What Does Leader as a Teacher Really Mean?

By Al Norval (bio)

Peter Drucker had a very useful definition of the role of Leaders saying that it was to:

• Deliver business results
• Build capability
• Reinforce the values of the organization

The first one is obvious (to most) but how to deliver business results? The answer leads to the next bullet; leaders achieve business results by building the capability of their people so they can build capable processes. The last bullet is a restriction on how leaders achieve business results saying that results won’t be achieved by doing things which are inconsistent with the values of the organization.

In summary, leaders need to build the capability of their people in order to achieve the desired results.

How do leaders actually do this?

The easiest and most common way is to send people to training classes. This may be easy but often people have no idea why they are in training class and even worse have no idea on how to apply the learning after they get back. After a week or two, people retain little of the training and their behavior hasn’t changed at all.

How should leaders build the capability of their team?

By acting in the role of “Leader as a Teacher”. That means using the Socratic approach and asking questions, giving team members problems to work on, and most importantly giving team member’s time to work on these problems. My colleague, Pascal Dennis, has written several excellent blogs on the Socratic approach so I won’t dwell on it here. It’s the next steps of practice and time to practice that really make the difference. Assigning practice problems that involve a repetition of already attained skills, and don’t stretch a team members skill level will do nothing to further build their capability. All that happens is a reinforcement of current skill levels. Assigning problems that stretch team members but occasionally lead to failure results in great learning. Leaders need to be conscious of this as they assign problems but also need to give team members time to complete the problems and learn from their failures along the way. Capability is built over time and building the capability of an organization takes a true long term commitment.

It’s not practice that makes perfect, rather its deliberate practice that stretches people combined with time to practice and learn from failure under that guidance of a leader/ coach that makes perfect.

Cheersl

Al


In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

PDCA - the Pounding Heart Muscle of Life
Want to Make Better Decisions? Simplify…
How do Adults Learn?
Back to Basics – Visual Management

Lean Leadership Excuse #3

By Al Norval

I work with leaders in many organizations that are making the transformation from a traditional way of thinking to Lean Thinking. Some are doing very well and some struggle with this transformation. In previous posts I’ve described a couple of the excuses I hear coming from Leaders about why they can’t make the transformation to Lean Thinking and Lean Leadership and truly lead their organizations to become the best they can be to deliver exceptional value to their customers.

Some of these excuses I’ve talked about in previous posts include:

“I don’t have time” and

“It’s so hard”

Today I’m going to talk about another excuse I hear more than I’d like to, which is:

“It’s easier just to tell people what to do”

This excuse goes right back to our Mental Model of Leader as a Teacher. In a traditional hierarchy with traditional thinking, the leader was the boss who often saw his role as telling people what to do. In a Lean environment, the Leader is a teacher who uses Socratic questioning to build the capability of the team. This is best done at Gemba by using real problems encountered by the team. By building the capability of the team, the team grows and is better able to solve problems in the future. The more capable people are, the more problems they can solve to root cause, the more time they free up for leaders to coach and mentor their team. It’s a very different skill set but one that starts a benevolent cycle of teaching, learning, and improving.

Leaders acting as teachers build the capability of the team but this takes time. Thus the dilemma – If I just tell people what to do, it’s easier and takes less time but people don’t learn, grow and develop their thinking. They learn to go to the boss and in extreme cases learn to do nothing until the boss tells them what to do. Since they keep coming to the boss asking what to do, there isn’t time to build the capability of the team.

So, I hear the excuse – It’s just easier to tell people what to do. Get it done, get it over with and just move on. Short term thinking with short term gains but no foundation for the future. Lean is a journey to True North with our people pulling us into the future. For our people to do that, leaders need to invest in building people’s capability one step at a time. It’s long term thinking with respect for people at its core and it’s not easy.

But just because something is easy, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. That’s why it’s called Leadership, the ability to do the right things not just the easy things.

For more on Lean Mental Models, please see Lean Brain Boosters.

Cheers