7 Traits of High Potential Team Leaders
With Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak
Show Notes
I’m Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak. Since 1997, I’ve specialized in developing team leaders’ capability to get better results.
Working with over 7000 managers of customer-facing teams, I’ve identified there are 7 traits high-performing team leaders have in common.
These are the ones to look for when you’re recruiting team leaders, to ensure they’ve got high potential.
The 7 Traits of High-Potential Team Leaders:
Honesty (05:09).
Action oriented (11:02).
Low need for approval (14:32).
High IQ (20:10).
Social awareness and ability to maintain good relationships (22:57).
Self-awareness and ability to self-manage (25:02).
Great time management (28:08).
You'll Learn:
The most important characteristic people say they want in their team leader - based on global research since 1987 (05:34).
The 2 questions to ask during an interview to identify whether a prospect has this characteristic (08:02).
The competency area of your team leaders which has the greatest impact on employee engagement (07:08).
Why most successful team leaders aren’t perfectionists (11:58).
The percentage of decisions made by Chief Executives which are wrong - the number will shock you (12:33).
What high performing team leaders have in common with dictators (15:19).
Strategies they use to keep maintain self-awareness (25:32).
The common red flag which shows a person has poor self-management (26:04).
The hack high performing team leaders use to ensure they get things done in the required timeframe (28:38).
Follow me on LinkedIn, or connect with me on Facebook.
If you want to understand how the future of contact centre coaching - which is a behavioral science-based approach - can help you to strengthen employee engagement and to drive results, send me an email (at blairs@bravatrak.com) and we can organize a 15-minute call over Zoom or Teams.
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak, the future of contact centre coaching. BravaTrak measures and improves coaching effectiveness, so you strengthen employee engagement and drive results.
Now today, the tables are turned. Rather than me doing the interviewing, Josh Ballantyne is here and he's going to interview me on the seven traits to look for when recruiting high potential team leaders.
So Josh, welcome along. Great to have you here.
Josh Ballantyne (00:35)
Thanks Blair. Good to be here.
Blair Stevenson (00:36)
Fantastic. Now, I've interviewed you previously on this podcast, but there may be some people who are listening to this particular interview who haven't heard or seen your previous interview.
So just as a starting point, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your expertise.
Josh Ballantyne (00:57)
Yeah. Thanks Blair. Great to be on the show. So my background, I've got 13 years' experience in the financial industry. I focus more on the insurance side of things. I haven't done any other financial things like banking or whatnot.
In that time, I've really focused my energy on the sales area, on the sales management, business development, sales operations. But I do actually have a real passion for sales management, and in particular performance leadership. I think it's one thing to run a business, but what I'm really interested in is actually driving the business forward.
I get quite a kick out of looking at how businesses can make really small, easy changes or additions to what they do at the moment, and will drive surprising results from their sales teams. And, of course, having fun doing it. So I'm really, really interested in finding out what those small things are, putting them in there and seeing what happens.
There you go.
Blair Stevenson (02:00)
Very cool. And for listeners, I can tell you that Josh is an outstanding leader and an outstanding coach, which is why he's here asking me questions. So let's switch roles. You're now the interviewer, Josh, take it away.
Josh Ballantyne (02:16)
Awesome, thanks Blair. And so before we jump right into it - where I ask you about the seven traits of what to look for when you're in the recruitment process for a team leader - what I'm actually interested in Blair is what's given you the insight into those traits.
Or to be a bit more blunt about it, why should people listen?
Blair Stevenson (02:34)
A reasonable question.
I've been working in this space for approximately 23 years. Prior to that, I was a service quality manager for New Zealand lotteries, or Lotto, as people know it. And my team was responsible for franchise management programs. So we were responsible for training franchisees.
And over time, I got to see which of those franchisees were successful and which were not. So I was able to correlate what I was observing in terms of how they operated with the success they achieved.
Over the last 23 years, I've worked with - personally worked with - roughly, I'm trying to calculate it, somewhere around 7,000 first-line managers. I have put most of those managers into role play situations where they're forced to lead and coach other people. I've seen how they've operated.
