Maintenance maturity needs leaders, go and find them

Growing up the maturity of maintenance needs quantitative measures as KPIs to guide us. But there are some qualitative aspects that we need to foster. One of the very first qualitative aspects that we need to grow in our team is leadership. Moving forward is a change. Change not only needs management but it needs leaders to guide the teams. Instructions and processes can reach everyone. And, managers will schedule trainings to explain and prepare the team members for the new way of doing things. However, most of the people need an archetype to follow. An archetype is a role model performing in the new norm. Then the mass will start to follow.

Part of the foundation level of maintenance maturity was the People Pillar. We had clarified the importance of people and how they can mature in their performance as part of the maintenance maturation in this article: Which Maintenance Pillar will be the best for your next step? Part-II. However, naturally, people needs leaders to follow them. Leadership might not be an official hierarchy title, however some organization has in its organization the title of group leaders. This hierarchy position of a leader includes managerial and supervision duties. However the leadership archetype is a modal who sees and does things differently and the team is willing and eager to imitate them.

Why we needs Leaders?

Leadership is characterized by a one main feature which is foreseeing. Foreseeing is to be aware of beforehand; predict; anticipate. You can use different words to represent this unique feature like the broader vision or the helicopter vision. Chose whatever resonates with you. The one with this broader view is having a competitive advantage of better understanding a task and its linkage to other tasks, people and systems. He or she can foresee what will go the right way and what will not, what preparations are needed in advance . The leader has the end result clear to him so he doesn’t allow the task to take him out of the main route. He naturally guide himself back to the track that will end up in the achieving the goal that he is focused on. This foreseeing entrenches the team trust in him.

Leadership and Life

This leadership quality are great when you apply it to your life. Simply you take the lead of your targets, daily activities and, needs. You build clarity around them while watching your step and whether it is taking you there or not. Every path is having its own delights and stumbling but not all of them will take you to where you desired in the first place.

Those who are leaders of their life can lead a team and succeed. Why? Because leadership is more about understanding where you stand now and where you want to go next and which route will take you there.

Those missing this quality prefer just to do what is required as it is stated and keep doing it as it is. They enjoy being consumed by the doing.

Those leading naturally can be easily distinguished and noticed in any community. It starts from the childs playing together, you can easily notice the seeds of a leader within one of them. If it exists within more than one, that’s where fights starts and naturally the group is splatted to two. Each one is led by one of the natural leaders. In work place you can easily point out a team member with the potentiality of leadership. That’s why it is always nice to divide the team into groups and let the natural leaders appear.

How to spot and grow leaders?

1.Create possibilities

Sometimes you don’t manage to find your teams leaders easily. Then there is no escape from dividing them to groups and monitoring their performance. If you couldn’t reach them, then you have few more options.

Shuffle the groups and have another close look This time not only look for leadership seeds but also, look for whom resist to be led. Those resisting to be led will need a special treatment but that’s more the concern of a change management. Here were are only looking for the potential natural leader to make sure that our teams are properly organized. This step is crucial when you are building up your maintenance process or updating it. Those leaders will be the facilitators of the new maintenance system approach. They will execute the tasks of building the system correctly as they have the oversight and the foresight to do a task which doesn’t have a physical result right a way.

Group those resisting, claiming and blaming together for a short period to allow good seeds to sprout.

2. Provide support

While picking your leaders you might be challenged by some incompetence in the natural leaders. They might be under age, overage or lacking the technical experience as they are juniors or lacking the place experience as newly joined.

For those experienced but still younger than most of the team, always let them lead temporary tasks till the group approve of their leadership. For those who are overage and it appears in their limited physical ability, experience will makeover this part. Just make sure to support them with highly active and much younger team members. For who are junior but posses leader talents, invest in their training. They will be your future leaders. Same as the experienced but newly joining the team, you need to be patient and let them gain the place confidence by assigning them easy tasks as a start and gradually loading them.

Can we build leaders?

Yes but, if he or she are having the passion, enthusiasm and effort to provide. They need to invest some time and effort in learning them the skills of leadership. They need to know how to quickly reach a correct overview of any task or problem. You can create a system with defined steps of how to reach an overview and what you is needed at every situation. Check our available a training course in how to create this system

Who is entitled to lead is the best one who understands the mission then follows the steps not who follows blindly. Below leadership skills are needed for leaders and those whom we synthesize out of a potential candidate. Look for those skills in them, and polish their skills to achieve the best results.

Leaders’ soft skills:

• They are willing to deal with persons with differences. They are not attracted to fight with or judge them.
• Can find the best within every team member and what needs a support. They do this to help and not to criticize.
• Want to serve others rather than being served by others.
• They do not force the team to follow the instructions. They explain and ensure that the information is clear to whom need it.
• Commit only to what they can do
• They guide others and show them the way
• Willing and continuously seeking to know more and update themselves.

In Conclusion,

You can’t consider the maturity of the maintenance in the people’s pillar complete without preparing enough leaders. Moreover, you won’t be able to grow the maturity of maintenance in all other maintenance pillars that we are going to see in the coming weeks without well prepared leaders who will lead the change. As explained in this article, you can spot the potential leaders through their traits. Then, you support them to grow. Otherwise, if you can’t find enough natural leaders you can build some out of those who are willing to exert the effort and stretch themselves for an extra mile.