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[Music] Hey welcome back everyone to the cancel for maintenance podcast. If this is your first time joining us, we're a show that takes a behind-the-scenes look into the gritty, non-glamorous life of aircraft maintenance. We share some laughs and part some wisdom, all in hopes of giving you that split seconds relief in your day that can hopefully prevent mishaps. I am your co-host six, I'm MVP, and our third host Mr. Shoreline is silently in the back monitoring our audio, making sure our faces stay fit for radio. Today we actually we're back again and we have a guest today. He is a aviation test engineering manager. Wow, I don't trip to myself saying that he's the test engineering manager. He has a various experience in avionics, a lot of Air Force related stuff, a lot of a lot of things that test to make sure other things work, if that's the best way of really putting it lightly. It's pretty good. He's a well-rounded aerospace individual. I mean coming from the flight line everybody has to be well-rounded. We all help each other. This is true. However, I think I took well-rounded a little too literal and it became physical. Like I'm physically well-rounded. I mean I've been physically well-rounded since I retired from the Air Force. Please welcome Rod. Hi Rod. Hi. Long time no nothing Rod. I know right. It's been a minute. And so not to shamelessly plug your other endeavors. Rod here is also having a leadership course for all those who want to expand their leadership capability, discover their full potential, realize they have potential, and then pass it on to others. So for those of you who think they have potential, realize that they don't and then give them the potential. That's too on the nose Rod. Yeah, it's pretty damn on the rose yeah. So what I noticed coming out of the Air Force and going to the civilian DoD contracting kind of stuff was how few managers actually work on trying to improve the outputs of the people, the team that's working for them. They instead they focus on like oh what times you show up and that's it. Like they focus on the easiest things and I've just seen so many technicians withering under this poor leadership that they, to be fair they never were taught. They've just been told what to do by their bosses which just makes them yes men. So I just want to try to make things better because I feel like the techs of the employees, the lowest level, the work culture can improve for them if managers know what they're doing. I mean say those parts louder please. And I mean the touch labor is kind of the backbone in the industry. Somebody's got to do the actual work you know. So as a manager I feel like the best thing you can do is make the lives of those individuals that much easier so the hardest part of their day is the actual touch labor, the building and fixing and innovative side of it you know what I mean. Absolutely that's all I'm trying to give them is the freedom to do their job, do it well, bring an environment of success. And if we can get that across multiple sectors I think that more employees will be happier and I was just listening to a thing the other day they had a I don't remember who it was. There was a study done where they took a high performing team of five people and put one negative person on their team and they found it dropped their output by like 25%. Oh I mean I know in deployments in the past you know deployments can be rough enough as it is but if you're there with a solid crew you know even if you're getting shot at it's still a pretty good day. But you could have you could have a deployment where where the sun shines every day and there's no attacks and everything's just working and and nothing's breaking and everything's meeting schedules but you got one one negative Nancy on there so to speak and then you come back off that trip and you're like how's the worst trip ever. You make that one person the manager now everybody's having a bad deployment. Yeah well obviously that's that's what happens in most days like well we can't have them going on the road no more and mucking up things over here so we'll just have to muck up things from from back home. You know and you really took red my mind on that one. No you guys are both breaking my mind on that so like especially you know when you have one individual who just for whatever reason is just not meshing with the team right either they're too negative they don't know enough or whatever the case may be or the yes man right it's bad when that one person comes in it just really spreads that cloud of negativity around and then everyone starts breathing it in and next to you know like they're they're all having a bad time they're realizing that they're they have a bad time and then more so as to what you said Rod when that person's in charge of people you know it's what's what's the South Park where the one guy was like okay what you're going to want to do is treat your team not right and if you don't you're going to have a bad time is that South Park yeah you're going to have a bad time he's like a ski instructor. Yeah if you if you French fry when you're supposed to pizza you're going to have a bad time. That is it that is it and and hot take on a lot of this stuff is majority of these managers that mean we all come in there like wanting to make an impact right do something good right and then but when you try to actually absorb some of the stuff you're kind of just left to the wolves you know for a good chunk of time right and then a lot of people can argue that well if you were just had the right stuff or if