I've then worked with the organizations they've worked for, and I've been able to view data on their actual performance. And for the last 15 odd years, my company has also provided leadership and coaching assessments for a wide range of organizations. I've debrief those assessments with senior leaders.
We've compared the results from those assessments with the actual results of the teams those people have lead. And I've been able to get a very, very strong sense of what good looks like when it comes to people leaders, as a result of that.
Josh Ballantyne (04:23)
Right. That's obviously a long period of time to be sort of working in the field. One thing that's quite interesting that stands out is the number of 7,000. Obviously, it's probably not the perfect number, but about 7,000 leaders themselves.
So you obviously have access to a huge range of styles, people, personalities and whatnot. And I just wished that I was able to put that information in here, but I guess that's what we're all gonna learn today from you. So thank you very much for sharing it all Blair.
Blair Stevenson (04:49)
You're welcome.
Josh Ballantyne (04:50)
Awesome. So I think what we'll do now is we'll jump into the first. I guess from what you're saying, there are seven main traits that you want to look for when interviewing and looking for high performance and high-performing team leaders.
We'll jump into the first one. So what is the first one there Blair?
Blair Stevenson (05:09)
Number one is honesty. And I put it at number one because there are couple of guys, Jim Kouzes and Barry Pozner, who have for decades been researching leadership.
They originally wrote the book The Leadership Challenge and they have published multiple additions to follow it up. And what's really standout is the research they've done across countries. Consistently, people say the most important characteristic in their leader is honesty.
And so within our BravaTrak leadership assessment that I alluded to earlier, one of the competency areas that we measure I refer to as credibility. And a number of the statements associated with credibility are purely about honesty.
For example, "Does this person do what they said they're going to do? Does this person live the values they expect of me, or do they do something differently? Do they admit to their mistakes and shortcomings, or do they try to blame other people or cover it up?" All that stuff. "Are they open and honest in their communication or do they hide stuff? Are they transparent or non-transparent?"
All that stuff, it's really clear, is the key to leadership. And one of the reasons I say it's really clear, outside of the Kouzes and Posner research, is that because we've got so much data across clients, we've been able to do some statistical analysis of what are the drivers of employee engagement, in terms of leadership.
And what we've discovered is the overall leadership performance index has a strong positive correlation with employee engagement. But if you then look at the competency areas, it turns out that credibility is the highest scoring competency area in terms of its correlation - its positive correlation - to engagement. And that comes up across clients time and time again.
Josh Ballantyne (07:37)
It's really interesting. So obviously you've figured out what questions that you can ask in the BravaTrak surveys to identify honesty of the leaders and whatnot.
Do you have any tips of what could be asked to identify in an interview situation? Because if you're trying to find someone, you're trying to look for that quality. Do you have any tips on what could be said in there to identify that?
Blair Stevenson (08:02)
Yeah, so the two that I see constantly tripping managers up is they don't do what they say they're going to do. And the other one is that they act differently from the standards or values the expect of others.
So I'd be asking about, “What do they do to ensure that if they make a promise, they follow up on it?”. Or to figure out ways to ask that question around if they make a commitment, what happens in relationship to that commitment?
Josh Ballantyne (08:49)
That's interesting. So in an interview situation, if you're trying to look for a team leader, that's an external applicant, you'd probably ask around what do they do to ensure that they follow through with what they've said they're going to do.
That's quite interesting, because I suspect in that interview process, you'll know pretty quickly if they have a system or not to ensure that they do.
Blair Stevenson (09:08)
Yeah. And if you think about referees, those are questions that I'd be definitely posing to referees.
Josh Ballantyne (09:16)
Yeah. That's interesting. And of course, if they're an internal applicant, you've probably seen their past behavior in those particular area. That's really, really good.
And, last question on this, is how long did it take for you - because obviously how do you track and measure honesty? You don't know. Obviously you've found there probably are a number of ways. How long did it take you to come up with the questions in that survey to highlight actual honesty of employees?
Blair Stevenson (09:42)
Took a little while. I'm an evidence based guy. So I wasn't interested in just making up questions. So I look at what's the research evidence from a variety of points of view. You know, what's the research evidence from a performance improvement perspective?
