Author Archives: Pam Lyra

Leading for Success: Setting Critical Success Factors

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This blog is third in the series “Leading for Success.” Also see How to Motivate Your Team and How to Build Team Chemistry.

Understanding how we’re going to be measured and how success in one’s job or department will be defined is important to everyone. And yet, selecting those critical measurements to drive performance and decision making can be tougher than one might think. How many times have each of us been part of an organization that decided to create a series of metrics, only to find out that the behavior we created wasn’t what we were looking for?

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Leading for Success: How to Motivate Your Team

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Motivating Teams ImageThis blog is second in the series “Leading for Success.”

Motivating a team might be compared to creating a sculpture. The artist is able to see beyond the raw material to the potential in the mass, and then carefully carve away extra material to realize a fine piece of art.  To extend this analogy into what creates a high performing, motivated team, one must first understand the raw material: Continue reading “Leading for Success: How to Motivate Your Team” »

Leading for Success: How to Build Team Chemistry

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There are a number of core principles that come together when leading teams. Among these is maintaining overall chemistry, keeping the team motivated, setting critical success factors, measuring team results, and sustaining high performance. While there is no one recipe for success, this blog series will outline some of the methods that have worked well for me over the past 20+ years of leading teams in operations and customer services. In this post, I’ll focus on team chemistry. Continue reading “Leading for Success: How to Build Team Chemistry” »

Are you Getting Cheers or Sneers with Your Holiday Customer Service?

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The holidays are one of my favorite times of the year. Catching up with friends and family along with the lights, smells, and sounds of the season always take me back to my childhood at Grandma’s house. I remember lying in bed, counting to a hundred dozens of times while waiting for the first sounds of the morning. Hearing the coffee pot turn on, and the stove light, knowing that others would be waking soon, this was the time I would sit and just talk to my mother’s mother. We would discuss the important things that are on a seven year old’s mind, like the doll that I was hoping would be under the tree, visiting with the neighbors next door, or how fun it was to just watch the lights on the tree, marveling at how pretty they were. Continue reading “Are you Getting Cheers or Sneers with Your Holiday Customer Service?” »

The Fine Art of Communication

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Communication is an ArtI’ve always considered myself a good communicator. Through my early years and on to my college years I was praised for writing clearly and for speaking to the point. However, once I got out of school and took my first professional position, I learned that effective communication is an art form in itself. Here are a few things I’ve learned: Continue reading “The Fine Art of Communication” »

The Power of a Great Service Experience

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In today’s world of automation and instant gratification, service can be a real hit-or-miss proposition.  Service professionals are constantly balancing automation and personal touch, trying to manage costs for delivering service through any number of approaches, with varying levels of success. The use of overly automated systems and endless escalations are common pet peeves, especially in situations where you know your particular problem requires talking with a competent human.  Continue reading “The Power of a Great Service Experience” »