With 300 Green Belts trained but business results not delivered as targeted, Agilent Technologies, Inc. needed to understand the root causes and develop methods to raise their Six Sigma Green Belts up the ladder of development. Agilent has an excellent training programme for Six Sigma Belts with effective tools for instruction and learning assessment. However, the quality advocates believed a more highly developed programme of proactive coaching was necessary for Green Belts to achieve a higher level of maturity, improve the contribution to the business, and to attain industry recognised certification. A Six Sigma Project was instituted with two goals; (1) develop a measureable process with associated methods and tools to coach Green Belts to the desired level of cognitive and affective maturity; and (2) improve that process using Six Sigma methodology to reduce variation in the quality and effectiveness of the coaching process. This article discusses the four-step coaching process developed by Agilent. It describes the goals associated with Agilent's expectations of its Green Belts on the cognitive and affective rungs of the ladder of development. It reports the project's results and what was learned during the journey with regard to the key relationships for Green Belt development. Lastly, it proposes recommendations for further development of Green Belt coaching and improved business results

Volume 21

Numbers 9-10