The Manufacturing Leader’s Guide to Building Confidence

When you walk onto the manufacturing floor in the morning, what happens? Are you type who loves to confidently strike up conversations with your team, or would you rather keep your head down and avoid conversations, especially when it comes to difficult topics like addressing an employee’s poor behavior?

If you’re the introverted type, you might think all hope is lost when it comes to building confidence. But confidence isn’t something you’re born with, according to confidence-focused coach—and recent Mindfulness Manufacturing guest—Tracy Hooper. In her podcast, Tracy highlights some great ways manufacturing leaders can improve their speaking skills, spark productive conversations, and approach every day as a confident leader.

Confidence Tip #1: The Power of Compliments

Starting conversations can be difficult, particularly if you’re talking to someone you don’t know very well. In situations like these, Tracy recommends kicking things off with a compliment. Authentic compliments that focus on behavior—like “great job getting those great results on line 3, second shift with no quality defects last week!”—are better than comments about the other person’s appearance, especially in situations where you don’t have a casual relationship with person you’re speaking to.

Confidence Tip #2: Find Your Magic Words

In his book Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact, author Phil Jones suggests “magic phrases” that manufacturing leaders can use to jumpstart great conversations. In her podcast, Tracy builds on this idea and adds some magic words of her own: “how” and “what.” By using questions like “how is that task coming along?” or “what are you working on this morning?” manufacturing leaders can easily start productive, open-ended conversations without making the other person feel defensive or criticized.

Confidence Tip #3: Learning Through Listening

As prolific interviewer Larry King once said, you can’t learn anything new when you’re always talking. This powerful quote also applies to manufacturing leaders, who can build confidence by listening to others. If you’re nervous about your own confidence, it can be all too easy to talk too much to cover it up. But by listening and allowing others to speak, you show your own confident and willingness to accept new ideas. If you’re someone who wants to grow your listening skills, Tracy’s tip is to practice the three-sentence rule. Say what you want to say in three concise sentences, then pause to let the other person speak.

Confidence Tip #4: Look Them in The Eyes

One of Tracy’s favorite confidence-building tips is also the simplest! When speaking to someone, don’t forget to make eye contact. This makes the other person feel valued and acknowledge, and will help you present yourself as a confident, engaged leader on the manufacturing floor.

Learn More on the Podcast

To learn more about Tracy Hooper and hear her other tips for building your confidence, check out her episode of the Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast!

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop floor. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website