Strong and effective leadership is crucial in call centers. A management approach that suits your organizational culture and reflects employees’ interests can help reduce attrition and turnovers.
Aside from this, good leadership boosts work productivity and employee engagement. Competent supervisors create a positive environment wherein agents feel valued and motivated. These qualities, when embedded in people’s work ethic, allow companies to be more agile and efficient.
But what happens when team leaders fail to perform their roles well? One alarming consequence would be profit loss caused by performance declines. Contact centers run by bad leaders also experience sudden surges in resignations.
How can company leaders prevent these horrific outcomes?
It pays to be aware of the negative and counterproductive management habits you may be guilty of. Here are the five types of terrible team leads that force customer support reps out the door.
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The lone performer
One of the most important leadership skills all managers must have is the ability to delegate tasks to other team members. However, some managers refuse to do this. It may be because they don’t trust their people enough, and in some cases, they may even belittle their team members’ skills. They thus hog most of the tasks even if distributing the workload to the rest of the team is more efficient. The lone performer often ends up overly and unnecessarily stressed out, and this can affect the entire group’s mood and performance.
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The enigmatic leader
Surrounded by a mysterious aura, the enigmatic leader’s main fault is failing to communicate with employees clearly. This results to a lot of misunderstanding and a lack of direction. Often, customer support teams led by such types of team leaders are clueless about the organization’s targets. This prevents agents from aligning their performance with the call center’s goals.
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The blame thrower and credit grabber
Employees are especially annoyed at bosses who are only present during the good times. Meaning, when the team celebrates a milestone, these types of leaders would be the first to take credit. But when the group hits a snag, this leader would blame everybody else except themselves. Such behavior creates a gap between managers and their employees, which leads to discord and lack of teamwork.
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The callous boss
Another desirable leadership skill you must have is the ability to discern employees’ needs and address them. Insensitive managers, however, don’t pay attention to their team at all. They don’t take the time to ask agents about the resources they need and how their work experience can be improved. This results to poor employee engagement and low productivity.
On the contrary, showing your staff that you value them can motivate them to perform well. By knowing what your team needs, you can provide the right resources that will make them better customer support reps.
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The controlling ruler
To be competent at their jobs, customer service reps need a lot of freedom. Team leaders must trust them enough to make smart decisions regarding customer issues, as long as they’ve been trained rigorously. Implementing policies that are unnecessarily rigid can stifle agents’ creativity and resourcefulness.