees)hell a lot of pressure from the client and the agent level is really irritating.Is there any way to develope managorial skills?Studying 6sigma help for it?help me out from seniors plsssssss(but i wanna take it as a challenge and do it.im really cool and funny in nature...is that a barrier?however my smile has gone off nowadays)

[rebelxt]

Relax.. This is not somethign u need to worry abt.
Not everyone is open to changes. The team you are handling right now was probably handled by a teamleads who had a wonderful rapport with the team before.
The folks in your team are not against you but probably missing you.
For some time , you need to really not pester them with their Aux / ATT and things like tht. Pretend you are not looking at it also. But make sure you know what their performance is.
Most cos give a budget to their team leads to have team outings , etc. If you hve something like that , take your team out for lunch.
In Team meetings, ones that involve your Team managers and other Team leads, talk high about your team mates. This will reach your team mates somehow. This will make them get a good opinion about you.. Once they get close, take the whip. No one wil complain after that.
All the best.

Reading books , having yards of certifications will not help all the time. Practical knowledge is the best that anyone can get.

[Susan_l]

HI

Being a successul TL, you definitely have to develop some managerial thinking as you kind of represent a middleman between managers and agents. When you start to think from the manager's point of view " What are their expectations from the agents? " " How much is this going to cost? " " How much profit is that going to make for the company"...all these no-fun managerial stuff, it sure is not easy being stuck in between. You need to be commended for it !

Secondly, by now you know how your agents' working habbits, characteristics, weaknesses and strengths are. You might want to keep track their calls for a period of time to identify their problems. If there's a pattern, you then have to tailor your suggestion/solution approaches for them differently. It may sound like a lot of work but once you are prepared mentally, your agent may be surprised how professional you are while still maintaining your " fun" spirit at heart.

Please don't ever lose your kind and fun spirit. Call centres need people like you.

Let us know how things are going

SUSAN

[Lyenal]

hi reblext and susen,
nice to get your replies. I think i didnt communicated my exact situation here.The issue with my work is not because im rude...its just opposite.
I go too close with ppl.so I could understand what they need from management,even they share everything to me as a friend.evrybody tell about their collegues(even complaints about them out of the boundry that they are team members,they tell me)but they started taking advantage that they started being lazy and they didnt listen to me when some pressures were put on.Ofcourse no problems on the work quality...When the management looks the team it doesnt look like a controled one...
anyway this advises would be much useful and im trying to apply on...give more suggessions...Now I got a confidence that i can do it good.
(I was able to manage a lot of trainees,i sent many batches out successfully and got a good appreciation too.so sometimes i plan to go back as a trainer but managorial skills are everywhere needed as suzan said.so i just wanna take it as a challenge and do it...lets be in touch....keep sending mails...i feel supportive...
bye
lyenal.

[aruntyagi]

I can figure out the problem you are facing. As far as i think the problem is due to the transition from training to operations.

As a trainer you have to get really close to ppl to make sure you nurture a raw bunch of ppl into a skilled group of ppl.

You will always have to draw a line so as to how far do you wanna go so that they dont take advantage and you can pull them whenever you want.

Remember a TL's job as per me is to work the agents to the managements advantage by exploiting them to the fullest-that's why i would say you wanna get close to your team so that you catch the nerves of your ppl and you can make them work the way you want.

But remember this has to be camouflaged!your team should not even think they are being exploited.
I would say there are no set guidelines so as to how to manage ppl-but whats worked for me is that i have learned from the working of different ppl(Seniors & ounter parts).

Hope this would help you articulate your thoughts well

Arun Tyagi

[Lyenal]

hi all,
Nice to get the suggessions...and Im working on everything.I tryed to analyse my issues and i guessed the same wat u said Arun!!! even i tryed like my seniors who were much friendly...but as u said i missed to draw a virtual boundry to maintain the level.one more reason was my total work experience itself is 2 yrs and many callers would be of more than my age.In training that was not a issue because we had all the information about the work which they dont know,but here i cant teach but warn them not to to it.I'm working on it.I suggested the management to put me on a entirely different team where no one knows i was a caller, trainer or whatever so i could start a new life as a professional TL.management is satisfied with my suggession and Im working in the mean time to get success in the next profile...All your suggessions are much helpful.lets discuss more...reblex and suzan why so silent?how r u ?keep in touch pls...

[Saramencia]

Hi Lyenal:

Thru this forum i can feel your easygoing personality! and I can feel it because...I am just like you! First of all I would like to point you out some things:

1. Never hide you were a Rep that is one of your strengths because your team should know, you were sitted right were they are now and you know all that they do.
2. You are just passing thru a normal "transition time". Been so young and have been promoted is not very good seen by your "ex peers" who don´t understand why you were the "one" and they are still taking-making calls.
3. One error you should be aware of is: Not beeing so soft that they make whatever they want but never be so strong that they feel you are making them slaves, much more if you were a rep like them. In my experience what you have to do is to call to their commitment to the company and to theirselves. That you have an extraordinary challenge and that you count with them to pass it thru succesfully! Make them think you will not be able to do it without them! and tell them sometime, one day, various of them will be "first time TL" and they will need the support of their team and supervisors as you are, right now.

