How do we get better at what we do? How do we get great?

We all enter the workforce and begin the journey of our professional advancement. The ability to learn new things, assess new situations, and keep the advancement moving through the learning curve is easy at first. In the short-term we can see ourselves developing and moving forward – we have momentum. But after time, for most of us, this improvement and this advancement speed levels out. We start to ask ourselves why and how did this happen. This "make your way on your own" learning model I am describing is inherently wrong. This model stops most of us from reaching our goals. We don't recognize the issues that are standing in our way or if we do, we don't necessarily know how to fix them. It is this slowing or even worse the stopping of advancement that enters us into a cycle. A cycle where we question ourselves and our abilities. We may even lose our commitment to self-development. What is being described here is a breakdown in our development process and most importantly a lack of support through this journey. What I am explaining is also being seen, felt, and perhaps transitioned behaviorally to the teams we lead (it’s exponential and contagious). 

How do we break this cycle and beat our only competition – ourselves? First off, we need to reaffirm our commitment to self-development. Secondly, we need to introduce the support that is required in doing so – a coach. Ask yourself these questions, what makes us different than sports teams and why do they use coaches? Sports coaches act as our external eyes and ears, providing a more accurate picture of our reality. They recognize the fundamentals and they break our actions down and then help us build them back up again. They hold us accountable and they provide us the support we need to advance to become great - this sounds quite transferable to business. 

The Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels (DLLAL) program aims to re-introduce us to this commitment to self-development via its Leadership Development Model (LDM). The LDM consists of 4 elements including; (1) Commitment to Self-Development, (2) Coach and Develop Others, (3) Support Daily Kaizen, and (4) Create Vision and Align Goals. Through our coaching, we measure, and ultimately develop leaders around this model, shifting the focus back to understanding the most important step – leadership commitment to their development. 

DLLAL is developed around the Shingo prize winning book Developing Lean Leaders at All Levels: A Practical Guide, written by Jeffrey K. Liker with George Trachilis and published by Lean Leadership Institute. The coach-led program contains a 2-phase learning system which entails an in-depth discussion of Lean values and mindset, building to problem solving, its intrinsic connection to performance measurement and standardization, and then layering each of them to form a platform for the Leadership Development Model at the core of the program.

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