Leading—the way

When Manufacturing Systems Engineering Team Leader Sam Juniper completed his masters degree in aerospace engineering his mum gave him a beautiful orange stone. He tells the story to illustrate how his own quiet love of hard science has always been a little out of place in a family of extroverts.

As a team leader, I am ‘doing’ and ‘managing’. I am very comfortable with the engineering, of course. But as a technically-minded person the leadership part of the job feels more art than science

Now, as a new manager in a technical discipline, he finds himself negotiating similar ground. “As a team leader, I am doing and managing. I am very comfortable with the engineering, of course. But as a technically-minded person the leadership part of the job feels more art than science. The Leader Standard Work model doesn’t spoon-feed you but it does give you a nice support structure for developing your soft skills for the ‘people’ parts of the job.”

Leader Standard Work helps make the business more robust and flexible because it separates the role from the person. But there are big benefits for individuals too, especially if they find themselves in unfamiliar or high-pressure situations, as new managers often do. One such came for Juniper earlier this year. He was working long hours and weekends managing a team of experienced Meggitt electrical contractors relocating test equipment to the new factory. “The Leader Standard Work approach definitely helped me to not just manage the team but lead it,” he says.

The migration was performed in two phases and the first was not a great success: “We did a lot of work in a very short time but the end result was messy. Lots of little timing issues meant that, even with most of the job done, no single piece of kit was ready to be tested and commissioned.”

Leader Standard Work methods helped Juniper reflect on the shortcomings of the first phase. “I put a lot of effort into thinking about what the team needed to know and how I was going to communicate it. I developed a much cleaner communication style which got the key messages across—what needed to be moved, and when, to optimise the recommissioning. And I was much more mindful in the second phase of using praise and recognition to keep spirits up. The regular Fish and Chip suppers didn’t do any harm either.”

Phase two went much more smoothly. Juniper wrote to the contractor thanking everyone involved for the quality of their work during all those late nights and weekends. If he had ever been in any doubt about the power of a simple thank you, the response he received said it all. “They told me it was the first time they’d ever been thanked.” ■

Above: Sam Juniper: From managing to mindfully leading with Leader Standard Work.