“I don’t know who the lady you sent over here is, but she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She spent two hours doing it, and my computers are still not working.”
“I’ll take care of it,” I told my client, “and don’t worry, you won’t be charged for any time we’ve spent working at your office today.”
I hung up and thought about my newly hired computer technician, Anna. She was an older woman who had made a significant personal effort to get the technical certifications she needed to qualify as an entry-level computer network technician. The reasons I hired her were on my mind as I called her cell phone.
“Hi Anna, it’s Scott. Are you OK?”
She sounded frustrated as she told me the procedures she’d used to diagnose the computer network problem she’d encountered at the client’s site. She then described how the client had stood over her shoulder watching her the entire time. This level of scrutiny had rattled her.
“Let’s escalate this to our senior technician. Can you walk him through a quick turnover when he gets there?” I asked.
“Yes, OK, Scott, but I should have been able to handle this problem. I feel badly about it,” Anna lamented.
“No worries, just let the client know a senior technician is on the way,” I told her.
There is a big difference between classroom skills learning, and being able to apply those same skills under varying circumstances and pressures. This was the third time I’d gotten a call from a client complaining about Anna’s demeanor when she was on-site at their business.
Once he arrived, our senior network technician was able to quickly diagnose and address the computer issue our client was experiencing. He also made sure I knew that he again had to abruptly leave another client site in order to “babysit” Anna.
To be effective, management needs the trust of those being managed. When your team begins to feel the team leader is protecting and making excuses for a team member, that leader begins to lose the trust of the team members. My leadership and my decision to hire Anna were being challenged. In addition to eroding confidence and trust, it was expensive to send our highly compensated senior technician to a client site, where a junior technician was already working and should have been able to solve the problem. We were losing money every time this happened.
Anna had been working for us for almost 30 days now, and it just wasn’t working out. I had only a few days left if I was going to let her go before the state would require that I as the employer would be responsible for an unemployment claim. Those kinds of claims are costly to a small business like mine, and they have long-lasting ramifications on the rate you’d have to pay the state for unemployment insurance.
I pulled out an organizational chart of my team, and I saw each of our staff members in a two-dimensional box with their names and titles. As I scanned their names, I smiled as I considered the strengths they brought to our team—strengths that could not be contained in the small boxes on my organizational chart. I thought of why I’d hired Anna, the older woman with the kind demeanor, who was determined to change careers and succeed in a field dominated by men. That’s when I realized what I could do to not only fix my immediate dilemma, but to also introduce an innovation into my business.
Those character strengths possessed by Anna—love of learning, bravery, kindness, humility, and gratitude—may not have been successful when she was standing face-to-face with an agitated client. But those same traits seemed like a perfect fit for a technician responsible for answering my client’s initial calls into our hotline, which is how they request our technical help. Imagine your computer isn’t working, or even worse, that you may have lost data. The emotions of fear, anxiety, and anger wash over us when our technology inevitably yet always unexpectedly breaks down. Clients who are fearful or angry need a kind, brave, and humble voice to answer their calls for help.
The new procedures I drafted traced a hotline call from our clients, which was answered first by our “level 1 remote technician, Anna.” Anna then would escalate the call to an appropriate next-level technician if she could not help the client resolve the issue remotely.
After talking to Anna about my intention to change her job description, and getting her agreement, I called a meeting of our entire team and announced this change effective immediately. In a short time, these new procedures significantly reduced the cost of maintaining our professional technical staff, as we were able to multiply the effectiveness of our team through the thoughtful and patient efforts of our new, level 1 remote technician, Anna. It also increased client satisfaction because Anna’s voice and demeanor were more aligned with handling frantic or agitated callers than those of my more experienced male technicians. Soon my clients were asking for Anna by name and not demanding an escalation to our senior technicians. That’s when I knew we’d solved the dilemma.
As you review your organizational chart, consider adding the top five character strengths of each of your staff members, and not just their names and titles. This provides you a three-dimensional view of your team, and keeps their most important strengths at the top of your mind.
Many times a staffing problem lies with the lens a team leader uses to narrowly see the staffing challenge. If you as the team leader are able to envision and reposition your existing staff to meet new marketplace challenges, then your team will be light years ahead of your competition who are unable to innovate in this way.
Scott Brennan is president and accelerated team success expert at BOLDbreak, Inc., and author of the award-winning book, “The Surging Team – 10 BOLDskills for Accelerated Team Success.” Brennan offers business-to-business leadership consulting services, including virtual consulting via text, e-mail, phone and video conference, plus the online video training series, 10 BOLDskills for Accelerated Team Success. Learn more at www.BOLDbreak.com.
