Look at Rae standing there. Confident, stylish, and let’s be real, you don’t get a crown drawn over your head by accident. She is the chief architect behind a successful team that has grown from two to twenty-seven members over the past few years and continues to expand. What you see is a strong leader with three years and nine months of unstoppable forward motion. This is Rae Angelie De Guzman, a team leader from Fusion CX Legazpi, Philippines.
The Genesis: Setting the Standard from Day One
Two agents. A city that had not yet proven itself in this vertical. A standard she set for both of them before anyone was watching.
Two agents in Legazpi, at the start of something nobody had yet mapped out. Rae applied the same standards to those two people that she now applies to twenty-seven, because she understood early that the standard cannot be conditional on the size of the team. If it is only maintained when someone is checking, it is not a standard. It is a performance.
Rae made sure they were the best-coached two agents in the operation. Her approach was already fully formed at this stage: ask first, listen before advising, make coaching conversational rather than directive. She would ask them their perspective before offering hers. She recognised small improvements loudly, because she understood that the agents who feel their progress is seen and recognised. And she firmly believes:
Her own growth was running in parallel. English communication with clients had felt intimidating at the beginning — the fear of grammar mistakes, of being judged, of the language creating a distance she couldn’t close. She resolved it the way she resolves most things: by changing the frame. Stop thinking about correctness and start thinking about connection. Genuine communication lands. Technical correctness without warmth does not. She teaches her agents this now, because she learned it by needing it herself.
“As long as you communicate genuinely and naturally, conversations become easier — almost like you’re just talking to your own friend.”
— Rae Angelie De Guzman, Team Leader, Fusion CX Legazpi
The Reality of the Floor: Managing Personalities and Pressure
Managing personalities, pressure, and the floor on the same shift.
The biggest challenge in Rae’s role, she names without hesitation: managing different personalities during high-pressure situations. Not every agent responds to stress the same way. Not every person responds to the same kind of feedback. A Team Leader who applies one approach to every person achieves consistency in method and inconsistency in results. Rae adapted.
On the floor during peak periods, her movement is deliberate: check in with the team before focusing on the numbers. Help manage calls personally — she still takes calls, still resolves customer concerns alongside the agents she leads. Keep the coaching and encouragement continuous rather than reserved for the end-of-shift debrief. Stay calm, because she has learned through experience that the emotional temperature of a floor follows the leader at the front.
“I stay calm under pressure because I believe a leader’s attitude greatly influences the team’s mindset.”
— Rae Angelie De Guzman
The Ultimate Reward: Celebrating the Growth
The moment that fills her heart completely.
The proudest moments of Rae’s career are not in the metrics or the headcount. They are in the moments when an agent’s name changes status. When someone she coached, believed in, and pushed through difficult shifts moves upward into a higher role. Her heart, she says, is full whenever this happens.
This is the measure she uses for her own success: not the team’s KPI performance in isolation, but the career trajectories of the people on it. The agent who arrived uncertain and is now leading their own calls with confidence. The person whose name in the tracker started as an enrollment and became a promotion. She was part of that journey. She considers this the most important work she does.
“My heart is full whenever I have agents being promoted for a higher position.”
— Rae Angelie De Guzman
OPM, Coffee, and Can’t Stop the Feeling
Every morning with her family is her reset and recharge. Original Pilipino Music, warm and familiar, the soundtrack of a household easing into the day together, is Rae outside work. Sunday mornings shift to worship. The week has a rhythm to it that is entirely her own.
She admits she is a night owl who drinks coffee. She unwinds with family on her days off, eating out, watching Netflix, and recovering from a week of sustained attention to twenty-seven other people’s performance and well-being. After a long shift, she wants McDonald’s chicken fillet with fries and Coke. Rae’s workday theme song is Can’t Stop the Feeling. Even in serious work shifts, there are small, funny moments, like mispronouncing names and struggling to keep a straight face while fixing it.
The favorite song of this Legazpi girl is Daisies by Justin Bieber. A song about flourishing in unexpected places. What keeps her grounded: the desire to grow, to provide better for her family, and her faith.
The Forward Motion Continues
There is a specific joy that only a certain kind of leader understands. When someone overcomes a challenge, they grow. For Rae, every name in the tracker is a story she helped write. She knows the difference between coaching that builds confidence and coaching that adds pressure. For two years, she had only two agents, and now the number has reached twenty-seven and is still growing. It is a team shaped by coaching, confidence, and standards that have remained her north star in this journey.
Rae’s journey from guiding two agents in an unproven market to leading twenty-seven thriving professionals is proof of what happens when leadership is rooted in empathy. By choosing connection over perfection and people over raw metrics, she hasn’t just built a team, she has built a community. As Fusion CX Legazpi continues to expand, Rae remains the steady anchor at the front, proving that the best way to rise is by lifting others along the way.