An Empowerment Example

One of my primary functions as a lean practitioner is training and training development for our "Boeing Portland Fabrication System" (a lean management culture based on University of Kentucky's True Lean program).  I am the resident training developer for my site, and most of my training is adopted by the other 19 business units that make up all of Boeing Fabrication).  Recently, I was asked to support our executive leader on developing training for his leadership team around Ken Blanchard's Situational Leadership II model.  While my previous role was instructional designer, I've been out of the general instructional design "game" for a few years.  In addition, this training is for a higher level employee than is my usual audience.  This crowd has potential to be quite a bit more critical.  I know that I was selected because of my background; this was the next step in "fostering personal mastery experiences," (Whetten & Cameron, 2016, p. 373).

I had the full confidence of the executive team.  I know that because the request came in as, "you can do this no problem, right?" followed by a bit of a smirk.  This was a great confidence booster to me.  It's nice to be trusted to the point where my leaders think they are making a joke when asking me if I have the necessary capabilities to complete a task.  That definitely provides some confidence.

Luckily, I wasn't going in blind.  A clear set of goals was created, including times and dates of training delivery.  The executive team was straightforward about why they wanted to provide the training for their senior managers and the issues that they hoped it would help address.  I also attended a two-day training intended to support people that, like me, were planning to bring the training back and share with others.

All the "prescriptions of empowerment" were there (Whetten & Cameron, 2016, p.372).  Now, development is completed and I'm looking forward to participating in the delivery of the training in March!

I think the element with the most for me was the confidence bestowed upon me.  I think if I don't have that confidence in one of my followers, then it is my job to provide the support, information, and resources they need to ensure that I can have that confidence in them.  Thinking in this way is crucial to follower growth.

References
Whetten, D. A. & Cameron, K. S. (2016). Developing management skills, 9^th ed. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Conflict Resolution

At our site, I manage a training lab for teaching our new production system.  The lab is real; we have saws and presses.  But the PVC airplane “parts” we make are not.  I am one of many instructors that help facilitate groups.  Our most popular training is Systematic Problem Solving (SPS, based on the Toyota 8-Step Problem Solving Process).  In this class, we break the group into sub-teams.  Each sub-team is assigned some work to produce our “parts,” trained on how to do the work to build at their station, and then we run several “shifts” and track our progress.  Based on the issues in the lab, sub-teams then perform problem solving on their own “work” (meaning the work they have been assigned in the lab).  It’s lots of fun!  And, as you can imagine, leads to lots of conflicts, of all varieties.  We see all types of personal differences, as do almost all team environments.  Informational deficiencies are common because of the different pace each individual learns the material they are immediately expected to apply.  And, my favorite, we induce a lot environmental stress into the situation by keeping very short and strict timelines for working through the problem solving process.  In most of these conflicts, my role as facilitator makes me moderator (less frequently as the teacher, I am also sometimes the judge).

One common conflict we see repeatedly is when trying to determine the root cause of an issue. In the SPS model, you pick the one, most impactful root cause and fix that first.  Often we find that the groups splinter into camps between two root causes.  When this happens, as coach, I have to step in to ensure the learning doesn’t stall.  My approach is always neutral and question based.  I start by reminding them that I don’t have the answer (although many of them think I have a secret book of all the solutions to all of the problems in the lab – I don’t).  Then, I ask them to review the problem that they have decided to work.  Sometimes, they recognize right away that one root cause ties directly to the problem and then they quickly determine on which root cause to focus.  Other times it takes a bit more digging.  I ask them if the root causes are both facts or if one is an assumptions.  I ask them if they’ve done any testing to determine which root cause really creates the problem.  In all cases, I guide the team into discussing the process and the facts.  And, I always, always inject humor.    In almost all cases, the conflict elements melt away.  In some cases, a team member may require a cooling off period.  I always allow them that personal space and ensure that the rest of the team is respectful of that need.  In addition, I have a pretty good list of appropriate (and inappropriate, if it gets really tense) jokes about root causes and all the recurring problems in the lab, so I know what works to break the tension.

I also ensure that they complete their problem solving.  Whatever level of participation, the entire team gets equal credit.  This usually provides a rallying point for even struggling teams.  The final step in the training is presenting the problem solving to leadership.  As expected, that “in the trenches” camaraderie building goes a long way in repairing damage from conflict.

In the end, the lab is fun and it’s not real life.  Therefore most conflicts, no matter how desperate they seem, are overcome by the end.  I think being more mindful of my role as mediator will help me to approach situations better with a theory-based plan of how to handle it.  To this point, I have relied on my intuition and experience.  While experience is good, it’s great when it has theory behind it.

