Being Useful

Written by Jason Haines

“Always help people increase their own self-esteem. Develop your skill in making people feel important. There is hardly a higher compliment you can pay an individual than help him be useful and to find satisfaction in his usefulness.” -Donald Laird

Start somewhere and learn from your mistakes. We have heard this many times and it still seems as if no one really understands what it means. Whether it is the leader or the frontline workers, we all have misinterpreted this statement. How can we help people at all levels understand that they are safe, able to start from somewhere, and learn from their mistakes? First, I want to let you know, it will not happen overnight because many people are not used to being given the freedom to work on their jobs without someone always controlling what they are doing. We first must show them that we as leaders want to allow them the freedom and must show the trust to them that we mean it.

This comes by working on ourselves first, finding and changing the things inside of us before we can make changes to others. Why must we make the proper changes to ourselves before changing others? Attitude reflects leadership; your followers will see what you do. When you have a nonchalant way of doing things your followers will model this, and so we must find a way to make changes in ourselves and. These changes will be for the better, this goes for leadership or Lean, because they will benefit not only yourself, but those around you as well. Because when we make these changes, people will be more apt to come to us and ask for our help. Making us more useful to the team and those around us.

When we become useful, we will find more efficient ways and have the time to learn from the people around us. In Lean, usefulness of the leadership is very key to it working out. Why do we need leadership to be useful in the implementation and sustainability of Lean? If there is no leadership participation in Lean, or in anything for that matter, many of the things we as leaders want to do will fail. Why is this? Because people need direction, they need to understand your vision and the idea that you have so they can get on board and be willing participants. This does not mean you need to be over their shoulders forcing them to do exactly what you want them to do, it means you must sell what you are wanting done, guide them in what you want done, and at the end of the day allow them the freedom to find what will work under the guideline of what you want. When we allow our employees and followers freedom to figure out what will work, they will find the best way to do the things that need to be done. When people see you giving this freedom, they will come to you with updates and status of the project plus ask for input from you to make sure they are on track.

Be useful, does not mean do the job for the people. Jesus did not do the job for the disciples he gave them guidance and allowed them to use the information to perform the job in the way they deemed best for the situation. As leaders we must do the same. In Lean we have many things that help us with guiding our people, but one of those big things is the use of the A3 and going to the Gemba. With the A3 and going to the Gemba, the leader has an idea and maybe an answer (do not use it), as to what is going on and will give the person working the project advice, teachings, and coaching but will not coax an answer. Why is this you may ask? As the person who is doing the mentoring, when you try do develop ?someone through thought, you are trying to build teams, and you are trying to help open communication by getting people to find the real root cause of problems. Helping people to think critically.

When we are not useful, we give people all the answers and lead through fear. Fear turns people into fighting against each other through competition because they are then only worried about two things: Getting ahead and saving one’s job. There is no cooperation amongst the group, and everyone is only out for themselves because they view the leader as only out for themselves. Being useless as a leader leaves all your followers in the dark by providing no direction or vision on where the organization is going. People want to have a direction and if their leaders have no direction all things turn to chaos and people do things out of fear to help themselves.

Through Lean I have found a toolbox that helps to guide me and allow me to concentrate on leading people while the tools help manage the process. Many times, people think of Lean just as a set of tools that are to be used but do not think about the bigger picture of how those tools help. I have heard many people tell me and others in the Lean industry that, “that is nice to know and guide Lean training, I am (insert Lean certification) as well and used to train within it ?but realized it wasn’t needed.” When I hear this, I usually know they do not really know much about Lean and the benefits it has for all leadership at all levels. Plus, the benefits to all employees and helping them grow to be leaders and ambassadors of the company, organization, or your family. Yes, all walks of life we must be useful and present.

Being useful also means being present. Because if we are not present and thinking of the next answer or thinking of something else, we are not that useful to the people around us. Plus, if we are thinking of the next answer, we will be useful in a negative way to where the person will always depend on us and not learn to think on their own. We want to teach the people who are in our stead how to think for themselves and make decisions about things to fix problems or come up with ideas. Think about it, how many times as a leader have you had to stop today to answer someone’s question on something they probably could have solved on their own? Is this because you have gotten mad in the past at them for being wrong? Is it a past manager? Maybe you should go and see, or think back to the past, and make the proper changes to allow your people to think and use you for guidance when needed.

Thinking of other things is a sign of busyness. Busyness has become a badge of honor, see my past writing on this, that so many people are busy out of fear they will be fired, ridiculed, or downgraded by those around them. We all fight busyness, and it sometimes is hard to control. But why are we busy on things that seem to not matter, and it distracts us from the stuff that should matter. Such as our family, our followers, and our friends. These people are all important to us and when we are busy, we are useless to them. They will turn to things, as I did, that do not really benefit them and are bad for them. So why don’t we stop and become useful to those around us. Whether it is family, friends, or others we need to be present and useful. You never know what you will learn!