WFM Unfiltered

The Rift between WFM and Team Leads | Martin Teasdale

• Martin Teasdale • Season 1 • Episode 31

Share episode

Message the show!

Team leaders and WFM professionals—why does it always feel like you're speaking different languages? In this episode of WFM Unfiltered, we’re tackling the age-old battle between workforce management and team leaders. And who better to break it down than Martin Teasdale—contact center veteran, founder of the Team Leader Community, and host of Get Out of Wrap.

With over 25 years in the industry, Martin has dedicated his career to supporting and elevating team leaders, and today, he’s here to expose the root cause of the ongoing friction between WFM and operations. From clashing priorities to inconsistent communication, we’re diving into why these two groups struggle to align—and how to fix it.

Expect brutal honesty, real-world examples, and actionable strategies that will help you build stronger relationships between WFM and team leaders. Is the problem poor leadership? Lack of training? Fear-driven cultures? Martin’s pulling no punches in this one.

If you’ve ever wondered why the hell doesn’t my WFM team listen? or why do team leads always resist what’s best for the business?—this episode is a must-watch.

🔔 Don’t miss it—Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/@wfmunfiltered?sub_confirmation=1

Show Links:

Thanks for listening.

If you'd like to contact me about the show, you can email me HERE.

If you have questions about working with me on WFM projects and Consulting, you can find The RightWFM website HERE.

Please remember to subscribe and leave a review of you've enjoyed the show!

Irina:

Hey everyone and welcome to WFM Unfiltered. Before we start, because it's a very special episode, I just wanna mention something because I realised that I'm doing incredibly crappy job of saying that this podcast is only made possible because of the sponsorship of RightWFM. So if you are on the lookout for a WFM consultancy services, please reach out and if you're considering working with consultants, I would be more than honored to work with you. And I want the more important part. I have an celebrity on the podcast today, and let me try to get this right. We're traveling to near Oxford. I think you said something like Di Martin, but near Oxford works better for me. So, hey Martin, how are you doing?

Martin:

Irina, it's great to be here. And that was, that was perfect.

Irina:

Oh, this is the, again, the British politeness. Perfect. Garbage. That pronunciation, garbage. But thank you so, so much for accepting the invitation to be on the podcast today. I know that it goes, you don't have to introduce yourself, but please just do it for me for my benefit.

Martin:

well, Irina, I'm Martin Teasdale. For the last two years I've been self-employed, like you doing the Get Outta Wrap podcast. And. The team leader community, an online community for about 500 members at the moment who come from all different verticals. before that I've, I've just spent my entire career in contact centers. Started as an agent, became a team leader. A team leader who annoyed WFM it at the start. At the start and then onto contact center manager and hire, hire it. This industry has given me the chance to work and travel work around the world. I spent two and a half years a running a contact center in Istanbul, which was amazing. You know, so I'm, I consider myself very lucky to have fallen into this industry I. I'm loving what you are doing as well. I think it's great. It's a great podcast. think you've made, you've taken, and that's what I like about our industry, right? There's so many different subjects, fields within it. And for you to take WFM and really get under the bonnet and have a laugh with it and talk to people like yourself who, who know what they're doing, I think it it without you even knowing, it becomes a really good resource for people within contact centers. You know, if I am, I, I will, I tell people in the community that they should check out your, your podcast because I think the more, whatever, whatever discipline you're in, the more you understand about the other disciplines in the contact center, the better you become. So, yeah, well done. You more power to you.

Irina:

Oh, thank you so much. And as I mentioned before, the recording, it means so much coming from you because. Spoiler. Alert. Alert. I think that you got your math wrong, to be honest, because I remember I was checking your podcast already years ago and I was thinking, oh my God, this is what I wanna do. So I was so ending the good sense of the word, like this is now happening, like the podcasts are here. So maybe in the future when I trust myself a little bit more, so I cannot believe that it's only two years. You sure?

Martin:

been self-employed two years, but the podcast I started while I was still employed, so I started it, I started it five years ago as a hobby because I, I, look, I liked podcasts, but I thought, oh, I wonder if there's any about contact centers. And the only ones I could find were American ones. There were no UK ones. And they were, they were fine, but it's harder to relate to them. So I thought I might, I might start my own. And it just, it, it started as a, started as a hobby. And I think you, you must know this, the, it's the process of doing it is the thing that is amazing. And hearing, you know, I've learned so much from every guest that's, that's, come on. It's that, that's why you, you know, that's why you do it. So yeah, five years,

Irina:

Wow.

Martin:

oh, it'll be six in May, actually six years in May.

Irina:

As I said, I think I only started listening to podcasts in general six years ago, and

Martin:

I.

