What do you do if your manufacturing team is struggling with leadership?

3 Foster collaboration and communication

Fostering collaboration and communication among team members and across other teams is the third step. Collaboration is a process of working together to achieve a common goal, while communication is a process of exchanging information, ideas, and feedback. To foster collaboration and communication, you should establish a clear and shared vision, mission, and values for your team. Additionally, define and communicate the roles, responsibilities, and interdependencies of your team members. Moreover, create a culture of trust, respect, and accountability by encouraging and facilitating teamwork, brainstorming, and problem-solving. Lastly, provide regular and transparent updates, reports, and feedback.

4 Develop leadership skills and culture

The fourth step is to develop leadership skills and culture within your team. Leadership skills are the abilities and behaviors that enable you to influence, inspire, and motivate others to achieve a common goal. Leadership culture is the set of norms, values, and practices that shape how leadership is exercised and perceived in your team. To do this, you can identify and nurture existing and emerging leaders, provide training and mentoring opportunities for development, delegate tasks, decisions, and authority to team members, model desired qualities and behaviors, as well as celebrate and reward leadership achievements and contributions.

5 Monitor and evaluate progress

The fifth step is to monitor and evaluate the progress of your team's leadership improvement. You can measure and track key performance indicators, such as the quality, quantity, and timeliness of output, customer satisfaction, employee engagement and retention, team cohesion and collaboration, and leadership competence and confidence. Additionally, you can use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to gather qualitative feedback from your team members and other stakeholders. By analyzing the data and feedback you receive, you can adjust your actions and strategies accordingly.

6 Seek external help if needed

The sixth and final step is to seek external help if needed. If your team's leadership challenges are too complex, deep-rooted, or urgent for you alone to handle, it may be beneficial to look for outside assistance from your senior management or human resources department, professional consultants or coaches, peer mentors or networks, or industry associations or experts. These external sources can provide you with new perspectives, knowledge, and resources to tackle your team's leadership issues and improve your team's performance and potential.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?