Lesson five, listening to each other and solving problems together. Alright, so let's continue with the observable behaviors that you want to see in a culture of mutual respect of team respect for each other. So some more suggestions about things that you might observe team members listening to each other's ideas, and disagreeing with each other without getting into an argument. So let's cover these two together. So how do you influence members of your team to listen to each other, disagree non violently and find solutions together. So first of all, take onboard all we've discussed so far in this module, set the example roll out a problem solving method, train and coach that method and train People in listening skills.

So I'm going to look at each one of these now in more detail. So I don't need to say a lot about this slide, other than to remind you of everything we've covered so far. So go back on that, think about what we've done, take onboard, all that we've discussed, from having the right attitude to people's motives, to charity, to greeting each other, to feeding back on the way that our team talk to each other, to creating a team feeling and understanding each other and their personalities. Take all of that on board, because that's a way that you'll help people to have those conversations where they are able to disagree without being disagreeable. Okay, so I'm not apologizing again for saying set the example if you want your team members to listen to each other, to disagree non violently which means listening to each other. opinion on ideas and taking someone on board and putting forward alternative ideas.

If you want that to happen, you need to set the example as the supervisor as the team leader as the manager. So how good a listener are you? So do you have nice big ears that are really listening to your team? set the example be a good listener. So there are three types of listening, peripheral listening, attentive listening, and active listening. Let's have a look at what they are.

So the first type we'll look at is peripheral listening. And peripheral listening is when you're not really listening to the individual properly. They're just kind of a voice somewhere inside your head, but you're not really listening to what they're saying. You're probably thinking something else as they're talking. Like, I wonder what I'm going to have for my meal. Tonight.

Now that is often evidenced by poor eye contact, so they're not really looking at you or they're not looking at the individual they're supposed to be listening to. They might be distracted, maybe looking at their phone or looking at something else. And they're not engaged, you can tell by their body language. The second type of listening is attentive listening, which is definitely better. Where you get good eye contact, you have affirming body language. So often when you're attentively listening, you might be gently nodding your head to show that you understand or you agree, your eye contact is good.

But it's possible you may still not be truly engaged because in your mind, you're still thinking, I wonder what I'm gonna have for my meal tonight. So the best way to listen is to do something called active listening. And that's when you demonstrate good eye contact. You have a therming body language We said the nodding and so on, but you're truly engaged. And that means you are asking questions. That's interesting.

Tell me a bit more about that. This would be active listening. So active listening is definitely the way to go. And you can set the example by being an active listener yourself. So part of my job is to speak to lots of managers, and I can tell you lots of them are not active listeners, they are peripheral listeners. So demonstrate good listening skills.

If you've got those good listening skills, train your team in that you could use a professional trainer or you could do the training yourself in some sort of workshop. Either way, train people don't assume they know how to listen. What else can we do to influence members of your team to listen to each other, disagree non violently and fight solutions together. So one of the best things you can do is to introduce a problem solving method or two, and train and coach that problem solving method out so everybody knows how to use it. And that has the effect of everybody being able to understand the process for problem solving, understanding what the issues are, without it feeling like it's a witch hunt. It's how we're going to find to blame for this.

That's not what we want. We want to find solutions. will introduce you to this is the pro Peck simple improvement process is the process I use when I'm working on continuous improvement projects. And it's a very, very simple process for problem solving. Now, it's actually just an extended version of what you might be familiar with and it's called the Deming cycle. It's known as plan do check act.

If you look carefully, you can see that the plum bit is down there where you are Fight actions and plan they do best is when you implement the check bit is when you review. And then you've got the act bit, which is all of that. So it's really a variant on plan, do check out for a bit more information bit more detail. It's a very simple method of problem solving. So let's see how you might use it. So the first thing that you do as a manager is you tell your team, this is the process.

We start with understanding why we need to improve. We do the current state analysis, we identify the goal or objective that we're trying to achieve. We identify actions and we plan we implement and then we review. This is the process particularly important for this whole question of understanding what's happened and problem solving is the current state analysis. The purpose of that stage is to find out what's happened and what's happening. What does the data say?

What's the root cause? At this point, we want to avoid opinions and prejudices. It's really just about data gathering, what's happened? What are the root causes? So in order to do that you need to observe, you need to measure and you need to report and then you need to do some root cause analysis. So what's the root cause of why that has just happened?

If a bunch of facts tell you that you're underperforming, they're the facts. There's no good arguing about it. That's what the facts say. What's the root cause of that gets to Okay, why is that happening? And the two tools that I'm going to share with you on this now I've used these on multiple courses. So if you've been on any of our courses before, if you've looked at any call to change stuff in some of the other modules, then you may well have come across a five wire Fishbone.

So these are root cause analysis tools often used in lean. So let's start with five. Why? It's a root cause analysis tool. You ask why? Or what was the reason five times and that generally gets you to the root of the problem.

Now sometimes it will be slightly less than five. Sometimes it might be more but the principle is that five is normally the amount of times you need to ask why. So let's have a look at an example. Why did we fail to deliver on time to our customer? That was your first why answer. We missed the dispatch deadline.

Why did we miss the dispatch deadline? Second why we had a problem picking the item Why? Did we have a picking problem? Answer, Bob couldn't find it. Why could Bob not find the item? The system had not been updated.

So there we go. We've got four why's and our final. Why is why was the system not updated. And so we're not updating the system at two o'clock in the morning like we should be. That's the cause. So actually, although the end result was we missed the dispatch deadline, it wasn't really about our delivery, or it wasn't about that it was about this updating the system at two o'clock in the morning.

That's what we need to deal with. But if we use a tool like that, then we're able to do that without all the emotion so it's not about trying to find somebody to blame. So let's work on this together. Okay, so what happened? Okay, so why did that happen? What was the reason for that?

What was the reason for that? What was the reason for that? Okay, now we've got a solution. So training people in the use of that sort of tool very, very useful. Alternatively, fishbone diagram is another way that you can identify root causes, generally speaking, you have the effect that you don't want at the end. So that could be again, we fail to meet the dispatch times for this time, instead of just asking why you're looking at different possible components of or elements that cause the thing to happen.

So the standard labels our equipment, people, methods and materials, but you can have any labels you want. Greater draw that on a big piece of paper or a whiteboard. And together you can work on the root causes. Now if you see people working on that together, discussing, doing root cause analysis, finding out reasons and then coming up with solutions that eliminates all of this. He said, she said, and I think is this Well, I think it's that sort of pointless conversation that you sometimes get in the workplace. So if you remember, we were looking at how you influence members of your team to listen to each other, disagree non violently and find solutions together.

So one of the key ways to do that is to roll out or train out a problem solving method, something like the pro pack method or even plan, do check act, and then train in some of those problem solving or root cause analysis tools like five why or the fishbone diagram. So my tip is to use these tools and processes to take the emotion out of problem solving. Be like my hero, Mr. Spock there, Leonard Nimoy who his approach to problem solving was not to get emotional it was to look at the facts, look at the data, and together identify what the solutions would be. So you're looking to understand find root causes, find solutions, not looking for somebody to blame