My background is in behavioral science. Some of that is informed out of the field of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM). So what does that research tell us? What is the leadership research like - for example like Kouzes' and Posner's - tell us? And I draw a Venn diagram. What I'm interested in is what falls in the middle.
And so I just looked at a whole variety of research and looked at the commonalities that keep on popping up. And that's what I I've drawn my questions from.
Josh Ballantyne (10:35)
Gotcha. I can imagine that the data that you have access to through all those surveys would be very, very interesting, obviously across a range of businesses. Very cool. Thank you very much for that Blair.
So that's the first one, honestly. Like we said, hard to track, hard to measure, but you've come up with some ways in order to tease that information out, which is really cool. So we'll move into the next one here.
What's point number two, when you're looking for a high performing leader?
Blair Stevenson (11:02)
Number two, I'd call 'action orientated'. For listeners, if you're familiar with McClelland's Human Motivation theory, back in the fifties, he identified that humans really have three needs. One is need for achievement, one's need for affiliation - to affiliate with other people. And the third one is need for power.
And you'd argue that action orientation really indicates a high need for achievement. I think most successful managers would consider that they are action orientated, that it's one of their strengths. They get stuff done, whether they do it on their own - just get onto it - or they find ways to do it through others, is pretty much irrelevant. They just want to get stuff done.
And so they're not perfectionists. Any hesitation often comes from either perfectionism or doubting yourself or risk avoidance. And that just causes delay. So what I've noticed is that high-performing team leaders just get on with it.
Josh Ballantyne (12:19)
Interesting. And so what we're talking about is they identify what needs to happen. Don't over brain it. Have a relatively good idea of what they need to do and just go for it, sort of thing.
Do you have any examples?
Blair Stevenson (12:33)
I remember years ago a really smart Chief Executive I worked for. He was just doing his MBA at the time, he was doing it part time. And he came across some research when he was doing his MBA, that 52% of decisions made by Chief Executives are actually wrong. So he claimed the research said.
But the difference between great CEOs and more average CEOs is A, they were willing to make a decision. And B, when they discovered they made the wrong decision, they were willing to change immediately.
And I think that's the key. We're not politicians where we've got to go, "Well, I say this once and everyone's going to hold me to it forever". Successful people make decisions, get on with it. And then if they realize they've gone down the wrong path, they take action to change the path they're on.
Josh Ballantyne (13:43)
Interesting. And so that action piece is pretty interesting, around the whole '52% of decisions a CE makes are wrong'. And that actually makes sense when you put it like that, right? It's not rocket science, but it needs to be pointed out that you make a decision, if it's right, awesome. If not, cool let's quickly acknowledge it and pivot onto the next one.
And I suppose it's a constant state of learning and changing and action. That's really quite interesting actually. Thanks very much Blair. I'm really interested in that percentage about CEs. And I suppose a team leader is actually a mini CEO, right? They are the CEO of their team.
Blair Stevenson (14:21)
Yeah, totally. We're all leaders.
Josh Ballantyne (14:25)
Awesome. Thanks Blair. So that's number one and two. We'll jump into the third point for high-performing leaders.
Blair Stevenson (14:32)
Third point is they have a relatively low need for approval. So if we put it terms of need for achievement and affiliation and power, maybe they've got a lower need for affiliation. They still need some need for affiliation, because you want people who like people, who want to interact with people. But they don't have a strong need for approval.
We previously talked about this, and our discussion reminded me how many years ago I worked for a manager who was on the senior leadership team. And I remember him complaining to me one day - it wasn't that appropriate - but he was complaining to me about something that happened with the Chief Executive. It may well have been an 'aha' moment for him.
The senior leadership team and the Chief Executive had discussed a topic on which a decision needed to be made. And the consensus of the leadership team was a specific decision should be made. And the Chief Executive went away and did something different. And my boss confronted him about us.
And the response from the Chief Executive was, "What makes you think this is a democracy?" Which was a reasonable question. He wasn't taking action based on a need for approval. He didn't need the approval of his leadership team to do what he thought was the most appropriate thing.
Because, if you've got a high need for approval, you take disagreements personally, you adapt your point of view in the face of team disapproval. What it means also, if they've got a high need for approval, they're afraid to say ‘no’ to people.