you had the right technical skill or was he was he was he excuses up the up the ladder and stuff I mean I can get away I I've been in teams where I can get away with the boss didn't had absolutely no knowledge technically about what was going on but it was a damn good boss and vice versa I had a boss who knew freaking knew a whole bunch of stuff but it just sucked to work around him because he just felt like he could solve anything right like you're just not trying hard enough so one of the magic nobody here knows as much as I do and you're all dumb because of it and so now not only do I have to lead and manage this crew now I have to do all the individual jobs as well yeah so that is a weak leader who just doesn't trust their people who say that part louder so I was on my last deployment while I was active duty um the lead for my shop that I would have been had I not been any seven at the time master started running the flight line whenever there was something that came up like a questionable solution for a fix or something I just look at him be like really and like we'll go get back on it I mean he I used my experience as a way to poke holes on their story to make sure that we had a good output not to tell them how to do their job right and you know this reminds me of a listener that sent us an email MVP you might recall this where an individual is asking about hey how do I like how do I adapt how do I be a good employee because said person was like brand new mechanic brand new to to the job brand new to the organization and a lot of this person's managers were like non-technical people like they do in the bare minimum of aviation so they're like wanting to make all these changes do some sick sigma stuff do some lean project stuff value stream stuff right like things that would just fundamentally shift how the how the shop works which I guess is fine if it if it really warrants that but um the issue was like they just had a hard time like really absorbing things because the managers didn't know how to do things and they're trying to drink from a fire hose pretty much and they're with uh trying to find a mentor who's really going for bad for them but since they're so new and they're trying to absorb stuff they feel like they're impeding the output of things right like um I can't do this fast enough I'm making too many mistakes and so on and so forth like that really screws with people to the point where like I might even meant for this right I mean that is one of the biggest issues you're going to run into in life in general confidence levels am I good at this I had a tech in one of my prior positions she was amazing but she didn't believe in herself once she started to understand that she knew what she was doing she's become like the go-to for that team like everybody trusts her um and because of that kind of stuff I try to take those individuals who have high confidence and I'll take the brand new people who are just like we have an intern right now I assigned her a mentor she didn't have to go find one I assigned her one that's that's actually a good thing that doesn't happen a lot okay mentors chips aren't used a lot and more importantly no one hugely assigns somebody one so no it's true it's you but that's typically what happened well this is my third year doing it my first year I did not do it I sucked but I've learned um now they they just want to do well they especially these young interns and new employees coming in right now I was thinking about it this morning like Gen Z what I've seen from Gen Z workers is that they just want to know what's expected of them before they start the job and I I kind of attributed that to their time in high school and junior high middle school whatever you want to call it um they put out rubrics now like I don't I can think of times in my high school when we had rubrics and times we didn't I think it's across the board now so they know what is going to be expected of them when they do the job in high school and they're expecting that in a workplace but it's not been like that um I'm trying to make it like that yeah because most of the time when you jump into the workplace I said well you know what's expected is kind of what was in the job posting but you know from there on it's kind of yours figure out just like we were talking earlier getting uh airquoasting here feedback on a project but you have to remind those individuals who are giving feedback on the project that there was no guidelines or or goal given in the beginning in the beginning of it it was I don't know put something together and we'll see what it looks like okay well I can make that you know look a whole a hundred different ways so then they show a lot of more right but they don't do that and I think maybe that's what people are expecting and just to add more to your Gen Z and school rubrics just just a few hours ago had a conversation with my niece you know just started high school freshman and I said hey how's the first couple days of school what have you what have you guys learned so far what are they telling you you're going to learn you know and I don't know we haven't talked anything school wise yet so what the hell you've been doing in class every day every class will go into like we have to sit down and read the uh school guidelines and basically understand how we're supposed to act and conduct ourselves in the classroom blah blah blah basically said again setting those guidelines here's what you're supposed to do every day and it's one of those like we're wasting time with that kind of there is a kind waste but at least they're trying to ensure