Front line leadership is a complex job. Front-line supervisors are responsible for ensuring their teams understand what’s expected of them and resolving safety procedures or employee issues on the fly.
Boost morale and teamwork while respecting social distancing guidelines with an online learning program designed to shift your frontline leadership.
Effective Communication
Frontline leaders need to effectively communicate to their staff. They also need to understand how the work they do ties together with other departments. Providing departmental tours as part of frontline leader training is one way to accomplish this.
In our study of the pre-implementation phase of a patient portal, we found that the strongest predictor of leadership support was how well frontline leaders understood the vision for the new technology and had been informed by information in their own organization. These factors explained close to half of the variation in leader support.
Frontline supervisors need to know the “why” behind many policies and practices at their organizations. Understanding the underlying issues can help them build trust, respect and understanding with agents. They also need to be punctual as being late for calls can damage their credibility. Being on time also gives them a greater sense of control and authority over their time. This is especially important in contact centers where agents may be working around the clock and can feel overburdened by their workloads.
Accountability
In the world of business, accountability is a key aspect of a company’s ability to garner confidence from external investors and retain loyalty from employees. Similarly, the healthcare industry requires accountable leadership that creates a culture of trust and responsibility.
Accountability is a complex concept that has multiple meanings, encompassing many different activities. Traditional forms of accountability mainly focus on the economic and financial dimension of transactions between an organization and its shareholders. A broader view of accountability involves the obligation to share organizational impacts with multiple stakeholders, including citizens and communities.
Frontline leaders are critical for the success of health information technology (IT) innovations. In a recent survey on the pre-implementation of a patient portal, our research team found that the strongest influences on frontline leader support for eHealth initiatives were their perception of vision clarity, and how well they perceived information shared about the new patient portal in their organizations. These factors explained close to half of the variation in leader support.
Empowering Employees
Frontline leaders have a huge impact on the day-to-day work of operational employees. They are often the key to establishing and maintaining a strong team bond. This can only happen if they are empowered and trusted with important decisions, discretion and responsibility.
Providing training and development is one way to empower employees. Another is by making sure that your policies align with the culture of your organization. This includes letting employees know the “why” behind many of your policies. For example, if the frontline leader has an understanding of the different departments that interface with the contact center they can better explain to agents the reasoning behind certain policies such as scheduling and timekeeping.
At Barriere we offer a frontline leadership program called POWER TO LEAD. It provides tools and training for supervisors to reinforce leadership behaviors that champion a culture of inclusion. This includes a series of classes on effective communication, setting goals and coaching others.
Authenticity
You can’t go anywhere these days without hearing the word “authenticity.” Unfortunately, it’s also become a bit of a buzzword that can easily get lost in translation. It’s important to recognize that there are different senses of authenticity and decide which one best fits the way you want to be viewed by your colleagues, customers, and the world in general.
The scholarly literature suggests that authenticity is comprised of four interrelated aspects: self-awareness (i.e., being able to accurately identify your core values and preferences), unbiased processing of situations, behavior that is consistent with these values and preferences, and relationships. It’s critical to develop and reinforce these leadership traits as a key aspect of frontline leadership.
Frontline leaders often have to do things that are not easy or comfortable. For example, a nurse working two jobs may have to choose between seeing patients at night or staying home to care for her sick child. These are incredibly authentic decisions for someone who is trying to fulfill their duty as a caregiver.