And it impacts other areas too. So for example, there's an organization in the United States called the Objective Management Group. OMG. They have developed a tool for assessing salespeople. And what they have discovered is that salespeople who have a high need for approval are poor performers.
Because they're seeking approval from their prospects, their clients, their customers. Rather than doing the right thing for the customer and for their own organization.
Josh Ballantyne (17:10)
Yeah. That's interesting. I suspect, based on what you've said, they are probably more impacted by when a customer says ‘no’, as well. And you'd hope that if they were high on the approval side of things, they were probably more likely to have their approval from their boss.
But if you're talking to customers all day every day, and you're on the higher side of things, you're probably going to seek it from your customer. Or if you're a team leader, you're probably not speaking to your manager hours and hours a day. You're probably going to seek it from your staff members themselves. Which obviously calls into contention the ‘no’s’ or that you're actually not going to make that decision.
Blair Stevenson (17:50)
The team can love a person who has a high need for approval. They just don't respect them, and they don't perform. Because they can get away with it.
Josh Ballantyne (18:01)
That's interesting. I'm in a similar situation. I had a boss once and when it came to decision-making, he actually said to me, he didn't say, "What makes you think it's a democracy?" He said, these words, he said, "This is a dictatorship. I care about you and I'll listen to you, but I am the dictator".
And the feeling that I got when he said that was complete acceptance. Like, "Okay". And he wasn't being horrible about it. It was just, he had the decision to make, he is in control of it. I certainly didn't want to be. He had that job. I didn't want it. But he seemed to make the right decision often. And he would make the decision and then we would just go and do it. And he was probably quite action oriented as well.
Blair Stevenson (18:52)
He knows what his job is. That is his job. And he's going about it the right way in terms of his thinking in terms of, "I will listen to you, I'll get your input. I'll consider that input. But at the end I make the decision".
Josh Ballantyne (19:06)
Mmm. And I suppose if he's considering all of the inputs, and some of them will be conflicting and some won't, so some would probably agree. And some other people in the team probably won't agree. But in the end, I'm thinking back on it, we all used to come around the decision, and say, "All right, what do we need to do to get it done?" An interesting point. I like that.
So what we've covered so far is someone who's honest. They're open, probably, to being honest. A high need for action or achievement, and probably a little bit of approval, but just enough to be able to manage relationships effectively. But still it's not dominating. So that they're able to just continue on with the action that they've set in front of themselves.
Blair Stevenson (20:01)
Exactly right. Good summary.
Josh Ballantyne (20:03)
So if we were to move to the next point there, we're three down, what's the next one you've got?
Blair Stevenson (20:10)
They're smart. They've got some intellectual horsepower, or above average intelligence. We're talking about IQ, which is more around that reasoning ability. The ability to assess information, the ability to use that information logically.
And you think about now, the requirement on team leaders is growing in the modern world, in terms of the ability to process information, the ability to analyze the data that they have, and then make some decisions based on that. And so you don't want people who sweat that stuff. You want people who can handle it.
And if we're talking about a high potential team leader, then we're really talking about someone who could then actually make the next move up to a center manager role or a second-line manager. And to easily be able to handle the kind of analysis and decision-making they need to handle at level too. So they're smarter than your average bear.
Josh Ballantyne (21:24)
Yeah. It's interesting that you say this, particularly around the data side of things. It can be a double-edged sword. You could be paralyzed by trying to assess and analyze and whatnot.
But if you go back to what you said earlier about they're action oriented, and if you're higher than average on the reasoning side of things, you're probably someone who is able to analyze relatively quickly without worrying too much about it. Know what they need to do and go for it.
And if I actually look at the leaders that I've worked with, the ones who are able - and this is obviously getting into quite a specific situation here - but if you talk about business reporting, business reporting doesn't fix a problem but it tells you where to go. And then obviously there are some actions that you need to do afterwards when you go to it.
But the people who are able to explain the reporting and teach it to someone else, they're already halfway down the road while someone's trying to figure out what to even do. They will probably have it done very, very quickly and move onto the next thing. And it really does actually make quite a lot of sense. Particularly people who look at it regularly, can make a decision quickly, and just go for it. It's quite interesting.
