Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast Ask A Plant Manager: Leadership insights on coaching, reliability culture, and overcoming maintenance challenges
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Aug 7, 2025 Joe Kuhn, a former plant manager and president of Lean Driven Reliability LLC, shares invaluable insights on fostering a positive work culture in manufacturing. He discusses how leadership should focus on support rather than blame when navigating crises. Joe emphasizes the importance of cultivating teamwork and trust, underscoring key qualities that make effective coworkers. Listeners will discover how to transform maintenance challenges into learning opportunities while enhancing communication and collaboration among teams.
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Learning from Mistakes as Manager
- Joe Kuhn shared how he once mismanaged a maintenance tech's error by resorting to discipline prematurely.
- Reflecting, he learned to first assume good intentions and leverage mistakes as growth moments.
Turn Failure into Learning
- Instead of disciplining immediately, engage the individual to learn from the failure and share lessons with the team.
- Assign equipment ownership to empower learning and advance reliability culture.
Avoid Discipline to Empower Decisions
- Avoid disciplining as it causes technicians to hesitate and seek excessive approvals.
- Foster confidence so decisions can be made quickly and responsibility embraced.