What makes me feel good about work?

I know exactly why I am motivated at work – my work means something.

I took a contracting job with Boeing Portland Fabrication in 2010 as an instructional designer.  In early 2011, I was assigned to a project that, in one form or another, I have worked continuously since that time.  (In fact, it even led to my hiring as a permanent Boeing employee in 2014.)  This project is about transforming our manufacturing plant from the traditional production environment to a people-centered, improvement-focused culture.  This new system will capitalize on the passion and skills of our people to make their own work safer, better, and easier which generates profits for our business.  These profits, in turn, ensure long-term security for our people.  There’s not much more you can hope for from your work, right?

My role is primarily training and communications of the system.  It is my job to create vehicles for driving commitment to and knowledge of the new system.  How do I help people understand what is it for them, why the company would invest so much resource into this type of change, what the changes are and how to make them?  These are questions I must answer every day.  It’s exciting and challenging and important.  It helps that I love these “Legos” (meaning training and communication), of course.

In the end, I hope that we transition into and sustain this new culture, and that I can be a part of sustaining it.  We are at about 35% saturation.  So far, we have been able to create enough capacity to increase the work that we do here, and that means more security for employees.

What’s even more exciting?  This little project we started in a dark room at Boeing Portland is starting to impact all of Boeing Enterprise.  My training lab held classes for more than 700 Boeing employees last year.

Motivation is easy for me, even for the most Sisyphean of tasks relating to the work I do.  I know that in the end, I will have truly helped change the company for the better of the people.

Supportive Communication

“We are getting less than 40 hours of work from a large number of our K.C.-based EMPLOYEES. The parking lot is sparsely used at 8:00 A.M.; likewise at 5 P.M. As managers – you either do not know what your EMPLOYEES are doing, or you do not CARE. You have created expectations on the work effort that allowed this to happen inside Cerner, creating a very unhealthy environment. In either case, you have a problem and you will fix it or I will replace you. NEVER in my career have I allowed a team that worked for me to think they had a 40-hour job. I have allowed YOU to create a culture that is permitting this. NO LONGER.”

Wow! If I received the message above from my CEO, I'm not sure that is a CEO I would be working for much longer.  Of course, while I'm job hunting I'd need to stay with this company to pay the bills, and therefore I'd still have to work through this problem.  My approach follows...

As manager, my very first response would be to pull the team together and honestly communicate the CEO's concerns.  I would describe my plan to address the concerns clearly.  That plan would be to pull in each of my team members individually and have a conversation in which we discuss whether or not they are part of the group.  If they are I would want to discuss why they did not, cannot, or will not remain on site during their scheduled hours.  Finally, I would work with the team member to determine how best to make a behavior change going forward.

It would be important for me to assume the best of intentions in each of my team members prior to meeting with them.  There are thousands of good reasons why an employee might arrive late and leave early from a job site.  And, once a few people do it, it's easy to understand how a culture may spread that leads everyone to believe that it is okay to do something.

In each of the individual meetings, I would:

1. Reassure the team member that there would not be repercussions for past actions (there is an assumption from the message above that this is true), that the intention was to make change from this point forward.  However, I would also make it clear that once we had an alignment on expectations by the end of the discussion, penalties would apply in the future for non-adherence.
2. Remind the employee that as far as company policy allowed, the conversation would be confidential.
3. Describe the issue at hand in a descriptive, congruent, problem-oriented fashion (Whetten & Cameron, 2016).  I would say something like, "it has been brought to my attention that several team members have been arriving after our standard 8am start time and leaving before our standard 5pm end time."
4. Ask the team member if they had arrived late or left early at any point.  During this time (and throughout the conversation) it would be important to watch for signs of defensiveness and disconfirmation (Whetten & Cameron, 2016).  Despite my best intentions, it is very likely that some team members will be offended at the very question.
5. Listen to the answer.
6. For employees that answer no, I take their word for it.  I coach that the expectations are for team members to be on site from 8am to 5pm, and that in the future there will be penalties for those that are not.
7. For employees that answer yes, I ask follow-up questions in a respectful way to try and determine why.  It would be important at this time to practice supportive listening and reflective responses (Whetten & Cameron, 2016).
8. After discussion, I would provide counseling on my expectations for future behavior, while monitoring again for signs of defensiveness and disconfirmation (Whetten & Cameron, 2016).

In the abstract, it is difficult to predict human behavior.  While it is likely that not all of these meetings will go smoothly, I will know that I have put my best foot forward for my team members.  At the end of the day, that is all that is within my control.

References
Whetton, D. A. & Cameron, K. S. (2016). Developing management skills, 9^th ed. Boston, MA: Pearson.