So obviously you've got IQ. Some of us know that there's another side of that.
Blair Stevenson (22:57)
Which is obviously EQ, or emotional intelligence. Absolutely. And I think Emotional Intelligence is central to being an effective leader. And I break that down into two parts. Outward and inward.
So the outward piece is that whole social awareness and relationship management. Someone who is empathetic, can build rapport with other people. Can relate to all kinds of people. They pick up on emotional cues. So if they're in a meeting, they're capable of picking up on emotional cues. Or they are out on the floor, they happen to notice something going on, they can pick up what's going on.
So they tend to feel comfortable socially. They enjoy working with people, so they can maintain good relationships. And out of all that, really importantly, it allows them to be able to influence people. Positively influence people.
Josh Ballantyne (24:11)
So it's almost like how they interact with others and adjust accordingly based on what they're getting back from that.
One thing I've seen is, we've all seen this before, right? We've seen leaders who deliver a message, cool, send everyone off, go and do it. And then they question why the other people aren't doing what they've asked them to do.
But the ones that actually questioned "Did I communicate that to you in a way that I saw you understood it?", and then adjust that communication, I've seen those ones typically have a higher output of performance. And less stumbling, I guess.
Blair Stevenson (24:50)
Yeah. And so they can get the best out of the people. Much easier for them to do that.
Josh Ballantyne (24:57)
Interesting. So that there is probably on the EQ side of things, would you say?
Blair Stevenson (25:02)
Yeah. So that'd be the outward manifestation.
The inward manifestation would be they are self-aware. And they self-manage. Self-aware is, for example, I talked earlier about that honesty piece around, "Follows through on promises and commitments they've made". They're aware, "Okay. There are some promises I made, I actually need to keep those promises".
They recognize their own thoughts and feelings. They take action when needed. They might, for example, take some time out. Meditate for a short time, or do some deep breathing just to get back into control. They're really clear about their own strengths and weaknesses. And, therefore, that allows them to cover for their weaknesses through the people.
And one thing that just keeps coming up as a red flag, I see time and time and time again, is that people who don't have that level of self-management - that they've got a lower EQ, amongst other things - they just don't control impulsive feelings. And so they'll act inappropriately, because they just can't control those feelings.
Josh Ballantyne (26:35)
Something probably just bubbles up and they'll just go along with the feeling and emotion rather than understanding what they've got and then adjusting from there.
Blair Stevenson (26:43)
Yeah. So then you get bullying behavior, or emotional outbursts.
Josh Ballantyne (26:53)
One thing that was interesting is you said, when going back up to the top one around honesty, there's a little bit of a linkage there around "Follows through on commitments they made", and then self-management to know "I've made that commitment I need to follow through on it". And then on the other side of it, because that's following through for someone else.
And then there's the internal one of, "I need to follow through for me". And I read quite an interesting thing the other day, and it said, "Self-confidence comes from following through on the promises you've made to yourself".
Someone who never, ever doesn't follow through on something they say to themselves, they're probably the most confident person in the world. Because they could do anything they wanted.
Blair Stevenson (27:36)
Yeah. It's a good point. I think it's a very, very good point. They know who they are and they manage that.
Josh Ballantyne (27:46)
So really what we've gone over is someone who's probably smarter than the average on the IQ side of things. They've also got a high level of EQ, externally, how they interact with others. And then also internally, how they manage themselves and their self-awareness and whatnot.
So we'll move on to the next one. I think this is the last one, isn't it Blair?
Blair Stevenson (28:08)
It is. And there's a bit of a crossover here in terms of that self-management piece. And that is they manage their time well. They regard their time as an important resource. So what that means is they plan how they're going to use their time, and they think through their priorities. They'll concentrate their efforts on important priorities.
So if I was looking at a contact center where I was looking at a team leader, someone who manages their time well would have used their calendar, for example, to time box. They'd block out time for specific actions, specific activities, specific priorities to ensure that they got them done within the timeframe they needed to get those done.
And reality is, for some people, that takes effort. I'm one of those people. Not all of us are super organized. But high potential team leaders organize their time because they've only got so much of it.
