Executives-Spend Time With Your Department

I've been hearing from one of my executive leaders over the past week quite a bit. Seems that the call center I analyze for hasn't been reaching the goal of an 80% service level and answering calls in 20 seconds. The actual performance has been around a 70-73 % service level with calls being answered at a 40 second average. So of course I've been getting questioned. We're all familiar with them, "What's going wrong?", "Why aren't we achieving the goal?", "How we going to fix it?". Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind the questions. Executives have every right to know why performance is lacking, and how problems will be fixed. The frustration I have is that is the only time I hear from this leader.

My thought is spend time with the department from time to time. I understand executives need to focus on setting strategic direction for the organization so I'm not expecting side by side mentoring. Visits should be made when things go good. Ask why goals are being met to compare different situations with each other. Praise for a good job every now and again is nice, perhaps speak at department team meetings so staff becomes more comfortable and cohesive.

Every leadership book or article talks about communication by all levels of leadership. Make that communication consistent and fair. Communicate with departments during good and bad times to get maximum effort from them at all times and so they'll take ownership of challenging situations.