Although information is readily available about applying team-building techniques to Six Sigma projects, there’s not much about how learning styles affect the success of Six Sigma teams. Knowing that the “people side” of an otherwise technical and statistical-based methodology is important to a team’s success, we analyzed Six Sigma team dynamics and performance through personal perspectives, interpretations, applicable literature, and team-building techniques. Here we summarize what we’d do differently in future team assignments as a result of what we learned.

We are concerned that formal training of Black and Green Belt professionals doesn’t thoroughly address the importance of team theory and facilitation (often called “soft skills”) to  the define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) methodology. After leading Six Sigma teams for decades, we reflected on the teams’ and our own performance as Black Belt team leaders in the spirit of continuous improvement. We focused on the dynamics and performance of project teams from a Fortune 200 company.

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