that every student knows it's better than I've seen them with a lot of corporations they actually seem to bank on the fact that people don't know what their the policies are well they're hoping you don't know so they can use the policies against you right yep that's just like that so yeah telling these kids that they need to read a policy I'm actually pretty cool with that uh like yeah I guess I guess some of it though I look at is like hey don't be a jackass in the classroom some of that where it's like you didn't learn that when you were in kindergarten you know what I mean like I mean yeah there is some of that but I mean I've been dealing with people who are in their 30s doing things that are like in junior high so fair point I'm in this conversation and I'm attacked well you know I'm glad you guys brought that up because um even with kids nowadays like um they have to read and sign a syllabus right at the lowest at the lowest grade level now I think what fourth grade they give them a syllabus it was mind blowing me like I didn't get a syllabus until I was like high school maybe maybe college yeah well I mean well the syllabus was like general stuff right it's kind of like here's the guidelines it's usually like like 12 maybe and it's always like some catchy phrase kind of thing so like you can easily remember it it's like so um what's what's the word I'm trying to go for like it's it's um it's like one of those cart like a cartoon show tune kind of uh saying it's it's it's uh quirky it's corny but it's it's memorable right like and it's usually something like uh whatever your school mascot is like uh a eagle never does this or something something like that right and and um it has like basic syllabus like this is what your grades are going to be factored into and such and such right but nowadays like they do that stuff for every single class like Jesus I mean I get it that way the kids the students know exactly what to expect they know how they're going to be graded throughout the year there's less subjective when you're just like oh the teacher doesn't like me I mean that follows into the manager just doesn't like me and yeah yeah the same token with uh with the um rubric is it also gives you kind of guidelines uh you know or not guidelines but like uh do buy dates right like hey you know here's what's due and here's when it's due and so that also turns into you know it prevents the well nobody told me or my teacher didn't tell me so think back in the day 30 kids in a classroom teacher says oh by the way the bells just rang everybody's running out of the room by the way don't forget this is due at the end of next Friday you know some kids don't even hear that and that same thing in the adult life oh I didn't hear that and so when they get an F they're going that's not my fault I and you didn't tell me you didn't remind me I mean my hell my own kids do that when I go tell them to clean up dog poop out of the backyard hey do you guys have dog poop today trash us tomorrow oh you didn't remind me I swear to god you know what I mean not my job to remind you right i said it's on the board i wrote it down on the little white board the chore board right i wrote it down on the board uh it's not my job to remind you to to go read the board do you know it's there you know there's stuff on there and that's where i you know that's where that's kind of this back and forth right that we're having here where you can see the goods and badges but at some point they have to take accountability on the right right well that's the biggest problem with all of business is accountability yep and then I see that's kind of like blending into the technical side of things right like uh they'll have like a uh out for like a better words a job board right they'll have like a list of to-dos and like you kind of sort of just pick one right i mean that's kind of exactly how we work or like a call board i guess like i get like whatever it's called in your areas forgive me i've heard it call different things job board call board different from most people the team that i'm in charge of is very different than most because we don't we're not assigned to any one program we help multiple projects ooh so uh you know what's what's that called uh uh in agile jeeps i just learned it's not so long i'm failing everybody i've been a wild side to agile uh you know it's kind of like a backlog right yeah it's like a backlog and they have like this pull system where you only pull one when you finish one kind of thing instead of just getting overloaded with a whole bunch of stuff which is that's all a scrum but yeah that's scrum yeah yeah so you know like what everybody does nowadays especially on the technical side of things right like they just say we have these many flights to hit i don't care how it happens just do it right and so you once in a while you will have that one technician who just wants to be Superman for a day and just pound it out right or you know like they for whatever reason or another they just love doing well things at once and they can remember it all or or something to that effect but like going back to like that one previous listener who sent us that that message when you don't know anything and you say hey we got these five things we need to hit like what do i do right and that kind of that kind of goes into the point right with the syllabus and the rubrics because if you're a brand new tech and you don't even know what you're doing or what's kind of the expectancy of you and i've seen this being played different ways where like they'll say like well it was in your job description