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Communication + Confidence for Manufacturing Managers: Speaking Up Clearly to Build Credibility and Stronger Team Alignment with Tracy Hooper #75

Release Date: 10/05/2022

Why Perception Isn’t Reality with Shawn Herbig | Plant Leadership | Ep. 197

As a young engineer on the Ford Explorer line, Shawn Herbig chased a strange complaint. Drivers said their radios were changing stations on their own. Dealers swapped the units, and every one passed the bench test. The cause: in cold-weather states, drivers wearing thick winter gloves were hitting two of the small buttons at once. Nothing was wrong with the radio, and to the customer, it was still broken. That moment started a career. Shawn founded IQS Research more than 25 years ago and his team runs the Kentucky Association of Manufacturers Wage and Workforce Study. He and Trevor get into...

Nobody Quits Over Onboarding | Manufacturing Employee Retention | Ep. 196

An HR professional in manufacturing told Trevor her onboarding program is strong for ninety days, and then it starts to dip. Her instinct was to extend it. The research says something else. Once somebody is past three months, lack of onboarding is the last reason they leave. Toxic culture, unsafe conditions and feeling disrespected are at the top of that list. And on the stay side, job stability and competitive pay are almost tied, with a cluster right behind them worth nearly a third of first place answers: feeling valued by your manager, a positive team culture, and clarity of expectations....

Your Best People Are Burning Out on Work They’re Good At | Frontline Leadership with Greg Harrod Ep. 195

Greg Harrod noticed something strange partway through a career leading cross-functional teams in manufacturing. He was getting more and more of the work he was best at, and enjoying it less and less. That is not a workload problem. It is a sorting problem. We hand out work based on two things. Is this person good at it, and are they available. We almost never ask whether the work gives them energy or takes it away. So the most dependable person on the floor gets handed more of what they are dependable at, and nobody notices what it costs until they quit. Greg is a business coach, a Certified...

Your Veterans Want Clarity More Than Your New Hires Do | Frontline Leadership | Ep. 194

Walk into most plants and you’ll hear the same thing. The new, younger people need everything spelled out. The veterans just go do it. New research says that’s backwards. Seventy-six percent of Gen Z expect clear expectations of their performance and responsibilities. Among Boomers it’s 98 percent, and it climbs through every generation in between. The longer someone has worked, the more certain they are that clarity is the leader’s job. Trevor’s take is that the quieter half of that finding is the one to worry about. The veteran who isn’t clear will push back and ask. The new...

Silence Is Not Agreement | Psychological Safety and Manufacturing Team Leadership with Dr. Sunita Sah | Ep. 193

Dr. Sunita Sah asked nurses in a large hospital what stopped them from speaking up about medical errors. They gave her two answers. They were afraid of the repercussions, and they had learned that speaking up changed nothing. Then she asked their managers the same question. The managers did not name fear or effectiveness. They said the nurses were not taking responsibility, and did not have the skill set. Same floor, two completely different stories. That gap is why near misses go unreported in your plant. Sunita is a physician turned organizational psychologist, a professor at Cornell, and...

It Was Due Thursday and It’s Still Sitting There | Manufacturing Accountability | Ep. 192

You walk in Friday morning and the material is still sitting in quarantine. It was supposed to be relabeled and moved out Thursday, and you need that space today because corporate is walking the floor tomorrow. What happens in the next ten seconds decides the whole conversation. Trevor takes one real scenario from a manufacturing leader he was working with and runs it through all three gaps. How you show up, because how people feel determines how much they can engage with you. Whether Thursday was ever an agreement or just a date somebody said out loud. And what a real accountability...

Be Curious Rather Than Furious | Manufacturing Team Leadership and Culture with Karin Lindner | Ep. 191

Karin Lindner has spent fourteen years trying to make manufacturing attractive to the people who work in it, and she says it is still not there. Her new book, Making Manufacturing Sexy, argues that most manufacturing leaders are not leading. They are surviving, stuck in a system that rewards firefighting. Karin and Trevor both worked at Magna. In this conversation they get into what actually changes a plant, and it is not the equipment. Karin shares the coaching tagline she uses with every client, be curious rather than furious, and the story of a general manager who described himself as...

You Cannot Recruit Your Way Out of This │ Manufacturing Recruiting │ Ep. 190

What if the reason nobody applies has nothing to do with what you pay? In new research across the United States and Canada, concerns about physical safety ranked as the number one barrier to even considering a job in manufacturing. Pay came in fourth. Trevor assumed that was a perception problem, an old black-and-white picture nobody had bothered to correct. So he went looking for proof, and could not find any. The people closest to the industry name safety right alongside everybody else. What he found instead was a gap inside the plant. Employees named physical safety at forty percent....

Why Nobody Pulls the Cord with Dr. Michael Gillespie │ Leadership Decision Making │ Ep. 189

When was the last time somebody stopped your line and you thanked them for it? Toyota built the andon cord into the line decades ago and most plants still treat pulling it as a failure. Dr. Michael Gillespie, organizational psychologist at the University of South Florida and co-author of Distancing with David Marquet, studies why the person closest to a problem is often the least able to see it. Being locked inside your own point of view is the default setting, not an occasional lapse, which is how five people can walk up to one stopped line and each honestly see a different problem. Nobody is...

Nobody Inspects the Culture │ Safety Culture │ Ep. 188

You inspect for hazards every single day. When did anybody last inspect the culture? In new research across the United States and Canada, a toxic or unhealthy work culture ranked above unsafe or hazardous working conditions as a reason people would leave a new manufacturing job inside the first three months. Forty-seven percent against forty-three. Most leaders hear that and file it under the soft stuff. Trevor takes a different position. Four points apart is not two problems, it is one. Culture is a safety system. A plant where people do not speak up is a plant where near misses go...

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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!

In this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, Tracy Hooper — founder of The Confidence Project and author of The Now Hello — joins the conversation to share practical tools for Operations Managers, Production Managers, Manufacturing Managers, and Shift Supervisors who want to communicate with clarity and lead with confidence.

Tracy breaks down simple, real-world strategies — from eye contact to starting and ending conversations on the floor — that strengthen leadership presence, improve communication skills, and build trust with your team. We also talk about how confidence directly impacts culture, engagement, and how leaders show up during everyday interactions on the shop floor.

1:36 – Confidence isn’t something you’re born with. It can be learned from practicing and taking action

3:15 – Complimenting someone is a great way to kickstart a positive conversation—but make sure it’s an authentic compliment

6:00 – “How” and “what” are great magic words for starting a open-ended conversation with confidence, but avoid starting with “why” because it can make others feel defensive

9:00 – If you’re always talking and never listening, you’ll never really learn anything

10:06 – Use the three-sentence rule - saying three sentences, then pausing to let the other person speak or respond

11:15 – Pay attention to body language, too!

15:00 – Even introverted leaders can become confident speakers, especially if they practice first with people they respect and trust

16:30 – To speak with confidence, you always have to learn how to let others speak

17:20 – When giving difficult feedback, “I” statements can help you have a productive conversation without making the other person feel defensive

19:30 – There is power in being brief

23:00 – If you only have a few minutes for a conversation, be a timeframe and be direct by asking to-the-point questions

29:00 – Always look the other person in the eyes when having a conversation to make them feel valued and acknowledged

Connect with Tracy Hooper

The Confidence Project

Buy The Now Hello

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