Irina:

I remember looking at yours, I think it was right when it started, and I was like, whoa, this is now happening in our professional industry as well. So. Great job, and I can only say that I would wish to follow your steps and be where you are, as I mentioned over LinkedIn when I grow up. But let's, let's leave it here. You know what, we have such a good topic for today, but before that I was wondering about get out of the wrap, where the, how did you come up with the name actually?

Martin:

Because, and actually there is a link to WFM here.

Irina:

Oh, okay.

Martin:

be because it was the fir, I had a couple of names, but this was the one that I came up with first and I loved because I. As an agent, my team leaders would say it to me all the time because you, you know, if you are, once you finish talking to the customer, telephony system you used, put you in the wrap status and you couldn't take another call. So your team leader would be saying, get outta rap. I like, and, and then you took another call because you were then available. and you know, let's be honest, sometimes it's meant to be used so you can write up notes, but sometimes you used it to have a chat, take a break. And I liked the link to the podcast because once you get out of rap, then you are talking again. So, it's could, it, it either causes confusion or people. Understand. It's kind of, be honest, I asked about five people I, I was working with at the time, what they thought of the name, and none of them liked it, but it, that made me want to do it even more.

Irina:

Really, actually the first time when I saw that and I was like, damn it. I hope it's not that way because hes completely gonna take over. So I really, really like it. It's a job well done.

Martin:

you.

Irina:

And on that note, you are gonna be representing an opposing camp in our discussion today. And I'm gonna have a go at you because we're gonna be talking about the between WFM teams and team leads. And personally, one thing that I just thought before our discussion started to annoy me often with team leads is the fact that when we're talking about WFM, we're usually saying, okay, we need to make trainings, we need to engage with operations, with the agents, with team leads. We need to educate them what we're doing. So they're on board. And I started thinking that unless you're an agent coming to work in WFM team, team leads never, ever, ever involve WFM in their job. So what do you say about that, Martin? How do you defend your camp?

Martin:

I would say luckily the majority of the team leaders in the community are far more progressive than than I ever was because I definitely. Was one of the team, you know, I would, I would be, I would've been a team leader that would've driven you mad because, and I know I drove my colleagues in WFM Mad for a while, for a while, because you're right, this, this, this idea of opposing tribes. Right. You know, my, my view was they only ever tell me off or tell they stop things I want to do. And also I would be thinking in the back of my mind, I'd think I should really check this with WFM. And then I'd go, oh no. So it, I'm just gonna do it anyway. Until, until through, what ev everything in our industry is about connections. Right. And it was, I'm not sure if you've had her on, but if you haven't, you should definitely have her on Faye. I called her work Faye management, Faser, Faye Herring. We, she was an agent and went to WFM, did really well there, started to, you know, become manager and so we, we already had a relationship and she just came to speak to me to say like, you are driving the, my team insane. And it was only through then spending some time with her and a guy called John, John Griffith and just sitting down and seeing the impact of what I was doing. And by this point I was contact center manager, so I had team leaders and they kind of, you know, I, I wasn't, I wasn't very good at getting them to develop relationships with WFM and it was only through that kind of. Understanding, right? Just sitting with them for not just 20 minutes, but I would be going in every day saying, okay, working with me, how can I do this? So tr things that I was doing and saying, okay, I, I understand I can't do this anymore, but how, what's a, what's a variation of it that I could do? know, like if I wanted to suddenly do, I had an idea for an incentive and I wanted to All the teams off and talk to them about it, obviously that would cause chaos. what could I do? What, what was the best way of doing it? How could they help? And then it started to work both ways. So people from WFM came into operations and resulted in the end that they always had somebody working in our area every single day. I think once you personalise teams you understand them as human beings, it, you don't then have this us and them because if they're, they were actually in another building, so they were in the building next to us, it's far easier to kind of go, oh, that WFM have, have said no, or they've messed up holidays, or, why am I having my team meeting here? That's harder to be so kind of, aggressive about when, you know, the people there, you know. So we started to do social events together. We did charity events together and, and that relationship worked wonders. It made such a difference. We became less of a pain. I. Everything improved from our kind of schedule, adherence, our availability, all of those things. And it made us be creative. And we still managed to do the things that we wanted to do anyway from an operational point of view. it all started through connection. You know, starts through connection. And if you're, so from that point, something that I did wherever I went. Like how, you know, it became a key part of my team's KPIs, if you like.

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

You developed relationships with our, with support functions?

Irina:

Oh, wow. Oh, I never heard about that. A KPI for that

Martin:

what,

Irina:

to,

Martin:

the, what's the other one? It's not KPIs. I've forgotten it.

Irina:

Is it like objective, key? Objective or,

Martin:

OKRs, that's

Irina:

okay. I never heard about that, but this is such a great idea actually that I am gonna still, so thank you

Martin:

no, no problem.