yeah what also says i can do whatever the fuck my manager tells me to do as a job description which is like a blanket statement for take out the trash or something right it also says i'll be the focal point for these five things and i've done i've been not the focal point of any of those you know it doesn't all time yeah and so like when we go into like the technical side of things of you're actually like having to learn some of this stuff but you're all lost in the sauce because like well you're expected to know this sure i know basic right i know how to run wires and tap out screws but what the hell is that i feel like that's one of the big issues and at least in the uh industry we're in like they'll bring people in who have no idea what they're doing give them a week long class and say go ahead and go and and as opposed to like i'm sure you saw this six mvp i don't know if you saw this uh i remember when i first joined the Air Force like i wasn't allowed to sign anything off i just followed everybody around and watched what they were doing at first i they had me start replacing parts it was really basic stuff to start building me at a low level and then grow into being an avionics technician we don't do that they they get like a week of training and like okay go draw holes yeah and that's because these companies i think so i have experienced some of that right so in my first job and for all the flaws that that company had but has but one thing they did at least back back then is they had like a a six week gen fan course right and you take that they had a uh training asset and you go out there and you would remove engines and and turn the engine apart and and learn how to do certain inspections then you'd remove the gear and change out actuators and you you did all these things as a new hire so at least by the time you hit the floor you had some idea of what was going to happen but you still weren't allowed to sign anything you just got attached to a senior mechanic and then you'd be following them around for months i mean months and you wouldn't sign jack shit i mean for both of us we were scared to sign stuff because we understand what the outcomes of all this is like working a flight line you know that you're when you're putting your signature on those forms or whatever the discrepancy signing it off you're taking that life cruise hand and life into your hands it's very important and to add to this right when you have like uh some individuals who went to a robust AMP school for instance right like uh you got like a associate's degree out of it you're kind of walking in feeling like hot shit you know what i mean i mean all things considering you're you're smarter than the average person right we we get it but then you get that rude awakening and that's when their confidence level really goes into the dumps when like they realize the pace they realize like what to expect like you know it's like unspoken but it's shown to them kind of thing like you're you're it's expected for you to work 17 hour days i mean some places do it someplace don't someplace how they kind of like they don't want their new they want to save the OT for the senior people whatnot but in some outfits right like they're the ones doing all like the low uh low low intelligence high labor work you know like sweeping out the the grates or dumping the hazmat cans or whatever the case may be and they'll get racked um for hours on end and they technically didn't learn anything and then after they're already physically drained from running all over a place to do like erin boy stuff and they say oh by the way you got to finish this uh this OJT sheet within six months like when the shit am i gonna find time to do that like figure it out bros i think i was lucky with that because like we really focused my first base when i was brand new daircraft we really focused on making sure that people understood what they were supposed to do um we were allowed to learn but there was a big focus on learning still so it was stressful to learn but we had the time to make sure that it was set in place i guess like we had the knowledge in place before we could start signing chips i feel like like you said the training was stressful and not so much in a derogatory way but uh meaning that emphasis was placed upon everything that you were doing i'll have to show them to show the importance of why you were doing it it's just like me saying you're taking the life of the air crew into your hands by doing those jobs that's where the the stressful side of it came in because if you messed up in any way i mean somebody was on you going hey doing it that way this drives this uh actuator uh uh screw arm in the opposite direction thereby puncturing through the through this bulkhead into the wing tank and now you're losing fuel it's extremes but i mean i'm just i'm just oh hey it makes sense now um do you guys think the reason we training isn't to that level right to the level we're talking isn't done so much anymore as time and money to do so we need people uh out on the floor now we need bodies there to to do these things but i kind of viewed as you know 10 real experience guys could probably do the job of 40 in experience so why not just take the time now and put these people through a real good training regimen so by the time they get the floor they're they're actually useful to the experience right from everything i've heard it used to be like that for dod contracting um military retirees get out and they'd get a job working hands-on on the aircraft and but they were already trained they'd already done x amount of years in the