Fostering a Mentorship Culture

By the time I had accepted the full time role facilitating the behavior-based safety process locally, I had become one of the most effective in the facility at conducting the observations involved and providing the necessary feedback to my peers. I had also developed a reasonable level of competence in delivering the training, be that with new folks coming into the process or building on what existing observers had initially learned. Sometimes, though, being good at doing something doesn’t automatically translate into being able to teach someone else to do it. In fact, that was exactly why Cindy and I initially created our Emerging Leader Development course (although we use it for far more than that today). The patience I experienced from Kevin and Terry wasn’t always something I passed along to everyone else.

I’m somewhat ashamed to admit it but for the first few months after taking responsibility for the behavior-based safety process, I failed miserably in displaying patience with a few of the members of the steering committee who were volunteering their support. By that time, I had been reading and listening to everything I could get my hands on from John Maxwell for more than a year. I remember hearing John tell a story early on about how he expected everyone on his team to not just come to him with problems, but to be prepared with at least three solutions to any problem they brought up. Before I share how poorly I implemented that idea, please know that he provided quite a bit more context. I’ve always been a bit intense so I only latched onto a small part of his message.

Our steering committee met bi-weekly, typically on Thursday afternoons just before shift change to minimize the impact on the hourly team members’ schedule. A second shift steering committee member showed up at one of the meetings visibly frustrated and said, “I’ve got a problem.” I proceeded to channel the best version of John Maxwell I was capable of at the time and responded by compassionately saying, “Any idiot can point out a problem. I don’t want to hear about it unless you have ideas for how we can solve it.” As you can imagine, the rest of the group needed to pick their chins off the table. Rather than diffusing that team member’s frustration, I had added to it. The good news was that they were no longer mad at the initial issue; the bad news was that they were now even madder at me…

We worked through the agenda of the meeting with a lingering tension in the room. Afterward, Terry took advantage of a mentoring opportunity by explaining that while I may have been attempting to fix someone’s dog, my message could have easily lost a customer (he just didn’t say it quite like that). I immediately circled back with the second shift committee member to apologize directly. I also apologized to the entire committee at the beginning of our next meeting. Thankfully, instances like that were few and far between. With guidance from Terry, Kevin, and Rod, I gradually got better at sharing even the toughest messages. 

By the time I was traveling heavily, it became absolutely crucial for me to be able to pass those lessons on to the team members who were willing to help me out; that’s where I first saw the importance of and the value from fostering a mentorship culture. Since the handful steering committee members who agreed to help with various tasks while I traveled to other plants, all them being great at their regular jobs but having very little experience in what they were doing for me initially, the first hurdle was getting each of them spun up on the how-to’s each the tasks they were taking on and to help them develop a clear picture of the goal I needed them to achieve. I had jumped into most of those things feet-first and figured them out as I went; you’re stunned, I’m sure… I certainly made mistakes along the way but those served as examples of what not to do again. In mentoring each of those team members, I had to keep in mind that they didn’t have the same experiences coming in so I couldn’t expect them to immediately perform the same way I performed. Assuming you remember how much of a challenge patience is for me, you can imagine the amount of energy this required. Over time, and with a lot of grace from each of those steering team members and support from Terry, Kevin, and Rod, they all became very effective in the respective tasks they had taken on. 

While they weren’t necessarily doing things exactly as I had, they were getting the results we needed - and in some cases even better than I had on my own. (We may just pull a lesson from that later on, too.) Further, having a team of folks engaging in developing each aspect of our process quickly built momentum that I never could have by trying to do everything myself - even if I had been in the building every day. Those relationships within that mentorship-focused team drove results and a level of influence (read: leadership) with everyone around us that went beyond any individual effort. That mentorship culture elevated the leadership ability and effectiveness across the whole team and it helped each of us grow through one another’s success. We’ll dig into that more next time.