Irina:

away because this is actually a great idea.

Martin:

Well, still with pride, I think that's how we all get better, right? I And it, and it, it makes a massive difference because if you think about your own career whenever, whenever opportunities arose, I felt like I had an edge over some of my peers because I had developed better relationships with other parts of the business. So that could, that might be client management, training, hr, know, it is, I think I liked it'cause I'm a people person, there was also a business side to it, which was. If I wanted to get things done maybe a bit quicker, or if I wanted advice, I knew that there were people that I had a relationship with that I could go and speak to. So whenever, when I started to manage other managers, became part of their objectives. Like, tell me, in, in the WFM team, who do you have a good relationship with? What are you doing? Like, how often do you meet them? so it, was, you know, from my point of view, it wasn't something to like beat people with it. W it was about helping them in their career as well. So if you think about, you know, we, we develop because of our networks,

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Because of our network. We get help because of our network. And you should start building that regardless of what position you're in.

Irina:

I really like the way that you're describing that, and this is something that. I repeat all the time and the people that I'm working with who are on more senior position, they're basically repeating the same message. Without that relationship being built, it's like you're working towards the same thing, but against each other. And that's why everything is collapsing. So for me, the end goal of building that relationship is something that everyone need to understand and to start working towards, but I need to understand the root cause of it. Like why wouldn't that be the natural conclusion once you start working in that environment? So for me, what from the WFM perspective, and especially in the beginning of my career, what really annoyed me is that team leads were basically split on two different groups. One of them were doing whatever the heck they wanted. Then they were starting to just basically confess and say, eh, eh, I did it anyway. But then we were blamed for service levels or abandonment rate or what have you. The other group, which I'm not sure which group irritated me more, was the group that did not want to coach their agents, did not want to provide negative feedback, were not necessarily good in coaching and in training. So they wanted to overtake everything WFM related and to be the, you can't take that vacation. Tell me what do you want them going? Go back and forth and basically the entire day of a team lead would be, can you do the 18? He can't do the 18. Can you do the 17th? He doesn't want the 17th. And that is really annoying because in the end of the month I'm getting the operations manager saying, my evaluations are not done. Trainings are not done. There's no co coaching because you're occupying my team leads to do essentially your job.

Martin:

I think there's something about the, certainly that description of leaders going backwards and forwards and saying, oh, they can't do this day, they can do that day. There's it, it's something that I've seen a lot. It's, it's kind of avoidance. You know, I, I would say to team leaders, there are, there are a number of personas to avoid,

Irina:

mm-hmm.

Martin:

If you are quite new in the, in the position. If you are, if you are new or inexperienced team leader, you either become. There, there's a danger, and I'm generalising here, but there's a danger that your about your role and your, maybe your fear and your desire to gain respect moves you into authoritarian. So you become a sergeant major in the army, or like the one you've described, rep, which is, I'm everyone is the enemy and I'm gonna get some wins for you, and I'm gonna, you, you want the holiday on the 17th, I'm gonna go and get it. And, you know, all of those things, for me a front that masks that you don't have confidence in being a, a leader and that you have to understand for, for the company and the function and the organisation to operate properly. You have to. or trust other functions where there are also experts that they know what they're doing and we will work with them. that, what that leads to is the team leaders having to say no and the avoidance of having to say no to their team because they are seeking out popularity than really, you know, be, being a leader isn't, you know, isn't, isn't necessarily about being the most popular person. And it's, that's something that I see in experience team leaders do, where they will go, okay, let's deflect to WFM rather than saying, well, we have a system, we have a process haven't been able to get that holiday. Is there another day you can do? What else can we do before we then start causing problems by going to WFM and and asking for something different? Or have we followed policy and procedure? I think does come down to, and sometimes the other thing would be a lack of understanding. So again, it's that if you actually go and see what WFM have to do, that education change your reaction. And then your job then is to educate your team. So I went from being a pain to being an advocate, to being somebody who made sure my teams knew everything about wfm, were we were the most compliant because that was a route for them getting what they, what our team wanted. Whilst keeping WFM happy, you know, it was that you, you can't, you can either work with WFM or you can try and push against them all the time. One's not gonna work. It might work now and again. working with WFM meant that my teams not only were our schedules and everything good, we tended to get the things we wanted'cause we understood the policy and the process better.

Irina:

Okay, so let me ask you this question, because the entire time that you have been explaining this to me, I have been thinking about a lot of situations from my past, and one of the thing that was very heavy on me as a manager and my team was when, let's say the contact center manager or operations manager, whatever your structure is in your contact center, was taking the side of the team lead, because that's your business, that's your operations. Like who gives a. About WFM? Well, everyone, because we're securing the agents that you're working with, but anyway, and they were taking their sides. If, for example, the team lead is considered good with their people, but good with their people means, okay, they're good in training and in coaching, they're disregarding completely the WFM part, but their team loves them. They're obviously good in one aspect of their job, but my question would be, can we consider a team lead being good in their job if they're completely disregarding that part of the organisational structure that we had?

