How can Lean leadership skills help you manage conflict and build consensus in your team?

2 Why do Lean leadership skills help with conflict management?

Conflict is not always bad, and can in fact be a source of creativity, diversity, and improvement if managed constructively. However, it can lead to negative outcomes such as stress, distrust, and waste if left unresolved or handled poorly. Lean leadership skills can help manage conflict in a constructive way, such as focusing on the facts and root causes of the conflict instead of personalities or emotions, encouraging open and honest dialogue with active listening and empathic communication skills, seeking to understand different perspectives and interests of the parties involved with tools like the 5 Whys and the Interest Matrix, finding common ground and mutually beneficial solutions with tools like the Conflict Resolution Matrix and the Negotiation Matrix, and implementing/monitoring agreed actions with tools like the Action Plan and Check-In.

4 What are some common challenges and pitfalls of Lean leadership skills?

Lean leadership skills are not easy to master and require constant practice, reflection, and adaptation. Common challenges and pitfalls of Lean leadership skills include being too directive or too hands-off, too rigid or too flexible, too optimistic or too pessimistic, too isolated or too involved, and too passive or too aggressive - all of which involve a failure to balance the needs of guidance and empowerment, standardization and innovation, realism and inspiration, autonomy and collaboration, respect and assertiveness.

5 How can you develop and improve your Lean leadership skills?

Developing and improving Lean leadership skills is not something that comes naturally; it requires the right mindset, attitude, and actions. To do so, one can look to best practices and examples of other Lean leaders, both inside and outside the organization. Additionally, feedback and coaching from peers, managers, mentors, and coaches should be sought. Setting and reviewing personal and professional goals with the SMART and OKR frameworks is also beneficial. Self-reflection and self-assessment using SWOT or the Johari Window can help to further develop Lean leadership skills. Finally, continuous learning and improvement through tools such as the Personal A3 or Personal PDCA can help to ensure progress.