military so they're already showing up with aircraft's uh experience under their belts and now when they're being asked to drill a hole for manufacturing they know what they're doing and they know how to apply the standards and hold two standards whereas some of these people are being hired straight out of walmart and they know how to stock they know how to put things on shelves but that doesn't mean they know what to do with an aircraft you know and to no fault of their own really because like what do you expect me to do bro i've i've never seen the plane before now but i'm here and so this kind of makes me wonder uh from your side of the house at least for test engineering like what's that learning curve like for someone to do stuff right because i mean so like uh let me preface before like when it comes to testing stuff i'm thinking like test cells uh air data sets um you know like like something outside of bits you know what i mean so we do most of our test on the road um my lab like i said earlier isn't um connected to any one program so we jump around our corporation to anybody any small programs especially who don't have their own flight test technicians of our caliber um we are very specific to the instrumentation side of flight test we put on the strain gauges accelerometers uh thermistors all these all these different instrumentation to get the data from the aircraft forward flight test uh my guys they start learning strain gauging pretty early on that's one of our big statements of work um they're not good at it for a while though and we do have some customers to say um they're just in our same corporation but i just completely lost my train of thought that'll have to be edited out customers that uh have uh expedited timelines is that where you were going with it yeah yeah timelines there we go so like we'll be supporting one team and they want things done super quick and then another team will be like okay we can push things out a little bit and there's a lot of balancing to that but some of our we'll put some of our younger techs on these ones that can stretch out a little bit because they need the experience before they're put on these ones that are very tight time limits uh we do some work that it generally takes about four days to do for an experienced person but if it's an inexperienced person that can jump up to eight days you mean but then again like you said like if it's not time uh constricting that that's a good learn that's a good teachable moment right and i always try to make sure i'm the the project or program manager whoever i'm working with is good with that too because i feel that they should be a part of that like okay i get that you're paying for this work to get done but you should also be paying a little bit for training too right yeah and i and i totally agree with that right especially if they're new and to that one listener's point right like that should be a focus um maybe not maybe not just for you but for the leads and the people who are doing all this six sigma process improvement kind of stuff like hey you know like i get it you guys want to lean out your your lead time but let's also um bake in there some some training time too like hey what's uh a realistic timeline for a person to like absorb some of this stuff right because i mean if you if you just do a blanket statement like oh six months this person should understand anything and everything within six months i mean like they can ballpark it but are they actually proficient at this you know especially like the military the way they did at least in the air forces they gave like an ultra unrealistic time period of extra long to finish everything because people would wait till the last minute now other people that just wanted to get like the testing over with they jump ahead and you'd get it done much sooner but yeah there was usually like a really long timeline to get qualified i don't see that in the civilian world i i i see bits and pieces like uh i've seen them where like it's either it's non-existent or it takes forever right and that's why kind of like say with apprenticeship like oh three four years of apprenticeship like does it really have to be three to four years right i mean if you were like say in EOS or for instance hell you can be studying for 16 years and you still won't be licensed for everything um but unlike here in the US and i think Canada kind of runs in a similar fashion like you you do two you do four years and like we're expecting you to know everything everything like uh okay but then you get those lucky few because i think some of the apprenticeships it goes by hours not by time or not by like uh not by years right so like say like go two thousand hours or something like that and that can take you anywhere from three years to six depending right but then you'll get those like those stellar few who just land at that dream place where you can just smash out two thousand hours in like six months um i feel like the Japanese right that you work with um you know a manager for six to ten years it seems like in some and some professions right like that's that but by the time your training is done do yourself are essentially a master like that's how they they they work so there's never a shortage of a master true in that system right now you know we've talked about this before but i feel like especially our industry could really benefit from that where yeah we you know we say oh you know you kind of get out on the floor and you're you're paired up with a senior mech for a while but it might be a week or two and then they're off doing something else