Martin:

no, no. You can't. And we, I had an example when I was working for an outsourcer. We lost a, a big client and which meant that we had to look at our numbers and

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Where would we move people and you know, trying to do everything we could so we didn't have to let people go. And it meant for the first time that we had to look at our team leaders who were doing sometimes very different activities. Some were inbound, some were outbound, some were working in financial services, some were in retail. And it was hard to draw comparison. So we. HR looked at this matrix of what does, what does a good team leader look like? This was a long time ago, but it's been very helpful for me ever since. And, you know, that kind of areas where, and w FM was a key one.

Irina:

Hmm.

Martin:

whether we would start, whether we were doing 360 reviews or things like that, what would, what would are the support functions you work with, what would they, would they say about you? How do you show up? How do you work well with them? By doing this matrix, it allowed us to look at team leaders holistically. And, and, and from that, one of the things that we did, because a lot of what we've talked about today is about communication and conflict. Now. We, we, we decided as a, as a company that one of the things that was missing was that people were either scared of conflict or they were not very good at it. If we could create a framework whereby people had shared language, shared understanding of why you might disagree and how we could work together, that that was transformative because it meant that relationships approved across the contact center. So we, the training I think was Grid International, I think it was called, but it was about like radical candor and being candid and understanding that we actually all wanted the same thing and we were, but we were doing very different activities sometimes that meant that we might become, we might come in conflict, you know, we, we then. Knew that we had to refer to what our agreed policies were because that, that answered a lot of questions and prevented conflict is just that people hadn't referred to them, but let's say it was ambiguous.

Irina:

Hmm.

Martin:

You might be in a position where operations needs is in conflict with WFM, by us having a shared framework that we'd all been trained in, that was a far, far more pleasant and productive experience you understood it wasn't personal. It's very hard when people are saying, why have you done this? Why have you done that? want to do this, we wanna do that. It's very hard to be in that situation internslise some of it. Therefore, this train, what this training did was saying, we're talking about the situation. We're not talking about the the person. What are we trying to work towards? So, do you know what I mean? It gave us shared vocabulary.

Irina:

Yeah.

Martin:

Shared framework, and it made, it made such a, such a huge difference. But in answer to your question, a lot of this stems from the team leader's manager. So the contact center manager or head of contact center. What are you looking for? So, in my career, I've had team leaders who you, you would've loved, they were excellent, anything to do with WFM, anything to do with qa, anything to do with HR and admin. they were not great people managers, not great coaches. They weren't great motivators. My my view is this, none of us, no single person is, is perfect. If you looked at the matrix of what we're asking people to do in their role. There would be something wrong if everyone was, every single item was green on the dashboard. They're always gonna have something that they need to, they need to work on. And that's good. That's that, that, that's a good thing. So for me it would be, you know, if there was a, in the example you gave, if there's a whole group of team leaders that aren't necessarily doing particularly well with WFM, they will be equally as bad with other areas of the business that they have to work with. That's a cultural thing. And that definitely sits with probably not even the contact center manager, but the contact center director or head of contact center. that, that would be, you know, a real problem. That would be a real, real problem I had, I had. Team leaders who were, who needed guidance, training, correction on how they showed up with WFM. a little bit hypocritical of me'cause I was like a, a,

Irina:

we all.

Martin:

a, yeah. I was a poacher turned gamekeeper. But for me it was, you know, it's just another area of the job that a team leader needs to be, needs to be good at.

Irina:

You know what? I like that you're so honest and transparent. So I'm gonna come clean as well. Because when I was put in that exact same situation, but from WFM perspective team leads, were getting so much on my nerve exactly for these reasons. Taking agents away, granting vacations, then coming to nagging or just completely overtaking the process. And then somebody's yelling at me for not having time for training. And you know, it's only natural that you're starting to take it out on them. So at some point it was. I really don't see myself collaborating with you, so I'm just gonna highlight every single thing that you're doing wrong, because by that point, you just annoy me. I just don't see what can I do for you anymore. And when I'm hearing you explaining, for me, it's just now so simple that if we're working as a part of one team opposed to just two different teams, it is just gonna be so easy for you as a team lead coming to me and tell me, I really need some help. I need to take this guy or girl or whoever for an urgent meeting, but I know that we're completely understaffed. What do I do? Tell me because I really need that. And then I have very hard time thinking that someone from WFM will say, oh, it's your problem, isn't it? Like, I don't care.

