Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/734166
October 2016 • SMT Magazine 17 KYZEN ON LEADERSHIP AND TEAMWORK Forsythe: Teamwork is a big deal. That's kind of where the company's leadership comes in, which is not a person but a group. Certainly, any company has lots of people that are in a leadership role, including ours. It's understand- ing those mutual goals. It's not about an indi- vidual contributor. It's about a group effort and how we achieve this group goal. We have lots of projects where there are peo- ple all over the world working on things to fig- ure out the answer or come up with an answer for the customer. There's probably more where it's just a local thing. We live in a very global world, but every problem is not global. Most of life is local, and it's true here too. It's a balance. That's where that sharing of knowledge comes in. Maybe somebody somewhere knows the an- swer but the local person doesn't. Making sure there's connectivity there and openness where somebody can be open that they don't have an answer and say, "Hey, does somebody else know this?" That's about the environment. That's having a growing and learning environment that peo- ple are okay asking those questions and the cul- ture around the company. They know they're not going to get "Why didn't you know that?" That openness to ask questions and reminding them to ask questions is pretty important, par- ticularly when you have the old guys wander- ing around that seem to know all the answers. It's like, "He'll think I'm stupid because he knows the answer and I don't know the an- swer." The reality is, why would you know the answer? You've never encountered it before. It's not something you just figure out. How could you possibly know? You could make a good guess, but why guess when you could know? Ask somebody and you get to know. Knowing is more fun. That's a key part of it, and millennials are in the same boat. We were the same boat when we were their age. We're in a hurry, we're eager and old people are dumb and all this. Every now and then, they know a few things. Every now and then, they prevent an error or they can save an error that got made. That's the balance. It's having that give and take and that sharing of knowledge. Let's face it. The organization wins if the young people do learn it faster because they'll have more people that know. That's better for them, better for the company and better for ev- erybody. Las Marias: Definitely. Now let's talk about train- ing. What is the role of a leader when it comes to training and updating the training or knowledge of the team? Forsythe: In this world that we live in, most people think of training as technical training. "How does the gizmo work? You got this love- ly little recorder device, well how does it work? How do you turn it on? Oh, okay, that wasn't very hard." But if we left you to figure it out on your own, maybe it would take longer. There's that technical nuts and bolts kind of stuff. A lot of leadership is learned by watching other people do it. Everyone has their own styles. Some people are loud and beat drums. Other people are more quiet. I don't think one's any better than the other on average, but the key is understanding what works for you and what works for your team. Some teams, even if loud is your favorite technique, in some crowds that just doesn't work. Leaders have to evolve their technique a little bit with their teams and recognize what they have there and let people grow but also keep them on track. While there are ways to train leadership in the business environment, it's difficult. It's more of the journeyman approach where peo- ple tend to get put in charge of projects where there are one or two people involved and they " Leaders have to evolve their technique a little bit with their teams and recognize what they have there and let people grow but also keep them on track. "