Coaching and Reflection
Summary – Why Coaching Reflection Matters
The final act of problem solving is not closing a report — it is coaching the learning that comes afterward.
Reflection becomes real when someone takes responsibility for helping others see, connect, and improve.
In Toyota, this was never a side activity. And I still think it is deeply misunderstood. It was part of the company’s design.
From shop-floor leaders to senior executives, everyone had a role in turning experience into structured knowledge.
That is what makes Toyota’s reflection process so powerful: it is PDCA at every scale — a continuous loop of learning from action, checking results, and adapting the system. In this summary article I will reflect on the three domains I observed.
The Three Domains of Reflection Coaching
Effective reflection coaching in Toyota operated in three interconnected domains, which together embody the full PDCA cycle across the organization.
Each domain reflects a different way of learning — local, cross-functional, and organizational — but all share the same rhythm of inquiry and improvement.
1. Reflection at the Gemba – Coaching Local Learning
The first domain is the gemba, where the problem actually occurred.
Here, the leader's role is to help the team think. They guide people through a structured reflection cycle — describing what happened, analyzing why, drawing lessons, and planning next steps.
They may model something like the Gibbs Reflective Cycle or the Check–Act portion of PDCA.
Good facilitation keeps reflection factual, specific, and human.
The coach does not criticize; they clarify.
Their value lies in transforming an event into insight, ensuring learning is built into the next activity.
This is coaching PDCA at the team level — reflection as personal and process development.
2. Reflection Across Functions – Coaching Connectivity
The second domain I observed at Toyota is cross-functional, led by managers and coordinators who make sure learning doesn’t stop at the point of discovery.
They connect departments, align standards, and promote horizontal yokoten — sharing of learning between groups.
Here, coaching means asking: Has anyone else seen this pattern? How did this happen from an organizational point of view? Who do we need to communicate this to upstream?
It is reflection turned into coordination — linking the “Check” and "Act" in one area to the “Plan” in another.
This middle layer prevents every function from reinventing the same solution or failing to communicate.
This is coaching PDCA across processes and departments — reflection as organizational alignment.
3. Reflection as Organizational Design – Coaching the System Itself
The third domain I observed is the enterprise level — where reflection becomes organizational architecture.
This is the domain of senior leaders, exemplified by Eiji Toyoda in Toyota and many other great managers who were the early architects of Toyota’s management system.
Their coaching was not simply interpersonal; it was structural.
They built feedback loops that connected shop-floor experience to production-engineering design, manufacturing standards, and supplier development.
In this domain, reflection becomes PDCA for the company itself:
- Lessons from incidents flowed to Production Engineering for design review.
- From there, updates were made to MTS and TMS standards.
- Finally, findings reached machine-tool builders and OEMs, who redesigned equipment for the next generation.
This was reflection as systemic improvement — the highest expression of PDCA.
As General Manager Mitsuru Kawai once observed,
“The most impressive thing about Toyota is that we don’t just solve problems as individuals — we solve problems as an organization.”
This is the essence of reflection coaching at scale: connecting individual learning to corporate learning through design, not slogans.
How Coaching Differs Across the Domains
| Domain | Focus | Type of Coaching | PDCA Expression |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemba | Team learning and behavior | Facilitative Coaching – guiding people through reflection cycles | PDCA applied to daily work |
| Cross-Functional | Shared learning between departments | Integrative Coaching – ensuring reflection spreads horizontally | PDCA linking functions |
| Enterprise | Organizational design and standards | Strategic Coaching – embedding reflection into systems and supplier networks | PDCA at corporate scale |
Across these domains, the spirit is the same. The difference is scope, not philosophy.
At every level, coaching reflection means closing the loop — turning experience into new understanding, and understanding into better practice.
Reflection for Leaders
Questions for Hansei at the Leadership Level
- Do we have a defined mechanism for learning from major events across departments and suppliers?
- How far do lessons travel — from gemba to standards, or do they stop at the plant gate?
- When was the last time reflection led to a change in design, training, or specification?
- Are our meetings producing learning or simply reports?
- Are we coaching people to reflect, or building an organization that reflects naturally?
Closing Comment
Coaching reflection is more than facilitating a meeting — it is guiding a company to learn from itself.
From the gemba to the boardroom, Toyota’s secret has always been the same: PDCA as culture, not tool.
When reflection becomes systemic, improvement never ends.
This article concludes the 32-part series on problem solving, completing the journey through Toyota’s eight-step process — from defining problems to sharing learning, and ultimately, to teaching an organization how to learn.