Martin:

Both groups have great people, average people, that need some, some work. And I think one of the starting points is, let's look at the similarities. You know, this was an exercise I did with. Our team leaders who, who had spent time with WFM then came back and I, and that was the first thing I asked them to list out, like, what are the similarities from your colleagues in WFM to, to you? And it, that's really interesting because by doing that exercise, the first one that they all came up with was they're really busy. They are really busy and so are we. They have competing priorities. They get given lots of different priorities all the time. So, so do we. know, and, and also there's there was a really interesting one where one of my team leaders and someone in WFM developed a really good relationship and the team leader shared with WFM something they hadn't even shared with me, which was their team. this, this team leader. the rules. And WFM really liked her she did things the right way. She was under so much pressure from her team the team that were next to them, their team leader didn't follow the rules

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Kind of got everything that they wanted. That's what they thought anyway. and you know, again, this is why it comes down to, the,

Irina:

contact

Martin:

center manager and above. So I was head of contact center. found, I, I found this out. I thought it was really interesting. So sitting with the contact center manager said, you know, if you've got, at the time we had nine teams, I said, if we, we can't have nine teams working in nine different ways because you've got people that are trying to do the right thing under, under, under pressure from their team because they only have to look over there. And go, well, those guys are, they're having another meeting. They're off the phones again, and we're taking their, we're taking their calls. What, what's going on? know? So, and again, it's about those kind of standards. It, it, it, what are our absolute standards that are, can, cannot be broken. So again, through experience, I became, I'm always quite relaxed. I've never lost my temper at work or, or anything like that. I like to have, I like to have a laugh, but I had some areas where there was no discussion. The, these were standards that we, that we agreed. And because without that kind of uniformity of your base level areas and performance and how you follow a process, it it created a lot of freedom actually, because it was like, if you, have you done. you done what we suggested, or no? Have you done what we've agreed? No. Go away and do it, and then you can come back and talk to me about your, your issue because you, because you can't have WFM qa all of the areas that worked with us having nine different variations of how an operation should work and, you know, and again, things like that made a, made a huge difference.

Irina:

I am gonna challenge you here big time, and I would challenge, not from your team lead view, but your senior position as a contact center manager or contact center director, and my problem with everything that you're saying is, I don't know whether we have the same saying in English, but freely translated from Bulgaria is the fish starts smell from the head, you know?

Martin:

Yeah, that's a good one.

Irina:

Okay, cool. So we were working in the same setup as you described. We had processes that literally everyone signed off and it was a BPO by the way, but we were exactly in the situation that you're describing. Every team lead, were doing whatever they want. So some were really following the rules, but it was basically in their disadvantage. Then someone else was doing whatever the heck they want, and there were no repercussions because the repercussions should have come. From the top, so I can understand if you have that kind of a cultural, emotional business, professional intelligence as the head of operations or contact center, but that's not always the case.

Martin:

I heard a quote many years ago, which I love. The culture of a company is determined the beha, the worst behavior that they allow to go

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Unchallenged or un, you know, undealt with. And again, similarly to how I said a lot of the time, leaders not doing the right thing is born out of fear. Sometimes that still exists at a a higher level, you know, senior leaders, leader, senior leadership teams, C-suite people, they're still. They're still human, they're still fallible. And they, they can determine so much. They don't, they, they don't understand sometimes the power that they wield by not making decisions.

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

So, you know, if, if things have been escalated, and let's say it's a, it's a challenge between operations and WFM, this kind of like, oh, favoritism or show, oh, but operations bring in the money, whatever. All of these different variations, fundamentally, if what they're doing is wrong, far more damage is done by not doing something about it than, you know, you might not see it straight away and operations might go away and they might be happy'cause you've decided in their favor. But the damage you've done manifests itself. Over and over and over again every single day because you've, you've, you've ruined the relationship and you've ruined, you've ruined that shared agreement that we're all working together that we have processes and policies to, to follow for a reason. Now, I don't, I I, never say we followed them blindly, regularly. Different situations arose where that gave us the opportunity to review what our policies were, because you know what it's like with contact centers were constantly changing. they weren't inflexible. But again, we came together as a, as a group to do that rather than we, Hey, yeah, we've changed, we've changed everything. You know, keep up.

Irina:

And you know what I found that this is the other problem because we may have processes and rules and uniformed framework or what have you, but there should be always exceptions. And I think this is where it gets challenging and difficult because how do you justify one exceptions versus another exceptions? So then you're in that constant vicious cycle as also you're saying that this person's reason is more important than my reason, so my life is less important to you. So there are constantly challenges like that. But I do agree with you that the problem is when. We can go into the other extreme. We are just so focused on the rules that we're just like completely blind from actually understanding that we're working with people and you know, sometimes you need to be flexible.

