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William's Blog Engineers need Coaching
William's Blog Engineers need Coaching | Engineers need Coaching |
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Why do Engineers need Coaching more than ever in the 21st century? Urgent need to change our Management Style
Modern business requires that every part of any process, be it admin, accountancy, marketing or production must be “right first time, every time”. Solutions need to be found there and then, as there is no time, nor is there any real need, for every decision to be pushed up the management chain or on to someone else’s desk. Engineering is a prime example of why this is of paramount importance but the challenge is how to ensure that this happens. It’s ok for the big boys who have oodles of money to throw at it but what about the smaller companies fighting for survival in a hugely competitive world market. The answer is to change the management style and this article deals with some background information and how Coaching can help.
Everyone needs to really believe that they have they answer, if they will only be allowed to look for it and feel they are part of the solution. The problem is that a lot of management is still by the old style of telling, rather than collaborating and asking.
It appears to be more natural for us to tell/order someone “what to do” rather than ask “how would you do it”. It seems it’s a throwback to the old days of confrontation between unions and bosses and even possibly related to the dreaded class system. The strange thing is that the main area of improvement is where there are more ladies in management, because communication is their style, and long may it continue.
The problem has been that our education, from school, college, university and on the job is that we are so used to not only having the answer told to us, often by rote, that we live our lives by that system from then on. What we need to be taught is use everyone’s creativity, rather than cramming our orders, our ideas down other people’s throats. It is even worse for engineers because we have been trained to use the left-hand side, which is the side that is naturally structured, analytical side and thus the side that for engineers is the most developed.
The result is that engineers don’t get to use and develop the other side of the brain, which is recognised as the creative part, the right hand side. We weren’t allowed to use it a lot during our formative years, and this never changed later on in life. For example when have you been allowed to make whatever came into your head, experiment without someone being on your back looking at the clock, the cost, etc. If all of us had been able to do this every so often, use our own creativity, gaining feedback from the learning experience then the British ability to be good at developing ideas would not have withered on the vine. Ideas and products would have had continuous development because people would have felt free to not only have their own ideas of improvement but would not have felt scared to voice them.
What we have all forgotten is that people learn fastest, work best and feel more confident, when they feel involved, are in control of their destiny, able to achieve goals by being part of the solution. Not only all this but the creativity is kept bubbling all the time. This is where Coaching comes in, because it can start the process off. It requires collaboration, something that some find really difficult to practise, often due to their egos and image, but nevertheless people will need to change.
“it’s not the strongest that survives, it’s the one that is able to change according to circumstances”
Why therefore does Engineering need more of this Coaching Philosophy than maybe other activities? Engineering is multi cultural, multi lingual, global at the touch of a mouse. Just like everything else, and leaving aside delivery schedules and quality, lowest cost wins. The thing is that engineering creates the manufacturing ability and more and more is going abroad.
We need to keep what we have and develop it even more. New ideas, new ways to produce better quality, create step changes in our routines, leaps not just small steps. We have to harness the power of the collective mind. It needs to be coached out. Our minds really can’t be allowed to switch off at 5.30 and come back on at 8.30 the next morning. We need to sweat the assets twenty fours a day and companies “mind banks”, made up of every single person, and are a crucial part of the assets. The challenge is for everyone to not only recognise this but to participate in the sweating/coaching process. No more them and us, all of us in it together.
As mentioned above, we engineers have very developed left-hand side brains and we need to allow the right hand side to get involved. I mean I would never have thought or even tried to write an article like this a few years ago, let alone when I was up to my ears in gauges and castings. But times change and we need to change with them.
The creativity of our engineering heritage means that we’ve done it in the past and we can do it again now, but not alone. We did it in the past because it was new and we were creating and we need to get back to that.
Companies already stripped to the bone, need all the grey cells they can lay their hands on. Cost reduction has its limits, but there is no limit to good ideas. Ideas do not hang around like wallpaper, they have to be cajoled out, Coached into life often by using the brains and words of others to unlock our own.
Einstein said, “ Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create”.
The machines and equipment of the future rely on tomorrow’s knowledge, which is not known today. Nothing is ever created without imagination because this is where ideas and dreams come from.. get your companies growing today. Start the process now. Begin to think outside the box. Get the communication flowing up and down. Help coach your company to listen and ask. It will not happen overnight but rewards will come from some of the oddest places and at the strangest of times.
If you don’t know how to start the process, get a coach to help you, but one thing you do need is to start a “learn-on-the-run” Personal Development programme’ like the one I did. Over a period of time you pick up new skills and ideas from books, tapes and seminars. We have a list of recommended books and tapes on out website www.coachinginsight.co.uk that can purchased from any good bookshop.
©William Barron
Coaching Insight
January 9th 2000
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