EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

Effective Leadership



Effective Leadership

Introduction

The greatest handicap of applied psychology has been the fact that, without proper theoretical help, it had to follow the costly, inefficient, and limited method of trial and error. Many psychologists working today in an applied field are keenly aware of the need for close cooperation between theoretical and applied psychology. This can be accomplished in psychology, as it has been accomplished in physics, if the theorist does not look toward applied problems with highbrow aversion or with a fear of social problems, and if the applied psychologist realizes there is nothing so practical as a good theory [Lewin, 1951].

It is an organization's leaders that translate vision and purpose into reality. In today's complex world, the stakes are high, events shift and change an organization's landscape rapidly. Intense competition and volatility, new technologies, soaring customer expectations and a diverse workforce are impacting organizations everywhere. In an effort to survive, many organizations are refocusing their efforts on the voice of the customer, turning up the heat on performance and challenging traditional organizational systems and core processes. Major changes are necessary and more change demands more leadership.

In today's business climate, everyone is faced with achieving more with less. Good enough is no longer good enough to be successful. You as a leader, are challenged to create a high achieving climate, to take charge, set ambitious goals, obtain higher levels of performance from agents and to create a work environment geared to high achievement through alignment of action and people. Alignment involves comprehension and consistency between words and actions. Leadership is action, not a position or title.

In order to turn great ideas into great accomplishments; you must be able to build commitment and support. Leaders provide focus, involve others and build commitment by providing a sense of ownership.

Building commitment for the vision includes building trust that results in positive employee morale, team spirit, improved output and sense of direction.A call centre, using Taylor and Bain's (1999) definition:

… is a dedicated operation in which computer-utilising employees receive inbound, or make outbound, telephone calls, with those calls processed and controlled either by an automatic call distribution (ACD) or predictive dialling system (Taylor and Bain, 1999, p. 102).

The call centre is characterised by the integration of telephone and visual display unit technologies. More recently, call centres have had an additional technology, the inter-active voice response (IVR), overlaid upon existing technologies.

In addition to being able to place inbound calls in a queue and allocate them to call centre agents, the ACD technology is able to provide a high level of sophisticated electronic management information and call centre statistics. A great array of statistics is available, providing call centre management with tools not readily available to their peers in many other industries. Call centre managers are able to track the number of calls per agent, the number of abandoned calls, the time taken to abandon, the average speed to answer calls, the occupancy rate of agents (the percentage of time agents handle calls versus waiting ...