Leaders’ Actions Speak But Their Talk Matters in a Lean/CI Culture

Presented By:

David Verble

Many organizations are investing in lean continuous improvement programs, systems and staff.  Frequently there are critical pieces missing in these initiatives, however. One key piece is defining a new role for managers asked to lead in a continuous improvement culture.  Another is helping managers develop the skills and habits needed to be effective leaders in the new environment. Employees have to believe they are safe in pointing out problems, allowed to offer their ideas for solutions and improvements, and respected as capable of the thinking required for problem solving responsibility.

Most lean/CI programs do not offer managers and leaders help in recognizing that the ways they have always been rewarded for thinking and acting do not serve the new business priority of employee engagement in problem solving responsibility. And managers are seldom supported in changing to more supportive and effective behaviors.

The aim of this session is to offer way lean/CI leaders, coordinators, coaches and consultants can begin to fill that gap.  If CI coordinators and coaches model four new behaviors and engage leaders in experimenting with them the impact on engagement can be remarkable.  Hopefully when line managers and senior leaders see a difference in employee openness and energy, they will be “pulled” to work on developing these behaviors into habits that become automatic when talking to employees about issues in the work.

Learning Objectives

In this workshop participants will be introduced to the four skills below. They will take part in three exercises requiring the skills to recognize whether they are a natural part of the way they talk to and coach employees and other problem solvers.

  • Asking questions they don’t think they already know the answer to
  • Listening to the person and his or her ideas and concerns not just the problem
  • Acknowledging they heard and what they heard (nothing does more to show respect)
  • Asking what about they are hearing, not about what they think needs to be done

The intent of this session is to help participants first become aware of their own habits and then use that knowledge and the skills introduced to help leaders they support begin to recognize and change their habits.  Participants will be given PDFs of the three exercises to experiment with on their own and a related article to share in their work.

Facilitator Bio:

David Verble, has been a performance improvement consultant and coach since 2000. Prior to that, he worked for North American Toyota for fourteen years, first as an internal change agent and later as the Manager of Human Resource Development. He has been on the workshop faculty of the Lean Enterprise Institute for twelve years and has done presentations and workshops to support a number of the LEI affiliates in the Lean Global Network. His training and experience have focused on process management and improvement, leadership development, coaching, building PDCA problem solving skills, strategy deployment and support of cultural change for lean. David has worked with clients in manufacturing, healthcare, finance, and higher education in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.  David is a founding partner in the Lean Transformation Group (LTG).)  LTG uses value stream mapping as a tool to help clients learn the problem solving and leadership skills needed to improve their processes and increase performance of their businesses.  David is co-author with his LTG partners of two facilitator guides for leading value stream performance improvement projects, Mapping to See and Perfecting Patients Journeys.