and you're paired up with somebody else and and then you're left to your own to figure out your OJT but i think it could really benefit from having that kind of a pairing between a master or senior senior mech tech and and a new person so i do know that some of the leads at our corporation i work for do do that they take that on themselves they uh they'll go out with their the newest member on their team and they will make sure that that person knows what they're doing but that is very individualized it's not like it's a an expectation across the sector and those teams end up being some of the higher performing teams because the lead is actually engaged yes and i can attest to this deeply because i've been a part of teams where we had an air quotes up friendship slash mentoring program i'm saying this in like the most sarcastic of air quotes you know like it exists we have to we have like ment uh like uh file folders that that say we have them right they built one that has your name on it they have notes and stuff on it but they're more like checks in the box than actual like progression and and one can argue with me that you know like when it comes to like uh teaching and instructing and mentoring and coaching and all this other stuff that well this is personal to you right and with personal to you it's not may or may not be what's best for the organization which fair i i get it you know but think about like the the technical loss you're getting from this right like if you're not investing actual time to like help school this person up yeah it's gonna take a while like you might you might have a lead time in your project or your your flights or whatever but imagine when this person leaves like though you're most knowledgeable person for one reason or another just leaves like he's had it with you he gets hurt or she like gets promoted somewhere else and now you have like this huge knowledge gap and now you're like well what do we do now that's when you start relying on tribal knowledge and things start going to shit yes and we we've also mentioned this in a previous episode where tribal knowledge is not inherently bad but if you're um if you're kind of going to like if you're standards your technical expertise your leadership your mentoring your coaching and all that if that's trash then for sure your your tribal knowledge is going to be in the dirt too because you'll default to what you practice and if what you practice is trash yeah yeah and it's kind of like with you guys with your with testing right like if you just slap on gear without like doing like a a calibration check or a print or like a pre-use test you just roll it so you know i've worked in two different labs with this same job doing instrumentation and two different mindsets the current lab my co-manager has been doing this for a very long time and he tells when he teaches these the courses for string engaging he tells them you need to be able to see that it's good like if it's not pretty when it comes out there's a very good chance it's not going to be good to begin with because these are very intricate worst work pieces and the other lab that i worked in like just slap it on go we don't have the time to sit there and worry about it but the time that they're not sitting there and worrying about it they're filling with going back to refix it later it ain't so it ain't so and then i think that's and i think that's like one of the big detrimental parts of speed like uh everyone's all about like just give me the product give me the service as fast as humanly possible sure sure but you know if you have quality yeah if your quality is not baked into that if your mindset and your training and the stuff that you default to is not at least well prepped well rehearsed in practice it's going to be trash and you're going to have to spend all that time undoing it and rerunning it through the process the tests say and however many times until you figure out that you forgot to set the set something right uh i can recall a specific time when they were we were running a air data test uh for the pito system and they it was failing left and right like why is this failing took hours like i can't remember how long it was a long time and the reason why it was failing is because they didn't properly seat one of the adapters onto the pito tube itself and then one of the uh the static ports they were supposed to cover it but they didn't so it was just pumping air now it for one it had a bad seal from the pito itself but then as it's pumping air it's just leaking out from the other side only oh my freaking god man like like step one guys come on i went out for a job prior to retirement it was again peter static like you're talking about and it went into this manifold and it was supposed to go out i remember our commander was one who did the right up like he's like this these this information on my airspeed indicator isn't reading correctly i don't understand what it's showing me come to find out that this manifold it was going into it was crossing lines with the static lines so uh yeah you weren't gonna do it because it was reading static for a pito but the worst part was the this aircraft had been flying for a while and no other air crew would even notice oh my god that's kind of like it makes you go what what are you what are you using the data yeah right it's like it pulls too hard to the right that's kind of like when you crisscross your power steering uh fluid lines yeah you just kind of just trim yeah or what's um what's another one uh like stability control like it kind of it's well it's pretty much like power steering