Aftermarket: Leadership Skills for Aircraft Maintenance Managers

It is much easier working on airplanes than managing the people who do the maintenance. Managing aircraft mechanics is a tough job and few people can do it well. The job is stressful but important and life-saving work. In examining the tough job of managing aircraft maintainers, Joe Farcht has come up with 12 techniques to manage more effectively, and identified a punch list of more than 30 items to guide supervisory skill development.

Managing aircraft mechanics and projects is a very exacting and demanding job. Every few minutes there can be questions, changes in aircraft priorities, approval seeking for unexpected work, customers wanting an update, sign-off on urgent paperwork, reports for the boss, tracking and managing labor hours, ensuring safety and training to meet FAA standards. It’s a rat race. And seldom does a manager go home with a feeling of really accomplishing something important. Stressful is a kind word for the working environment that a maintenance manager must endure. Liability associated with a mistake is huge!

I’ve flown F-4 Phantoms for 20 years, own and fly a Comanche 250, and have helped mechanics and IAs in all my aircraft annuals. I also helped totally gut the plane from the firewall to the tail and replace everything. For more than 13 years I’ve successfully worked with hundreds of managers and supervisors in developing more effective leadership skills. Airplanes and leadership are the loves of my life; oh OK, I love my wife too.

How can you better manage all the competing demands that you experience? How can you feel good about being on top of your work at the end of the day? Here are 12 productivity enhancing techniques that, if mastered, can help you manage your work more effectively.

1. Know Your High Payoff Activities: Determine your six or seven most important high payoff activities (HPAs). Those are the activities that you are being paid to do. Track how much time you are spending in those activities each day. Manage your activities to spend 70 to 80 percent of your time in HPAs. Many managers don’t know their HPAs and find themselves doing tasks that have little or no value.

2. Schedule Times Daily to Handle Issues and Problems: Establish multiple daily blocks of time where you handle the routine work, issues and problems that are not urgent. Educate all who interact with you to make a written list of non-urgent HPAs or low payoff activities. In turn, you make written lists of items you need to communicate with each of your subordinates. During these blocks of time, walk the maintenance floor and mutually share lists. Respect their time by not interrupting them outside these scheduled periods.

3. Educate People About Emergencies: Outside the time periods scheduled in item two, educate everyone that if there is an HPA that is urgent, it is considered an emergency and anyone can interrupt you at any time with an emergency. Make sure that each interruption meets the HPA and urgent criteria before dealing with any issues or problems.

4. Protect Time to do the Important Work: Schedule blocks of uninterrupted time to work on the important work that you need to accomplish. Remember, you trained people to interrupt you in the past. You now need to train them to respect your HPA time.

5. Take Some Time for Self-Development: If you don’t get smarter about how you manage and work, then you can’t improve the workplace and help the people who work for you. Spend time learning new tricks and techniques for managing people and the work for which you are responsible.

6. Coach and Teach People: Identify the best people who might replace you and coach and train them to do your job. Delegate, develop, and engage them in doing the work that you already know how to do. A manager who can train up a replacement is much more valuable than a person who can only manage. The manager is then freed up for promotion!

7. Root Cause Problem Solving: At the end of the day ask yourself, "What problem did I spend the most time and effort solving?" Then ask yourself, "What was the root cause of that problem?" Finally, find and implement a solution to that root cause that will permanently prevent that problem from happening again.

8. Become a Proactive Manager: Don’t let yourself get into the "do loop" where you are reacting to everything. In other words — doing, managing results, and then communicating for help. The proactive manager is setting goals and planning, communicating those goals and plans, managing results, and last if necessary, turning the wrench to finish the job!

9. Get to Know Those Who Work for You: If you don’t know each employee spouse’s or children’s name, their hobbies, their personal goals, work aspirations, what motivates them, and their personal challenges, then you have some serious work to do. Take a personal interest and help them to realize their work and life aspirations.

10. Appreciate and Recognize People: Focus on the positive work contributions that your people are making. Every day you can be appreciating or recognizing each person for the good work they do. There has got to be some motivation for people to work for you. Appreciation and recognition are excellent motivational tools.

11. Establish Stretch Goals: Ensure that each person can contribute to stretch goals that are motivational. Have them measure the daily progress toward those goals. Goals can be set for quality, reduced waste, efficient use of labor hours, accuracy of paperwork, and a number of other factors affecting the safe operation and profitability of the business.

12. Communication: Have daily short meetings at the start of the day to establish the work schedule and expectations. Communicate not only the work scheduled, but also the company vision, values, purpose, mission, and the expectations of each employee. Cover current business initiatives and progress. Let them know how your maintenance department is doing in relation to goals. Include anything else that can contribute to creating a positive work environment.

Being a supervisor of people is a serious job. Being the best at that work is critical to the success of your company and the long-term success that you enjoy. Become a master of these activities, behaviors, and attitudes and just see where you go in your work, career and life.

How many years did it take to get you where you are today? What do you need to learn to become the awesome manager and supervisor that I’ve described? If you practice one or two techniques or actions daily to improve your management or supervisory skills, then in a short time you will experience huge improvements in how you work. Make no daily effort and languish in mediocrity. It is always your choice. Your future is in your own hands. Choose to start using the 12 productivity techniques and the manager’s punch list today!

Tips for Improving Your Skills as a Manager/Supervisor

In addition to the list of 12 productivity techniques, I’d like to share some thoughts that will help you become the awesome manager/supervisor that you are capable of becoming. Here are some items to guide your supervisory skill development. As a supervisor, I would...

• Have a goal to become the best supervisor in my company.

• Read and study 30 minutes each day to improve myself and my supervisory skills.

• Become an expert at personal leadership.

• Select someone to succeed me and actively develop them for my position.

• Be an enthusiastic and passionate personal and corporate leader.

• Become an expert at interviewing and hiring people.

• Learn about personality to value differences and build better relationships.

• Learn how to coach people in becoming more effective and productive.

• Provide five times more positive recognition than negative feedback.

• Take regular actions to encourage and develop teamwork and feelings of importance and belonging.

• Model accountability in all my behaviors and actions.

• Risk more and ask for forgiveness more often.

• Tune up my work skills each year to maintain high effectiveness and productivity.

• Ask for feedback about my own performance and take actions to improve it.

• Seek win-win solutions to every problem or issue I face.

• Set business goals with employees that result in pride of achievement.

• Give people opportunities to learn and grow through delegation.

• Talk about the company’s and my department’s vision regularly.

• Set and communicate clear work related expectations frequently.

• Teach people how to become master problem solvers.

• Model a balanced approach to work and life.

• See every person as possessing unlimited potential and greatness.

• Take time to personally know all about the people who work for me.

• Know all the goals of my employees and help them achieve them.

• Send a personalize card or note on special occasions like birthdays.

• Show appreciation (sometimes written) to every employee every day.

• Catch people doing the right things and praise them.

• Regularly find ways of making work fun.

• Use the company values to guide my work behaviors and attitudes (and my employee’s).

• Meet with each employee weekly with a helping attitude to review their accomplishments and review their prioritized work plan for the next week.

• Hold a 15-minute book study each week to encourage the development of people.

• Visit a hospitalized spouse or child and send get well cards for other health challenges.

• Meet quarterly to dialogue about the progress made toward development goals. Encourage people in taking weekly and monthly actions to achieve those goals.

• Never forget that my success is a direct result of the success of the people who work for me.

Sounds a little bit like a punch list for completing an annual for an airplane, doesn’t it? Well, it is a punch list for becoming a better manager/supervisor!