Improve Your Reliability Teaching Skills

podcast episode

As a reliability professional, you will be asked to teach. You are part teacher, coach, mentor, and expert. Being effective enhances the understanding of reliability objectives and methods to achieve them. Let’s explore becoming an amazing teacher.

Teaching is not limited to a formal classroom setting. You may find yourself explaining reliability concepts, the failure mechanism’s nature, or HALT’s basic tenets in meetings or hallway discussions. You will provide information to your peers, staff, and management. You may be providing guidance or instruction daily.

Our ability to influence decisions that improve product or system reliability performance relies on our ability to build trust and provide valuable information. Conveying complex concepts or topics is not easy, even with someone’s full attention and desire to learn.

Recognizing when an opportunity to teach and using a suitable approach to improve the ability of the ‘student’ allows them to hear, internalize, and apply the concepts and procedures taught. Let’s explore various approaches to providing someone else with information or guidance. Understanding the range of teaching approaches allows you to fit the appropriate approach to the specific situation and your organization’s culture.

We will discuss common teaching opportunities we run across as a reliability professional and the common reasons we are prompted to provide teaching. We will focus on teaching approaches. Guided discovery, the Socratic method, just in time or next step, a common goal or enemy, and 3 types of consulting (trusted advisor, expert, or pair of hands) are just a few of many methods you can use in your teachable moment.

This Accendo Reliability webinar originally broadcast on 12 February 2019.