I had the great fortune of working with a manufacturing team recently to talk about team health and strategy. Both of these facets of a team are incredibly important. As people get to know, trust and respect each other more, they are better able to do the heavy lifting of putting issues on the table in the service of the betterment of the team, department and overall company. Workers with boots on the ground, doing the everyday tasks can feel disconnected sometimes to the overall mission and vision of their company because they just see what is in front of them. They are ‘in the weeds’ and not necessarily ‘seeing the forest’. In my work I seek to connect people to each other, to efficiencies, to connecting their roles to a purpose.
As we explored what it means to be a good teammate, guys started to chime in and give shape to a definition. A good teammate is humble, open to learning, able to ask questions and ask for help, have fun and humor together, pick up where each other leaves off and just tacitly, implicitly know how to pitch in to help the overall cause or goals for the day. It was awesome to see grown men in greasy Carhart jeans describe this ideal and have an earnest desire to embody it. They don’t always exemplify these traits, but that’s the journey. Sometimes people get into funky moods for whatever reason, personal or professional. This is normal. Being supportive of others in down moods was another characteristic that came up. Additionally, the team just let go of an employee who was being overly negative for an extended period of time. They know what they stand for and use this as a standard. They realize that attitude is far more important as technical aptitude on the job.
We also talked about issues and goals, two sides of the same coin. Issues are normal, and abound in most relationships. My job as a coach is to smoke these out by making it a safe space to do so. If people can’t trust that their truths will be met with openness and a desire to work them out, they will stay silent, or hold back the totality of what they want to express. We came up with some really pressing issues that they are faced with currently: workflow, communication, efficiency and training issues. In my estimation, issues are opportunities for growth, and as we put them out there together, we can solve them together. Amazing. People are wise and it’s my contention that we are more wise together, what I call collective wisdom. We talked about two of those issues, namely training new guys, and a particular workflow issue. It was awesome to talk through why they are issues and move to figuring out how to solve them. It was beautiful to see the creative responses that ensued. For training we came up with shadowing other people, being mindful of training opportunities, giving a plan each day for training, and sticky notes on various machines. Now they will go and try these tactics, and then I will follow up and see how it goes.
I haven’t been with this team for about 7 months during COVID and it was great to reconnect. My mission is always to uphold focusing on what we can effect, defining it, talking it through and finding actions to solve it. It’s a really good process that works over and over again because as humans we are always working on something. Most humans I work with as well are committed to learning, evolving and growing. Nobody really wants a bad work environment.