How to Prepare Your Agents for Their First Leadership Role

When you have agents with leadership potential, you want them to succeed but may not know where to start to truly help them on their way.

That’s why our Editor, Megan Jones, spoke to a whole host of industry experts – including Clayton Drotsky, Kim Ellis, and Martin Teasdale – for their advice on getting an agent’s leadership journey off to the best possible start.

Covering everything from the value of starting early, to key leadership lessons to instil, and how to help them build up a support network.

Start Early

Preparing agents for their first leadership role shouldn’t begin the day they get promoted, it should start as soon as possible – with anyone who shows leadership potential.

Explain the Value of Self-Initiative

Your most promising agents will already be showing signs of self-initiative and making use of all available resources in the contact centre to upskill themselves, but some may need a nudge to explain the value of self-initiative on their leadership journey.

“As the proverb goes ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’, so I’d always say to my agents that only 30% is going to be from me, 70% is going to come from you. I will help you, I will show you, I will guide you, but I can’t inject this into you, you’ve got to put in the hard work!” – Martin Teasdale, Founder of the Team Leader Community and Get out of Wrap

Give Agents Opportunities to Shadow More Senior Roles

The sooner you can give agents the opportunity to learn more about the leadership roles across the contact centre, the better!

“Long before their first promotion opportunity opens, identify the people who have the aspiration to move up the ladder and start giving them opportunities to step in and shadow that role.

For example, by inviting them to attend weekly meetings while another team leader is on holiday.

It’s about bringing them along on that journey, giving them a flavour of the role, and building up their skills and experience.” – Jessica Ham, an experienced contact centre leader and receiver of the UKCCF Gold Award for Head of Contact Centre

You could even take steps to formalize this process, such as to create cover roles in your HR processes, marked with a step up in pay for the week they are on duty, as well as formal recognition on their employee record to support their longer-term career progression.

Encourage Them to Observe the Leadership Styles Around Them

In the early days, all agents with leadership potential should be encouraged to observe other leaders and decide for themselves what good looks like.

“Definitely encourage your agents to start studying leadership, and by ‘study’, I don’t mean read books.

I mean observe the leaders around you to engage and think ‘This is something that I think I could do, and I like it’ or “This is something that I don’t think works, and I do not want to be a leader like that.’

It’s about building up a mental bank of what good and bad looks like to draw on later.” – Martin Teasdale

Explain How Their Attitude Might Be Holding Them Back From the Job They Really Want

You may also need to show some tough love and point out to agents where their attitude and behaviours might be holding them back from the promotion they want. Some agents will undoubtedly need to take a long hard look in the mirror and take steps to mature before they can realistically be given the opportunity to lead a team.

Instil Key Leadership Lessons

Through trial and error, agents will learn a lot along the way as they embrace their leadership journey, but it can’t hurt to set them off on the right path with an overview of some key leadership lessons, including:

Why They’ll Need to Set New Boundaries Quickly With Their Old Buddies

“It’s really difficult when you’ve been everybody’s buddy for years, and suddenly, you have to create a distinction between buddy and leader.

One way to help your agents ease into their new leadership role is to encourage them to start their first team meeting with a Q&A session of ‘What do you want and expect from me as a leader?’

This sets clear boundaries in place, gives agents a voice right from the beginning, and shows them that their new leader wants to listen to them and isn’t going to abuse their power.” – Kim Ellis, Chief Learning Architect at Go Ginger Learning Solutions

The Difference Between Communication and Engagement

“Make sure they know the difference between communication and engagement, as they are often conflated with each other, but they have very different purposes when it comes to supporting a team.

Communication is about exchanging information between people or groups, whilst engagement is about psychological identification and psychological meaningfulness – our level of involvement, commitment, and connection.

In short, if your people don’t know what’s happening, you have a communications problem. If your people don’t care what’s happening, you have an engagement problem.” – Danny Wareham, Founder & Director of Firgun

Signs Their Teams Needs More Support From Them

“As a leader, when you care for your employees, your job is to position them for success by providing the tools, development, engagement and environment for them to be successful.

This includes looking out for indicators that highlight a team needs additional support.

For instance, a high percentage of agent calls going to either your Tier 2 agents, team leads or supervisors can indicate glaring holes in training or communication breakdowns.” – Adam Boelke, Managing Partner at The Alignment Advantage Group

If you want to learn the key signs your agents need more support, read our article: 21 Signs You Need to Better Support Your Contact Centre Teams

Why They Should Never Skip Coaching Sessions With Their Team

Make sure you share real-life examples to highlight why it’s so important to never skip coaching sessions with their team (even when they feel “too busy”), as highlighted in this example from Hayley Plant, an experienced contact centre manager:

“I can remember a particularly busy time working for a courier company during the Post Office strike where agent coaching sessions and training meetings were having to be cancelled daily due to the sheer volume of calls waiting.

