Be a Goldfish: 8 Leadership Lessons for Service Desk Teams

Written by John Noctor

I love a bit of Ted Lasso. It’s funny, warm and relentlessly kind, but underneath all of that, there are some surprisingly useful lessons about leadership.

Ted arrives in England to manage a Premier League football club despite barely knowing the game. He isn’t the technical expert, and he doesn’t lead through tactics alone. What he does particularly well is focus on people. How they grow, how they work together and how the environment around them affects their performance.

There are some interesting parallels here for service desk leaders!

A great service desk isn’t only about processes, technology or ticket statistics. How you lead people matters too.

Do people feel comfortable admitting when they’ve made a mistake? Are you giving people genuine ownership? Do you know what motivates the individuals in your team? And are you prepared to have the hard conversations as well as offer encouragement?

These are some of the ideas behind Be a Goldfish: 8 Leadership Lessons for Service Desk Teams.

The infographic takes some of Ted’s most recognisable leadership behaviours and brings them onto the service desk. It also looks at the thinking behind them, drawing on work around servant leadership, psychological safety and Radical Candor.

Most importantly, I’ve tried to make it practical.

The eight ideas aren’t intended to sit in a leadership presentation somewhere. They’re small things you can actually try with your team. From asking better questions and admitting when you’ve got something wrong to giving someone the decision rather than simply giving them another task.

Have a look through the infographic and ask yourself: which of the eight would your team notice first?

🔗 Check out the complete infographic for FREE!

And if you need some help to look at the bigger picture, we’re here to guide you!

These behaviours are a useful place to start, but strong leadership is only one part of a high-performing service desk.

If the infographic gets you thinking about how your own team operates, SDI’s Service Desk Certification (SDC) provides an opportunity to look at your service desk more in depth and benchmark against the SDI Global Best Practice Standard.

➡️ Take your team further with Service Desk Certification →