Martin:

We used to say, our world is not black and white. We work in the gray and what that meant was it's hard work, right? Because it meant communicating collaboratively. we were constantly faced with situations that we would say was sat in the gray. And the biggest thing, certainly as I became a senior leader that I worried about was setting precedent and not being fair to people. So we, we had like a, a working group that included us as operations, but hr, qa, WFM, and we w we would come together regularly based on either a situation or just to review where we were. But the situational stuff I found really helpful because we'd say, this person wants to do this in this team. What do we think? Is it similar to anything else that we've had up to this point? And that's the other thing as well, which certainly I, I wasn't good at to start with, but luckily I had people with me that were good we record, we started to record everything.

Irina:

Oh, that's a good one.

Martin:

Yeah. So we, when we had these situations, we could say, ha, have we had anything similar? And someone would go, oh, three months ago and so in this team had a, a similar situation and we decided to do this. You know, and we, that, that kind of working together to, in the gray was really helpful. And we communicated that to everyone, our teams that we did it. So, you know, again, it, you can't, you can't communicate enough, but it's hard work. And I think that's the thing, you know, it's far easier sometimes to just go, oh yeah, fine, you can do it just to get it off your to-do list. Or not to add it to do to your to-do list, but doing the right thing sometimes is hard work. You know, you've gotta, you've gotta put it in. But then once you get into that habit and you're raising standards by doing it you, you can do magical things. And it then doesn't become hard work because, because you've got people understanding, this is how we work. Sometimes I'm gonna say no to you, but there's thought behind it, fairness behind it. We, we care about you, but we care about the collective as well. and these things tend to even themselves out anyway. So that galvanised some of the team leaders as well, that they felt a bit more confident saying no because that was, you know, at a granular level. That is some, that's one of the causes of a lot of problems is that I. Team leaders are just, they're so busy, but isn't everyone, but they're so busy and it's just easier for them to go. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. can

Irina:

Yeah,

Martin:

You can take it. Take that holiday. That's fine. We'll figure it out.

Irina:

I, I really love all the tips and advice and your examples that you're bringing because I'm also starting to think now and reflect a lot on how these things can be implemented. So thank you so much. It's like lessons learned big time here. But before we get in the wrap, I wanna ask you a sneaky question because I assume or suspect that often the problems why team leads are more focused on quality coaching performance and whatever is that. In a lot of organisations, unfortunately, team leads, agents and operations are the one that are getting a bonus on the back of certain KPIs and WFM teams is somewhere there completely neglected and not a part of the bonus structure. So if I'm a team lead, usually what they're thinking, and we know that the salaries are not exactly, you know, the best of the best, and you're not becoming a billionaire by working as a team leader or as a planner anyway. But if they have to choose between spending their time achieving those KPIs and disregarding the other part of the process, but knowing that they will achieve the bonus, I would assume that their decision will be like, give me the money.

Martin:

Yeah. In that, in that scenario, probably, I've never worked anywhere where the the bonus was so skewed that it would a driver, a behavior like that. But there's, there's a really interesting point in, in what you're saying, and laterally in my career, I worked in the quality space, To WFM in that they Are not considered as important in inverted commas as as operations. And, you know, I became a big, I became evangelical about changing that, that narrative. And there's, you know, there's people that are doing some wonderful things by really looking at how companies and contact centers are structured to break that kind of thing down. But one of the things that I did do in operations and then moving through to quality and quality sort of consultancy, both for QA and for WFM, one of the things that, again, this is a generalisation, but of the things that I've seen a lot is that they do not or celebrate their successes to the rest of the business. Like. Operations, which is, you know, another reason why your podcast is brilliant, operations will always sing about what they've done all the time. There's newsletters, there's emails, there's awards, there's a board in a contact center that says, here are our achievements. I, I, I started to when I was both in operations, I, at one point I became responsible for a couple of the support teams as well. Made the first thing I said is we are gonna have like a Roll of Honor and an achievement board where, and that can cover, that can cover a multitude of things. One of the things that people do pay attention to is cost savings, efficiencies, improvements. So many of them come from WFM, qa. And I said, what we're gonna do is we're gonna start listing them. I started to suggest that to other companies I was working with, and a very well known car company who I went back to see, like 18 months later, that their, this was their QA team, but their QA team had listed in a year, like 180 improvements and achievements that they'd done over and above their job. Right? Resulting in millions of dollars worth of, of saving and that kind of publicity if you like. But that kind of, do you know what? Hello? Look at us over here. W are doing a good job. We are responsible for X, Y, and Z because it's educational. A lot of the time people in operations. they've gone and experienced it, didn't understand the sheer volume and complexity of what WFM were doing just as BAU. Now when once you start tracking that and sharing it, once you start saying, do you know how many different shifts, schedules, holidays, coaching sessions we've had to do and dealt with and this is what we do, that kind of communication became normal. And then we started to say, you, you guys are coming up with some great ideas. Here's how you can improve this. Here's how you can improve that. it made a massive difference. You know, I think there's always been a, a desire for, from a large percentage of people in operations to move into support functions to, they see that as probably more professional. You're more skilled. There's more chance of a a career.

