Who better to drive development—either informal or formal—than managers of learners? Not only do they possess a wealth of experience, but they can also place it in the proper, shared context for the learner. When the leader is a teacher, learners don't experience the frustration of returning to the job only to find out that their managers don't even know or demonstrate the skills they just learned. Through feedback and reinforcement, leaders of learners are integral in helping the skills ‘stick' once they're back on the floor. If managers do not support, reinforce, or model the skills themselves, why would you expect their direct reports to improve?
Equip managers to manage interactions: Effective leaders apply the Interactions Essentials framework for satisfying the two critical components of effective interactions: the practical and personal needs of the participating parties. This standardised approach includes the Interaction Guidelines—the five steps that target the practical needs of participants by guiding the structure of the conversation. These steps—Open, Clarify, Develop, Agree, and Close—form a process that progresses from the beginning of the interaction, through the engagement of participants, to the resolution.
Personal needs, meanwhile, are met through the application of a set of Key Principles. The Key Principles guide how participants interact with one another during the conversation and focus on fostering esteem, empathy, involvement, sharing, and support. Meeting personal needs addresses one of the foundational elements of lean: respect for employees. And, the consistent and effective application of the Key Principles builds trust—another fundamental element of successful lean operation.
Managers can learn how to utilise these principles to ensure positive interactions, Two additional process elements— checking for understanding and making procedural suggestions—help keep an interaction going and ensure the discussion achieves its set objectives. Through the use of the Interaction Essentials, interactions such as giving performance feedback, seeking suggestions, or setting performance goals can be standardised, and the waste generated by missing a step or violating the Key Principles can be eliminated.
For example, if managers skip the ‘open' step (and fail to explain the purpose and importance of the discussion), the conversation has no context. Likewise, if they don't ‘clarify' essential background information, the interaction can derail because all involved are not on the same page. DDI research shows that a whopping 85 percent of frontline leaders don't clarify before moving on to discuss an issue.
Also, when leaders fail to seek and listen to employees' input, they cannot effectively ‘develop' a course of action. They miss getting great ideas from others and can fail to identify the root cause of the problem. An alarming 94 percent of frontline leaders rely more on their own ideas, instead of involving the people closest to the work—their employees.
Finally, when leaders skip over the ‘agree' and ‘close' parts of the process and fail to review the WHOs, WHATs, and WHENs of next steps, there can be no commitment and, consequently, no action. Just think about all the meetings you've walked out of, unsure of what was decided and what action items were assigned to whom.
Amongst the four factors of production namely Men, Machine, Money & Material only the first one offer a meaningful competitive advantage as access to machine (technology), Money (Capital) & Material (Suppliers) is now a given. The future will belong to organisations who invest in nurturing this critical factor.
Amogh Deshmukh, Managing Director, DDI India
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