Accountability for Frontline Supervisors: Understanding Emotions to Improve Behavior and Team Performance with Sara Westbrook #57

Welcome to Manufacturing Greatness with Trevor Blondeel, where we work with organizations to manufacture greatness by leveraging resources you already have to achieve greater retention, productivity, and profits. To learn more, visit www.manufacturinggreatness.com and click here to subscribe to Trevor’s monthly newsletter.

Now, let’s jump in!

Is it really okay to lose it sometimes, or are we just making excuses?

In this episode, Sara Westrook joins the podcast to talk manufacturing leadership, emotional intelligence, and accountability for Operations Managers, Production Managers, Manufacturing Managers, and Shift Supervisors.

We go deep on owning your behavior, building communication skills, and treating emotions as a leadership skill. Sara shares practical strategies to shift mindset, strengthen self awareness, and show up with authenticity so you can improve trust, engagement, and performance on the shop floor.

1:45 – Leave your emotions at the door like a backpack, NO they are still coming in with you, so how do you move with and through them in a healthy way

3:02 – Do not want to make an emotionally based decision, can lead to regret

4:15 – Allowed to sit with that emotion, not going from emotion to choice, allow it to have room, move with and through, and have your own character based choice, bounce back and move forward

6:13 - emotional awareness, emotional management, and ultimately emotional resilience 

8:00 – teams want to be emotionally intelligent, yet they do not know how, like going to the gym, how do you build those muscles?  Not by watching videos, by putting things into action, habits 

10:57 – first exercise has the end in mind, what's the circumstance, or what are circumstances that you feel hold you back or really trigger you, and what emotion comes out of you 

13:08-learn to think and act beyond emotion to honour that the emotions there, but to start to use the emotion as information and even motivation 

16:08-how we engage other people matters, the art of communication and that takes being very emotionally aware 

19:15-why are emotions sometimes hard to talk about, you could have one group of people say well they're hard to talk about because I feel like i'll be seen as weak and another because of being seen as dramatic 

20:13-self care starts to take a big plummet it also can decrease company morale you know just keep shoving emotions down pretending they're not their 

20:30-breaking down the boxes, shifting a greater role for women in manufacturing 

24:12-when you can start to see emotions is information your brain now knows that oh it's something that I can do something with it doesn't completely have to overwhelm me 

26:40-sometimes you have to lean into that discomfort

27:05-doesn't mean you're an anxious person, it means you're a person that's experiencing the emotion of anxious and that's uncomfortable and awkward but it's part of the journey 

28:48-emotions are a reason for a behaviour, not an excuse 

30:00-Sara’s company 3E Emotional Development  is about really honing in skills on emotional awareness, emotional management and emotional resilience

Connect with her here;

Instagram: @iamsarawestbrook

Twitter: twitter.com/SaraWestbrook

LinkedIN: www.linkedin.com/in/sarawestbrook

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3Asvqps