Josh Ballantyne (29:27)
Whether that be through personal effort - because it doesn't come naturally - or it does come naturally and they just go for it. Now I'm probably more on your side of the spectrum, there Blair. My fiancé is at the complete other end. I don't want to get into how I feel about that.
Blair Stevenson (29:44)
She's clearly managing your time really well.
Josh Ballantyne (29:45)
I am not in control.
Blair Stevenson (29:51)
But you're right. There's a spectrum. But irrespective of where people fall - what their natural inclination is - what I notice is those high-performing team leaders will make the effort to ensure that they're prioritizing the stuff that needs their attention. Rather than be driven by the urgent but unimportant stuff that arises every day.
Josh Ballantyne (30:21)
Yeah, well that was I think on the last, or the second to last, podcast that you had. There was mention of Stephen Covey's four quadrants around prioritization. Urgent and important, not important and whatnot.
And what it sounds like, is someone who's able to, one, understand the importance and urgency of something. And then to time block those things that they deem to be important and need to get done. And then obviously the flow on impact from that is quite natural. It's really pretty simple. It sounds like someone who actually is able to say ‘no’.
Blair Stevenson (30:58)
Yeah, exactly.
Josh Ballantyne (30:59)
There's obviously a lot of demands on a team leader. It's probably going to get bigger over time as you mentioned. It's probably bigger now than it was five, 10 years ago. And so someone who's probably able to say ‘no’ to a request, which probably indicates someone with a lower level of needing approval of others. Because they need to get their own personal actions done.
Blair Stevenson (31:25)
Yep. Agreed. Yeah, so those are the seven.
Josh Ballantyne (31:30)
Awesome. It really does sum up someone who's honest, in many facets. Follows through, not only for other people - because they said they were going to - but also follows through internally. Action oriented in that they don't pause, they just say, "yep. I've got a problem. I can analyze the problem because I've got high level of IQ and reasoning".
They know what to do, they'll go for it, but they'll also go for it in a good way that doesn't mess with other people. They're demonstrating good EQ.
That really does sum up someone quite special. I wonder if anyone in the world is that person, but it's obviously someone that we want to hire.
Blair Stevenson (32:19)
If you think about that, that's definitely someone you want to hire. And they're around. There's a lot of good people around. It's just that not everyone is suited for a role as a team leader or as a centre manager.
And it's just making sure that when you do make those hires - because I have seen disastrous hires at this level. I think of a contact center specifically which was performing really poorly, and the senior leadership of the organization put it down to what they claimed was the quality of the people who could be employed in that location as frontline CSRs (Customer Service Representatives).
But when I spent time in the contact center, what I discovered was it had nothing to do with the quality of the CSRs. It had to do with the quality of the team managers who were recruited and running the place.
And I think anyone who's been around in business for a while knows that if you've got a really great manager, you shift them into a low performing team and they'll change the performance and culture of that team.
Josh Ballantyne (33:31)
Yeah, and sometimes quite dramatically. Not only does the performance change dramatically, but also how quickly it changes as well.
Blair Stevenson (33:38)
Totally.
Josh Ballantyne (33:38)
It's almost like, when walking past them, you could probably see their faces, prior. And we would all know what they'd probably look like. Probably not frowning, because they're at work, but they're probably not ecstatic. And then they've got a new leader who probably exudes all of these seven traits and people are laughing, having a great time and getting it done.
Those are excellent tips. And if you're a hiring manager looking for someone, or if you're in HR or whatnot, I suspect they would probably want to sit down, listen to this in detail, write some stuff down and figure out the questions that they actually want to be asking. So they're hiring the right person to ensure that their business is going to be going forward on the right foot.
Blair Stevenson (34:23)
Totally agreed. Well, that's all we've got time for today. Josh, thank you so much for coming on the show again. And this time to interview me.
For listeners, you'll find a link to the show notes in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, you'll also find a link to my LinkedIn profile in the description too (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensonblair/).
Now, if you want to understand how the future of contact centre coaching - which is a behavioral science-based approach - can help you to strengthen employee engagement and to drive results, send me an email (at blairs@bravatrak.com) and we can organize a 15-minute call over Zoom or Teams.
My contact details are also in the episode description below.
Well, that it from us today. Thanks again to Josh and have a productive week.