The impact of this over a continued period of time had a huge effect on morale, which affected the majority of agents in the contact centre, and we saw an increase in repeated mistakes and more frequent escalations to team leaders.

Without the investment in their personal development, the agents had begun to feel undervalued and lost confidence in their own knowledge and skills. We also saw an increase in absenteeism, which further impacted their colleagues.”

Training can often be put on the back burner when there are staff shortages. For practical methods leaders can use to avoid this, read our article: How to Keep on Top of Training in a Short-Staffed Contact Centre

The Importance of Building Meaning Into Their Team’s Work

“Nobody put their hand up at school and said ‘one day I’d like to be a call centre agent.’ Neither did I, nor have the hundreds of talented individuals we get to work with on a daily basis inside the industry.

Being a call centre agent we know is hard, we know the pressures that come with it.

But as leaders, we also need to be mindful of the perceptions that come with the role too.

Many see the role as a not so serious entry-level job, a stepping stone, or a filler for now while I get my bearings for my real career. Very few view the role as the beginning of a lucrative career within the industry.

This is a great way to show support and keep morale and self-worth within the agents high.” – Clayton Drotsky, Director of Growth Crew Ltd

The Importance of Their Own Emotional Intelligence

“Emotional intelligence starts with self-awareness. Who am I? How do I show up? How do I communicate? What do I like? What do I dislike? What am I good at naturally? What might I need to work on?

So explain to new leaders the importance of being emotionally intelligent, as these leaders are not only great for their teams, they’re great for themselves, just in terms of enjoying the role and the journey of developing as a leader. That is all centred in emotional intelligence.” – Martin Teasdale

How to Have Difficult Conversations With Their Team

It’s important to make sure that new leaders understand how to listen and give feedback well. For example, how to use the sandwich technique in coaching sessions.

Also, make sure they are confident having difficult conversations with their team.

Give Them a Support Network

It’s a sad truth that leadership can be lonely at times, so encourage your agents to start building up their support network as soon as possible – as it will pay dividends in the long run.

Encourage Them to Build Relationships With Support Functions

No one in the contact centre works in isolation, so it’s important to stress the benefit of building positive working relationships with support functions and other departments – from HR, to WFM and QA teams.

New and aspiring leaders can do this by popping their head into the office to say hello, volunteering to support any upcoming pilots and feedback groups, or asking to book in some time during a quieter period to understand more about their roles.

You can also apply this mindset to building relationships outside of the contact centre. For example, the warehouse or delivery teams.

Note from the Editor – We heard that employees at The AA site in Cheadle are given opportunities to go out on the road with the recovery team to see the service experience first-hand. Could you do something similar in your contact centre?

Set Them Up With a Mentor

If you have a mentorship programme, encourage your new and upcoming leaders to be a part of it.

Even if they only meet once a month or once a quarter, having an internal mentor to guide them and also hold a mirror up to their strengths and weaknesses can be an invaluable asset on their transition to leader.

Encourage Them to Lean Into Their New Peer Group of Team Leaders

Remind them, as one door closes another one opens, and whilst they might be leaving their old buddies behind, they’ll find a new support group in their team leader peers.

Remind Them to Be Kind to Themselves

There’s a lot to learn about taking your first step into leadership, but by starting early, instilling key leadership values, and helping your agents to build their own support network, you can set them off on a path to success.

Just remind them not to be too hard on themselves as they learn the ropes and that there’s no such thing as a stupid question!

What Have You Tried to Prepare Your Agents for Their First Leadership Role?

Join our LinkedIn community group and let us know.

With thanks to the following people for sharing their thoughts and experience for this article:

• Adam Boelke, Managing Partner at The Alignment Advantage Group
• Clayton Drotsky, Director of Growth Crew Ltd
• Danny Wareham, Founder & Director of Firgun
• Hayley Plant, an experienced contact centre manager
• Jessica Ham, an experienced contact centre leader and receiver of the UKCCF Gold Award for Head of Contact Centre
• Kim Ellis, Chief Learning Architect at Go Ginger Learning Solutions
• Martin Teasdale, Founder of the Team Leader Community and Get out of Wrap

For more information on developing team leaders in your contact centre, read these articles next:

• 9 Important Team Leader KPIs
• Train Team Leaders Well
• Team Leadership: What Makes a Great Leader?
• How to Prepare Agents for Team Leader Roles

Author: Megan Jones
Reviewed by: Xander Freeman