I will not tell you this is going to be easy, but please if your senior managment don´t move you at this time, think it will be the best for you, this experience will make you stronger and a better TL (as you want).

Regards,

Keep in touch

[thetuan]

Hi,

Congrats on your new assignment - as you get more exposure and "on the ground" experiences in different areas of call center management, you will be ready to run your own call center in the future. Having said that, you will need to show the ability to improve employees' performances and produce excellent results in these areas. It appears that you are very willing to learn and improve so I want to encourage you to keep the high spirit and energy as the call center business can drag you down from time to time.

Running a successful team is an art that is difficult to master and execute even for a seasoned manager. It requires you to be both a diplomat and a dictator at the same time. You will need to accomplish your goals and objectives without your employees turning on you and then you will have a mutiny on your hands. I think Susan_I and rebelxt gave the right advices to you.

You will need to set the right performance expectations for all your employees, manage to it and work with the morales and needs of them all. I think it's absolutely awesome that you can relate with your employees but I want to caution you from crossing the line from a being their manager to being someone they feel comfortable that they can negatively gossip about the company.

You will need to earn the respect of your team first before you can start working with them on their performances. You should be a manager that your employees can go to knowing that you will take their complaints and issues seriously and that you will do your best to resolve or to communicate honestly with your team about it. Also, you should try to be creative and have, for each month, a theme that you can work around. These monthly themes can be used to decorate your work area, run monthly contests for the team, decorate your team board, etc... This will make your work area more fun and less sterile. Also, you will need to enlist your team to help you with this so everyone on your team will be involved and hopefully, the team will feel good about coming to work in a nice, comfortable work area and also knowing that their team leader/manager cares for them and will exert all efforts to work with their issues/concerns. In short, consistent team communication and employee morale development projects and important processes for managing and maintaining a high morale group of employees.

Once you have started to address morale, you can focus on your team's performances. Susan_I touched on it briefly and she is correct on it. You will need to work with each of your operator to identify their areas of strengths and weaknesses. If you are lucky, then all of your operators and highly skilled, intelligent and they can do their jobs with excellent quality without supervision. If you can get your team to this point, then your daily work will be very easy for this team will run itself. You will have to think of your team as your own little call center and get each operator to think of their performances as their own businesses. The better they do at it, the more they can earn - this will requires a performance incentive program that rewards the right performances from your operator. Additionally, you will need to identify areas of weaknesses from each operator and work with him/her on how to improve on it. You can not go to them and tell them "you need to improve on X". You will need to listen to their calls and show them what they are doing wrong and work with them to ensure that they understand and they have improve on their deficiencies. If you have done your job and you don't see improvement(s), you will need to quickly start the corrective action steps so that you can remove the employees from your team that do not have the right skillsets for the job that you need them for. You will then get new operators and hopefully, HR will give you the right ones. If you do this consistently, what you will end up with is a team of high performers that have the right skillsets and attitudes for the job. Unfortunately, it is a "weeding out" process and if you can "weed" out the bad performers and replace them with excellent ones, then your team will be very easy to manage.

I am soo sorry for the long mail but this is a very complex topic that will requires you to do many things correct - unfortunately, these things are not easy to grasp and to execute and I have only given you a high level view of running a high performing team. Hopefully, you will have someone in your center that have gone through this successfully that can be your mentor.

Good luck

[Lyenal]

Wowwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!Thanks a lot for everybody's views and suggestions.thetuan...thanks for ur time to type a looong message.its nice to see everybodys view because i might miss to look at the issues in a different way.The day i signed up this site i was much frustated with this post and just i was trying to google a site to search for any trainer vacancies again.I got this site in the middle and just logged in and dropped all my frustations...I didnt expect that I would get this much help and still I would stay in the same job...but I am!!!Saramencia,aruntyagi,susan,rebelxt,thetuan u all helped me a lot...And now I am doing much better than the prev.stage,no complaints nowadays:)...Anyway I would go back as a trainer soon(its my feild of interest,and i could earn more in trainings)but just waiting to achive something in the field i entered.I dont want to go back with a failure.I'm sure I'm not going to...I am working on all your suggessions to make my team "the best".We think many times that we are stuggling with headsets and the TLs are just checking mails and surfing...but now i understand TL has to take many initiatives as thetuan said,so that our team would look much different from others...I'm fully working on that now...Hope we could continue this topic by telling our experience in handling different issues and share how did you bring your team"the best"...some thing like that...it would be usefull for everybody.....