How to be great Team Leader

If you're good at what you do in your job in BPO Philippines, you can be on the fast track towards a managerial position, but before that your capability to lead and manage others would be tested first.

You'll have to be a team leader.

A Team Leader is a very important position. People are selected as team leads for many valuable reasons. 


One of which is because people selected to be team leaders are productive and practiced employees, it is the aim of management that team leaders can train their teams to be just as competent for better performance and results.


Another important responsibility is to prevent people from resigning from work. Team leads are often the first line of defense to keep employees happy and loyal to the company by helping with problems and issues related to the job, maintaining good performance and working relationships within the staff and provide respect and reward for all the hard work the team makes.


TA good team lead must be:


Patient, but persistent.


Having a short temper does not make for a positive environment for cooperation. In fact, it destroys it. When team members make mistakes or fall short of expectations, a team lead should be tolerant and focus on the source of the problem to solve it and prevent it from happening.


To be persistent is that a team lead is firm on certain aspects of work excellence, but he or she should lead by example. If it's an agreed policy by the team that everyone should be at their workstations by 8 AM, the team lead should be seen present at his/her own workstation by 730 AM consistently, daily.


Strong responsibility and regard for continuous improvement. 


This is an extension of being persistent when it comes to good productivity and performance. A Team Lead should feel responsible for each member of the team's performance and productivity and the Team Lead should also motivate the same responsibility and regard for improvement in the team's individual members.


A Team Lead should not be satisfied with the so-so performance of the team, as long as they make quota. In fact a Team Lead should be receptive to ideas and means to make the work better and ideally easier for his/her team. 


A good team lead should always strive to make the process better, more efficient without making it harder on the team members or place unreasonable demands or challenges. A good team lead must obtain means and further training from management for his teammates' benefit. 


If the team improves, so does the standing of the team leader as well as the performance can benefit the company.


Balance Respect, goodwill with Business objectives. 


To make the team perform well, the Team Lead is at the core of creating an atmosphere of respect and good will within the team and with other teams and sections within the project or company. 


A Team Lead should not be about competition and challenge, but about cooperation and motivation. It's not about seeing who does better, but all about all working better together.


A business or project 's objective is to achieve success for continuity and some managers and team leads use underhanded or forceful means or manipulative tactics to achieve this. Unfortunately this sort of activities only brings about short term success and long term crises and headaches.


A good team lead earns respect by giving respect, achieves good will by sharing it with others. And with a positive atmosphere, a more productive team that can meet the project's objectives is more likely to happen.


A role model whom people can believe in. 


As important as it is for the team to believe in its Team Leader, the Team Leader must first also believe in them. 


By sincerely believing in and being involved in the team's development,  the team leader can bring out the best performance. 


Being interested in each team member can help pinpoint his/her individual talents and orchestrating these skills for the team's benefit. By showing interest, the team would be interested in the leader too. 


And just as important for the leader to be honest, diligent, sincere, polite, patient, to be able to handle a problem or issue with humor, basically all good social qualities to achieve admiration and foster good will and loyalty with your team.


Being a team leader is actually a tall order for anyone to meet up to. It doesn't come on overnight, these necessary skills and qualities.


Here are more tips on how to learn leadership and develop these qualities.

• Be a good listener. Listen well to understand another's needs and priorities. Good listening also develops patience and perception with others.
• Be a "people" person. Learn to be more "social" by taking active participation in group activities like sports or events. Practice social etiquette and courtesy and humor and pleasantness by joining in your community, church or club activities.
• Be a "sharer". Learn how to share credit, praise and rewards with others. Also learn how to share knowledge and opportunities and work and responsibilities too. Leadership is as much as delegating or empowering others to perform tasks and assignments to the best of their abilities. Be prepared also to share the responsibility of negative consequences as well. Nothing earns loyalty more than a leader who's willing to go join in a battle at the front line with the soldiers.

If one wants it, anyone can be a leader in BPO Philippines. Many are willing, but only a few can really achieve true leadership.