This article first appeared in Industry Week.
Manufacturers that are in tune with the quickly evolving workforce landscape are looking beyond the traditional areas of attracting, recruiting and retaining talent. They understand that the post-pandemic workforce is all about collaboration and values.
Job prospects value inclusivity in leadership and how decisions are made. They want to know that they will be treated well at your company, but they also want to know what value your company provides for its people, community, and the world in general.
In order for many small- and medium-sized manufacturers to thrive through the pending retirements of many key performers and the shifting workforce expectations, they must move leadership from a “me” to “we” perspective. One clear path to this transformation is through team coaching. Team coaching addresses the individual skills of your leaders while also addressing group dynamics. Much like a sports team, good coaching helps the group stretch beyond their current capabilities to achieve improved cohesiveness, performance, and value creation.
A successful organization is healthy and smart, according to leadership author, Patrick Lencioni. He describes successful companies as being able to align around strategic goals and execute against a shared leadership vision. These companies are agile and able to renew themselves through innovation and creative thinking. He says we all recognize a smart company; it is good at strategy, marketing, finance, and technology. In most companies, these subjects get 95% of the leaders’ attention. Lencioni describes a healthy company as being smart but also having minimal politics and confusion, high morale and productivity, and very low employee turnover.
Just as stakeholders look for signs of organizational health, employees look for signs of healthy leadership. They want to know how their leaders respond in a VUCA world (VUCA is an acronym with military origins used to describe the world after the Cold War):
Organizational health is about shared purpose, agility and resilience.
In a manufacturing organization, a healthy organization will operationalize its values. Its strategy will translate to the work environment. Values will emerge in behaviors on the facility floor in how people respond to each other and how they go about streamlining processes to reduce duplication and increase efficiency. It’s a culture of idea sharing and mutual respect.
Traditional training often begins with a “sage on the stage,” an expert explaining how to do something and sharing tips and best practices. In team coaching, the coach walks alongside the leaders, using their language and terminology to facilitate the dialogue and help them visualize future success and identify what might be getting in the way.
A key aspect of team coaching is addressing biases and accountability issues. Our work cultures have often accepted some behaviors that allow us to become complacent. Until we gain greater awareness and understanding, these unproductive behaviors will continue. Examples of this might include:
Without open and honest conversations, you will always have a lack of cohesiveness.
Perhaps new employees are treated well for their first 30 days, but then start to experience inconsistencies in expectations, behaviors and accountability. This plays out with retention issues, which is often the case when many new employees don’t last more than 90 days. Or, maybe key leaders are burned out and depart with more frequency than in the past.
In team coaching, the participants own the context; the coach does not provide answers.
Instead, the coach listens for the questions that aren’t being asked and surfaces the underpinnings that cause stumbling blocks and draws out a creative thought process. The leadership team works together to identify challenges and develop a plan to address future opportunities. This is how teams move from “me” to “we.”
There are two key components in creating and designing a culture that supports the behaviors that you desire in your workplace: process and focus.
Team coaching begins with a leadership assessment, which will help teams capitalize on their leadership strengths and allow space to better understand their leadership weaknesses. This not only summarizes the overall health of your leadership, it also gives you a glimpse into the health of your organization.
The next step is an analysis of your strengths, challenges, and opportunities. Look at your leadership alignment, gaps and opportunities for future growth. This will shape how you will lead the change you seek. Leadership has to be willing to be vulnerable in order to improve your work culture. Healthy, honest discourse can lead to transformational change for the betterment of all.
Lencioni identifies five essential behaviors needed for a team to excel. Each behavior in the model builds upon the previous and supports the others, similar to a pyramid. The behaviors are:
Your leadership will set overall goals and ensure that departments are aligned with appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, if improving your employee retention is an overall company goal, every department in your company should have tactics that align with that goal. They should have behavioral standards and measurements for accountability.
Team coaching begins with your core leadership. Once that group has a solid foundation, you should include director-level leaders and then frontline managers. The coaching should help you “inspire” change. Be sure to:
Manufacturers have traditionally focused on the here and now. And that makes sense, given the importance of current and near-term operations. But the pace of change has only quickened, from the adoption of Industry 4.0 to workforce dynamics and unforeseen disruptions. The future is, indeed, faster.
Placing human-centric traits such as empathy and relationship-building at the core of impactful leadership will be a long-term win-win for your organization. But providing leaders with the right skills can be challenging. IMEC or your local MEP Center can help you with a proactive approach to help your leaders thrive in this environment and meet the challenges of the future.
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