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Skills that you develop which is weird because you've got all of that, but then you've got the team or the function isn't as well considered

Irina:

Yeah.

Martin:

So what do you do about it? And one of the things was start blowing a trumpet a bit more. You know, start letting people know what you are doing. And that really, really worked.

Irina:

I cannot stress how much. I love that you're highlighting that. And actually I have a post prepared about it because one of my huge mistakes for many years throughout my career was I always did extra work and I was taking additional responsibilities and I was waiting someone to notice me, and I was going like that for months and months and months and years. And if I don't see any sort of reflection, like for example, being promoted when I felt like, you know what? I have taken those additional 14,000, I'm not being promoted. I was getting quite upset with my manager or leader. And on every single conversation I would be like, well. Honestly, you have absolutely not seen what I'm doing. Like, what do you want from me? Why is that not reflected, let's say in my salary? And they're like, well, you're right. I don't know what you're doing. Because the fact that I understand and I have that kind of a prepared list in my head, this is where I started. This is what I'm currently doing. Doesn't mean that someone else is gonna be mindreading and just gonna keep track if I just keep it for myself. So I really love the fact that you're highlighting that because also, I think historically we're thought, at least in my region here, that you should be a little bit more humble and people are gonna notice you. You should keep your head down and just do your work and somebody's gonna come and say, fantastic work. You have not opened your mouth, but I'm sure you're doing brilliant.

Martin:

I think there's and there's a way, know, it's, it, culturally we are similar, aren't we? I think it's, say to someone, right, you need to tell people about what you've done.

Irina:

Yeah.

Martin:

is brilliant. And they'll be like, oh, I don't want

Irina:

Yeah. Yeah

Martin:

Often though you'd say, right, there is a way that you can do it. That doesn't mean that you have fireworks going off when you walk in lasers and dry ice. You know, there, there, there's a way that you can do this that says, did you know, in addition to my day job, this is, I've, I've done this. Which means that, you know, and it can just be nice and factual because the, you know, a lot of the time I'd be saying to my teams, I recognize your work. Right? And I recognise when you've done something different. Or over and above, I'm looking out for it. Sometimes other leaders are not, but the, the one thing that is true of all of us is we are all busy. So now, and again, you, you have to get people's attention because I bet you once they notice it, they'll go, wow, that's great, that's brilliant. And then they'll tell other people and, and all of that kind of thing. But you're right. No, it's rare that people will find out what you are doing over and above and go, yeah, that's great. You know, you, you do have to feel, you have to become comfortable going, hello, can you look, look at this. You should be, you should be recognised for it.

Irina:

But I think this is a skill that we start learning when we're maturing a little bit more, and I think there are not enough trainings. How can you communicate what you're doing and your achievements because it's a fine line between being a bit ridiculous, like going to your manager, Hey, I have done three extra lines in my report this week that nobody pay attention to. And just like every minor thing, you're letting them know because ultimately that's okay. Good for you, but it doesn't bring anything to the business. Martin I, we set up a set up for a conversation of 20 minutes and I think it shows now how much fun I'm having with you and I don't wanna let you go before asking you one final question. And for smaller contact centers, you know, typically we don't have enough budget and we have different roles combining different responsibilities. So I was curious, what's your opinion of team leads also overtaking some of the tasks from WFM? Like say for example, intraday.

Martin:

I've worked in some, I've worked in some startups where as a team lead I was in, to or had to do things like that. I really didn't like it. It was really, it was, it was beyond my, my skillset. It was a lot of hard work and I didn't do a particularly good job. again, it's, it's great education.

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Education. I, I think, you know, within the team leader community, we've got people working for very small contact centers and people working for huge global organizations. Some have sero support. Others are part of very well thought out progressive that have. You know, support for everything. And it, it, it's, it's fascinating to see what that, what that means, what that results in, you know, because there is a certain buzz that you can get by being involved in. a team leader, but I also do some WFM I'm a team leader, but I also do this and I also do that. I get involved in clients and sales and, and all of those kind of things. When that goes, sometimes you miss it when the company, when the company starts to grow and adds these extra layers on, can actually miss the variety of the, the role. But I think in, its, in its true sense. Team leaders are all about the development of their people. that should be the number one priority. And, and, and as if we look ahead to the future, that is even more important because we have to go deeper than we currently do from a training point of view on emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, because our teams going to be doing more complex, more emotive customer contacts, and we have to equip our customer facing team members with the skills to do that. Now we need to free things up for team leaders so that their priority is that they are coaching or working with their team for the majority of their time rather than they're doing lots of small bits of everything which is. Generally the case, right? So I'm, I wouldn't say I'm not a fan. I think exposure to all the different skills and disciplines that happen within a contact center are great. But for a limited you know, it's, it's one of those things that if you are not spending time with your team, you're then gonna be dealing with absence, attrition, back to recruitment.

