KaizenProof

Lesson 21 of 23 · 6 min read

Lead by asking: coaching questions for team leads

In Lean: the lead's role, coaching questions

Builds on: Many small experiments

In one minute

When someone brings a problem to their lead, the move that feels fastest is to hand them an answer. In Lean the lead's job is different: ask questions that help the person find the cause and design the next experiment themselves, then clear the obstacles they cannot clear alone. An answer from the lead fixes one problem; good questions build a team that fixes the next ones. Asking is not a test of the other person; the lead is learning too.

The idea

Why not just tell? The lead is rarely the expert on this step; the person doing it is. An answer from above is often slightly wrong for the real work, and the person who has to carry it out does not own it. Worse, each time the lead supplies the answer, the team learns to bring the next problem upwards instead of working on it.

Lead by asking (in Lean: coaching questions). A short set of questions, in the order of the loop, covers most conversations:

  1. What should be happening, and what is happening?
  2. What have you seen? Can you show me?
  3. What do you think causes it? How do you know?
  4. Which change will you test first, and what do you expect to see?
  5. When shall we look at what happened, together?
  6. What is in your way that I could help with?

How to ask.

  • One question at a time, building on the last answer, in the person's own words.
  • Open questions, not instructions in disguise. "Have you thought about adding a reminder?" is an instruction with a question mark on the end.
  • Curious, not testing. If you are sure you know the answer, stay open: the person may know something about the work that you do not.
  • Treat "I don't know" as a good answer, and follow it with "How could we find out?"
  • Avoid "Why didn't you...?" It asks for a defence, not a cause.

Clear what is in the way (in Lean: removing obstacles, the lead's role). Some things only a lead can do: agree a change with another team, get access or a tool setting changed, change a policy, protect time for the experiment, decide on a control. When the person names an obstacle like that, the lead takes it on and reports back. This is the half of the role most often forgotten, and the one that shows the questions were sincere.

When to tell. If there is a real legal, safety or financial risk, or a fact the person could not know, say it plainly. Then go back to asking.

Example

Illustrative example, not a real company.

A customer service agent tells her lead that customers keep getting conflicting delivery dates.

"What should customers hear, and what are they hearing?" She describes the two different dates. "Where does each one come from?" She is not sure. "How could we find out?" She offers to follow a few recent tickets from start to finish.

A week later she has an answer: agents read dates from two systems that update at different times of day. "Which change will you test first?" She suggests that for one week, agents use only the warehouse system for dates, and predicts that those tickets will not get conflicting answers. "When shall we look at it?" Friday. "What is in your way?" Most agents cannot see the warehouse system without access.

The lead arranges read access with the operations manager that same week. She never proposed the fix. She asked, listened, and cleared the one obstacle her team member could not clear alone.

Common mistakes

  • Questions with the answer built in. If you would be annoyed by any reply but one, it is an instruction.
  • Asking without clearing obstacles. Questions alone, with the blockers left in place, feel like a test.
  • Taking over once it gets interesting. The person who owns the friction runs the experiment.

Words to know

  • Lead by asking (in Lean: coaching questions): helping someone find the cause and design the experiment themselves.
  • Clear what is in the way (in Lean: removing obstacles, the lead's role): doing what only the lead can, so the owner can carry on.

Check your understanding

3 questions. Answer them all, then check. You can try again as often as you like; nothing about your attempts is kept.

Question 1 of 3A team member tells you that invoices keep arriving without purchase order numbers. Which of these is a coaching question?
Question 2 of 3Which of these are part of a lead's role in Kaizen? Select all that apply.

Choose all that apply.

Question 3 of 3Put these coaching questions in the order a conversation usually takes.

Put the steps in order, first at the top. Use the Up and Down buttons.

  1. Position 1: Which change will you test first, and what do you expect to see?
  2. Position 2: What do you think causes it, and how do you know?
  3. Position 3: What should be happening, and what is happening?
  4. Position 4: When shall we look at what happened, together?

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Try it on your own work

Describe one recurring task that wastes your time, and see these ideas applied to it.

Report a friction (opens in a new tab)

Where this comes from

Developing people through questions, and seeing the leader's job as supporting the people who do the work, are long-standing themes of Lean management that grew from the Toyota Production System.