Leader Feeder by Unique Training & Development

As a front line supervisor or manager, you might find yourself in this predicament: you’ve been told by the management team to take a certain message down to your team, but you disagree with it. You’re not buying in personally. How can you handle this? Ask for more clarification. Maybe you don’t understand the background of […]

Creating a Respectful and Inclusive Workforce Sexual harassment is a serious subject and if you’ve been anywhere near the news lately you’ve seen high profile figures, men of power, who have been accused of sexual harassment. What does this mean for you, as a leader, manager or supervisor in a manufacturing environment? You must take […]

Ingredients to Make a High Performance Team Think about some of the teams you either lead or belong to. Do some of those teams have a better feeling than other teams? Do the teams that feel better tend to perform better and generate better results? Most people say that teams tend to perform better when […]

Three Tips to Help You Avoid Micromanaging No one likes being micromanaged but many people report being micromanaged. So how do you, as a leader, ensure your team achieves the desired results without having to supervise every little detail? If you’ve ever gone on a road trip with young children, you’ve likely had them ask […]

Some people say the job of a front line leader is pretty easy — as long as you have all your team members report for work with the necessary skills, your machines, and equipment work properly, your raw materials are good and the production schedule is stable — it’s a piece of cake! Right? Most […]

Two of the most important ingredients in any relationship are trust and respect. When a leader loses the trust and respect of his or her workgroup, it will cause morale and attitude to decline and negatively impact your organization’s results. In his book The Speed of Trust, Stephen M. R. Covey defines trust as being […]

When leaders aren’t consistent with one another, it can have a negative impact on team morale, the company’s performance and on fellow leaders. The most frequent areas of inconsistency are the enforcement of company rules, policies and procedures and the way the leaders interact with their teams. Some supervisors tend to come across as heavy-handed […]

Getting your team to help solve problems together tends to yield better solutions and greater buy-in when it comes to implementing those solutions. In some of our leadership modules, we have used a survival simulation where leaders can experience, in real time, the pitfalls that impact the decisions teams make. There are two dynamics happening […]

Most good listeners work hard at listening. It might come easier for some people than others, but you can develop your listening skills. When you become a better listener, you’ll notice that your relationships improve, performance increases and your own ability to persuade and influence will grow stronger. Here are the top three things you can […]

It’s always present and mostly sitting in the background, it’s is the evidence that emotion significantly overrides logic. Employees often share situations where they felt disrespected or belittled and those situations impacted their ability to trust others. Some of those emotional injuries and scars were from personal experiences at home as a child and others […]

Having a flexible workgroup that can adapt to fluctuations in workload will make it easier for you to schedule and complete the work your team faces on a daily basis. Cross training also helps your employees feel more valuable because they can perform different job tasks. It also adds a challenge to what could be […]

Involving your employees helps accomplish a number of positive things, such as: Your team members will buy into change more easily when you ask them for input. Because many jobs can become boring or routine, asking for input can add some variety and challenge and that can help motivate your team. When your team is […]

A lot has been written about the differences in managing millennials. Here are some practical changes you can make as a leader, to manage the younger members of your workforce. First, remember that millennials are also known as generation Y. And Millennials are least likely to like being called a Millennial because there is so […]

The leaders in some industries thrive on sarcastic communication. Usually the reason for sarcasm is to lighten things up and inject some humor into a stressful situation. Sarcasm by definition, is when the tone and underlying message don’t match. Lesson learned: I remember back to my first supervisory assignment. My insecurity made me more sarcastic […]

In the Front Line Leadership training program we ask participants to think back over all the managers and supervisors they have worked for and tell us what percentage of all those leaders were effective leaders. The consensus is that for most people, half of their leaders have been effective and half were ineffective. So it’s […]

When you introduce change into your workgroup, it will inevitably cause conflict. There will be differences of opinion on the current situation, the future goal and the best method or path to go from where you are now to where you need to be. This type of conflict is healthy because it engages your team […]

Most leaders think that employees are only motivated by one thing: money. We can probably all agree that earning money is important in terms of paying bills and living a desired lifestyle. As a front line leader, if we think that employees are only motivated by money we’ll fail to recognize that there are a […]

Employees listen with their eyes more than their ears. They watch the example you set more than the words they hear you say. As a front line leader, it is important to walk the talk and practice what you preach. In theory, it is a simple concept — if you tell your employees that you expect them […]

Dr Ellen Langer, Harvard Psychology Professor, did an interesting experiment using lineups of students waiting to make photocopies in the Harvard University library. In round one of the experiment, she had one of her graduate students go up to the front of the line and ask, “Can I get in front of you to make […]

Very common in leadership training programs, is the recommendation for leaders to give more praise and positive feedback. It seems like common sense to be more positive, yet many managers and supervisors still focus on the negative. Here are a few reasons why we don’t offer more praise: We don’t get much praise ourselves. We […]

Are great leaders born or made? While having certain personality characteristics might make it easier to succeed as a leader, most leaders are made over time, based on their experiences, the training and coaching that they’ve received and through their own self awareness and self reflection. Getting feedback from others can help you be a […]

Of all the significant leadership characteristics and behaviors, one of the most important is curiosity. Take the example of a driver cutting off another driver in traffic. Most reactions would be one of anger or aggravation. A curious person might wonder what kind of day that person is having or wonder why they’re in such […]

More common than the aggressive employee is the less offensive, passive employee. Passive employees are usually easy to get along with but they still might not fully meet your expectations as a leader. A passive employee tries to avoid conflict by telling you what they think you want to hear by following the rules and […]

More and more, production facilities operate across multiple shifts. This requires good coordination to ensure a smooth transition from one shift to the next. Many companies will use written shift notes to communicate key highlights from the previous shift. The shift notes are inadequate for one major reason — most supervisors don’t spend much time sitting at […]

Most organizations have a hierarchy structure similar to the military with the general at the top and the soldiers at the bottom. More progressive organizations and their leaders turn the traditional organization upside down. Instead of the President or the CEO being at the top, that person goes at the bottom, supporting the organization above […]