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

Can, you're not gonna be as effective as a team leader you as you could be if you're not having the majority of your working time coaching feedback, helping people develop, working on their careers, know, the, these are the things that leave life. You can have a lifelong impact on people that work for you in a really positive way. But again, that, that's a real investment of time and so long on. Long-winded answer that was, wasn't it?

Irina:

No, I, I like it. I would say that I understand the budget constraints, but I typically am not a fan of that mixture because for me, there should be a focus and you can't be focused on everything all the time. So you're other focused on the coaching and the development, but you can't be like, you go on the phone you are 10 minutes late. Let me speak to you, let me do the training. It is just, it doesn't work. So I, I think there should be a little bit better split of responsibilities for smaller contact centers. And I promise that's gonna be my last question. I liked because you opened the conversation for another one that is just curious for me that, you know, all those conversations about AI and specifically of, in WFM I'm reading probably between 102 hundred posts every day, how. We're eliminating agents, there's not going to be jobs, double FM, ai, and it's just like everyone is panic and it's complete chaos. So I was wondering from team leader's perspective, the topic about ai, do you see that kind of anxiety or stress or people thinking that soon the job of team lead is gonna disappear?

Martin:

No, it's good. Great question. We, had a session in the community on this last week and I was at an event yesterday where I was asked about my thoughts on, I. Am I worried about AI

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

and, To, to start with talking to team leaders last week, they're, they're not worried. are positive and hopeful AI can take away some of the tasks that stop them getting to their team.

Irina:

Mm-hmm.

Martin:

They did say their teams have expressed concern about the longevity of their role, of their roles. You know, I, I, is, am I gonna be replaced by ai? and I think, you know, whilst it would be naive to say that there's not gonna be changes I don't think these changes are things that we should be fearful of. think these are things that should. Influence how we proceed from now on, you know, and that, and that is are we, you know, we, we should be proud as an industry that we are at the forefront of the use of AI in real life situations. There aren't many industries that are utilising AI as much as we are. And that should be something that we attract people to our industry by, by saying, think for cust, regardless of demographic, after year, and the most recent stats from the end of last year are the same. E, especially if their reason for contact in a contact center is urgent or emotive. People still want to talk to human beings, know? And that is by far the biggest preference, like statistically huge. I don't think that's necessarily gonna change, you know, very, very soon, whilst we are in this situation, we should re again, going back to training. We, we should be working with people to give them the skills that they can become more than, let's say more than transactional agents. And we could really start looking at what does that look like? You know, if we're saying that we're taking transactional, repetitive tasks away from agents and they're gonna be dealing with complex emotive concerns, mo most agents will say, Ooh, am I gonna get more breaks though? Are you gonna train me more? Because that doesn't sound like fun. The cognitive load would be, would be massive. So again, like I mentioned earlier on, I think if you could get. Operations, WFM together and say, if this is where we're heading with ai, what does a future contact center look like terms of breaks, training, coaching, customer contact, navigating through channels? Are we gonna involve agents in developing the right prompts? And what's the relationship like? You know, I think, again, is, that excites me. It doesn't make me, it doesn't make me fearful. And like I say, you know, there, there's going to be change. It's happening really quick. There's investment behind tech and AI specifically and what that might look like. I would, I think we need to spend, we need to put as much emphasis on the humans within contact centers and, and investment in them. be able to really make the most of what the future will look like. But not, I'm not scared of it. No.

Irina:

That's a great way to wrap that conversation. Thank you so much for absolutely invaluable tips and advice and situations from real life. How can people find you and where.

Martin:

Can find me on LinkedIn or my website, martin teasdale.com or team leader community or get out rap the, the podcast. but yeah, LinkedIn is kind of the, probably the best place. But I, I've loved this. I've really enjoyed it. And as I said right at the outset, I think you're doing a brilliant, brilliant job and more power to you. And you'll have to, we'll have to reciprocate. You'll have to come on to get out a rap.

Irina:

Always like, that's one of my dreams, so please invite me.

Martin:

Yes. I.

Irina:

Thank you so much for that conversation, and I can't wait to chat again. Cheers.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Irina Hollatz (Mateeva)

Host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.