Maintenance & Reliability News - Maintenance Journal

4
AMMJ
July 2013
1. Watch their feet
This principle has stuck with me over time because
it makes so much sense. What it means is to watch
and see if leaders do what they say. We’ve heard
many versions of this principle but it’s important to
remember because people will do what they “see”
their leaders doing. If craftspeople see their leaders
cutting corners, taking shortcuts and allowing
procedures to be ignored, they will too.
People are watching what we do.
2. Even managers should do some real
work once in a while
People want to work for leaders who they know will do
the work required to earn the respect of the team they
are leading. As a leader, never let it be said that we
ask our team to do things that we won’t do, to develop
skills that we won’t develop, to get certifications that
we won’t work to get, to spend endless hours in the
plant while we’re at home, or to work with broken
processes and systems that we’d never put up with.
It’s good practice for leaders to spend time on the
floor, at times run a crew and experience firsthand
what it is like to perform maintenance work.
People will follow leaders who work to
earn their respect.
3. Look at who’s working for him/her
That is, the quality of a leader can be seen in those
people he/she surrounds themselves with. This is
one of my favorite principles as it has proven true
more than once over my career. Effective leaders
are always on the lookout for good people. The best
leaders want the brightest people on their team. They
aren’t challenged by smart, talented people. They
want people on their team that push him/her to work
hard to stay ahead of them. An interesting result of
following this principle is that our potential is often
determined by the team we surround ourselves with.
You are who you surround yourself with.
4. Let them do their job
How many times have you heard employees
say, “I just do what they tell me.” This is
a learned trait that almost always comes
from poor leadership. Typically what these
employees are really thinking but not saying
is, “If they’d just get out of the way and let
me do my job, I could make them a lot of
money.” It is our job as leaders to prepare,
train, teach and mentor our teams to do the
job that’s asked of them. And when they
are ready, we need to let them, and expect
them, to do their jobs.
A leader has to know when to
give up control.
5. Now that’s a guy you
want to work for
This is an interesting principle that
I’ve come to see as a combination
of things. First, have you ever
noticed that the best leaders often
work for other really good leaders?
Maxwell says that strong leaders
naturally follow stronger leaders
and I think that’s true. But perhaps
more importantly, I’ve noticed that
it’s often not the project people want
to work on but rather the person,
the project leader, which people
want to work for.
The leader often has a vision for
what he/she wants to accomplish.
The team wants to work for the
leader first, then the vision.
People follow the leader first,
then the vision.
6. If you want them to follow you,
you’ve got to show up every day
When I heard my dad say this it was often followed closely by other
sayings like “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and “hard work covers up
a lot of mistakes.” My family didn’t have super smart genes, but
we did have plenty of hardworking genes, so I got the point of this
one pretty quickly. Our credibility as leaders doesn’t come with a
diploma. It comes through hard work and that hard work builds up
credibility over time, one situation at a time.
So when we make a mistake (and we’ll make plenty of them) the
ability to say “I was wrong” or “I’m sorry” can leverage the hard
work we’ve done over time.
Leading people is really hard work.
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