A production manager is guiding a major change project in his engineering firm. But his boss’s indifference to his recommendations is making him falter
The Issue
Tom is a middle manager, part of a busy production team in an engineering environment. The production team has been charged with delivering a big change project to drive forward efficiency and drive out waste in its manufacturing facility. This is an important and strategic project for the company and is being closely analysed by the senior leadership team and board.
Tom is responsible for the smooth running of multiple production lines, reducing downtime to drive forward productivity and the quick handling of maintenance issues. He also liaises closely with the quality assurance team so that customer orders are delivered to the standard expected. Being on the front line he is in the perfect position to identify issues and propose solutions.
Every month he has to create a report and deliver a presentation to the senior leadership team, demonstrating how the change project is progressing and where efficiencies have been identified. However, his boss rarely gives him the opportunity to present the report and does not give Tom either the chance or the credit for new ideas on how to improve processes.
Tom is finding that his confidence is at an all-time low and equally that he is losing the will to drive forward the change project – ultimately affecting his promotion prospects in the team.
How might coaching help Tom?
The Interventions
Jacqui Hanbury
Strategy manager and coach Festo Training and Consulting
I’d ask of Tom, “If you were your manager – how would you judge your performance in these meetings?”
Together we’d explore how Tom’s lack of confidence in his presenting skills is causing his boss to not trust him and his colleagues to stop listening to him before he has made his point.
Because of his lack of confidence, Tom seems to have stopped preparing properly for the meeting. Thus when a question is asked of him, he doesn’t know the answer. We’d work on him putting himself in the position of his manager and colleagues, helping him to accept that it is in his power to change the way the meeting goes.
I’d ask him to think on the question, “If you were to start again with a clean sheet, knowing what you know now, how would you do things differently?”
Continuing along these lines I’d ask Tom how he could change his self-perception and his line manager’s perception of him in meetings. We’d explore how he could prepare better for presenting his reports, speaking to his boss beforehand and not being fearful of speaking up when his boss or colleagues talk over him.
One option might be to ask his manager for some training on presenting at his next meeting. He might still feel he would struggle to present any new ideas in the meeting as all his colleagues have been doing their jobs for a long time and his is a lone voice. So we’d explore where else he might present his new ideas, which could open up a new set of thoughts for Tom.
I’m confident that coaching would enable Tom to change perceptions, become empowered, identify ways to improve his performance, gain the trust of his boss and colleagues and handle his lack of confidence about public speaking.
Philip Jones
Director, Workplace Dynamics Ltd
Jean-Paul Sartre1 was famously reported to have said, “Hell is other people”. This may seem somewhat unduly harsh when applied to Tom’s boss, however is a useful reminder of the challenge of interacting with other people.
Tom has discovered a way of observing, analysing and reporting what happens in his world that has served him well. However it’s not working for his boss, who isn’t responding to Tom’s preferred methods.
This situation is causing Tom to reflect too disapprovingly on his own performance. To support Tom, I’d suggest the following structure.
I’d begin by encouraging Tom to think about what he’s pleased about in the way he’s gathered the information for his report and his general management of the project. I’d hope that by considering his skills in this matter he would have the chance to feel more confident about the value of the work he has done. We might also use this conversation to inspire Tom to think about how he might do this in a way that would be even more useful to his company and his boss.
I’d ask him to think about the ways he’s worked well with his line manager in the past: what has worked? Here I’d be looking for exceptions to the belief Tom has developed, such as he “rarely gives him the opportunity”. Here I’d be curious as to the times when Tom has successfully engaged his manager in Tom’s work.
Then I’d encourage him to think about how his line manager likes to receive information and help him to formulate a plan for delivering his report in a way that his manager prefers.
Another French philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas2, wrote of the necessity of helping others the way they best want to be helped, rather than the way that we want to help.
1 J-P Sartre, Huis Clos (No Exit), play, first performance, May 1944
2 E Levinas, Humanisme de l’autre homme (Humanism of the other man), Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1972