Creating a vibrant team that is motivated with high morale can be a daunting a task.  Sometimes it’s a task that can seem nearly impossible, especially if your people are disengaged with their work and the organisational culture.

For frontline managers the task of creating good morale and motivated, engaged employees can seem even harder than other areas of the business.  This is because the nature of frontline employees work is usually prone to repetitive tasks with little autonomy or sense of control over their work.

In a call centre for example, even the ‘not ready’ time is recorded and analysed as an area that could use constant improvement.  For some people it’s readily accepted as a challenge to keep their not ready time to a minimum but this is generally the high performers.  For your average performer, your core people, this doesn’t inspire or motivate.  But what does?

Unfortunately there isn’t a magic bullet solution.  The key to developing high performing frontline teams that are motivated and engaged is largely to do with frontline leadership skills of the team leaders.  Team leaders in turn need to be supported and coached by their direct managers to enable these skills to be developed overtime.

Frontline leadership skills cannot be developed in a vacuum.  One centre manager I have worked with described it as a change in the way business is done from the top down.  Without the top down support the change doesn’t carry the weight necessary to ensure the attention of frontline employees, they think of it as just another passing management fad.

Frontline leadership skills need to become indoctrinated in how business is conducted on a daily basis.  Without total commitment to the change from frontline management to leadership it is too easy to slip back into old habits that only motivate a minority.

A relentless approach to an established frontline leadership methodology allows sustainable change and sustainable improvements over time.  Frontline leadership isn’t just a ‘flash in the pan’, it’s a new way of doing business that enables, empowers and gets the best from people in a genuine manner.  The resulting sustainable improvements to the bottom line are the key to moving your organisation to the next level.