but yeah come on guys it's just a step one but um that again kind of goes into like the ensuring the safety reliability in the tests right right so i mean what would you say probably be one of the the best like um advice to to ensure like the safety and reliability of the test that's being conducted i mean one of the things i focus on is individual strengths and as you get to know your team you'll start to see who has strengths for what and for people doing tests you want their strength to be attention to detail there are too many things that can be missed with people not paying attention or just half-assing the job because it's they don't see it as important you want those people that are overly and anal to ensure that everything's caught all the eyes are dotted all the teasers crossed but it takes you knowing your team to do that and then we're talking about this in spite of time right yeah i mean i it's it's one of those like give her like opportunity cost kind of things right now we're talking about economics but it definitely is like well what's the risk of taking that extra minute or whatever extra minute hour or whatever then it is to just breeze through it i always try to get the max amount of time for every job that we we're working just to make sure that my guys are getting trained um i try to hit par i don't try to go under that way people the the the the hours are allowing us to train yes because this way in the future when they really need it when do you need something a string gauge applied the first time right correctly that's when it's that's when all this is going to come through and be of value i'm so glad you mentioned that because nowadays everything's all about speed or all about i think what's the word gain uh everyone wants gain like we want to be under par we want to shoot eagles every single time right minus two under par becomes the new norm and then and then you have to shoot under that par and get quicker and quicker and quicker and yeah keep escalating yeah you're you're moving the goal post every single time right and it's never in your favor so i'm like uh then we have like this unrealistic expectation of things where well you guys got it done in like 20 minutes the last time how do how do you do that like well see how we're gonna you're gonna have to not ask many questions i need you all to get real cool with a lot of stuff real fast we can have it we can have it running or we can do it right yeah and and and i'm glad you brought that up because there's you know that gives that false connotation to a lot of people like oh like well these people got it done fast right and then they started they can compare it to like negatively compare it to like say airlines for instance right like all these guys are always on time they're always making their marks like sure but it's gonna cost you like a shit ton of money so one of the things that i learned as a prosuit was generally it takes eight hours to pre-flight a kc 135 which is the aircraft i worked while i was active duty if we put the crew chief who had done the last pre-flight back on this aircraft they already know the majority of the problems they can just significantly shorten that time because they're already have experience with the aircraft they already know what's wrong there are they know what they saw previously and if they see something new now they're really quick to jump on it but you could knock down an eight-hour pre-flight down to two hours having had that experience to know what's going on like you can look at uh in the uh lap well or whatnot and see okay yep everything's still there we're good here i don't have to pay as much attention yeah and you try to do that in the past we would try to send you know birds that would shuffle between locations but we always tried to give them a home station when it came to you know times for maintenance right so that might you know roll through different sites when it's just a quick turn just hop fuel and send them on their way but when it came time for actual maintenance we try to return them to a mayor quoting a home a home a home base of operations because like just like what you were saying the the people there become intimate with that bird they learned they know all its quirks it's you know all this one this one always runs about five degrees hotter you know on the on the schooling pack than the other birds for whatever reason but you know they just have that intimate knowledge so again like you said if something's wrong they're going to notice it a lot faster than somebody who hasn't seen that bird in a long time oh absolutely and then like even the military takes it to the next step of like c5s and c17s have an in-route system where they can fly anywhere in the world and most bases have an in-route that they can land at and it there's different levels for the amount of work they can give them like i think a level one can pretty much just only refuel and preflight but like a level three like rambstein air force base out in germany they can do anything and everything that they need to for those c5s and c17s to tear them apart as needed so yeah okay the crew chief might be at home station he might have the met or he or she may have the most knowledge on that aircraft but there's still people out there on the road who are pretty well intimate with these aircraft as well right and and i think a lot of that comes through the exposure piece right and that kind of echoes what we've been saying earlier like you gotta afford the time for them to kind of figure it out right not just have like this uh unexpected or unrealistic standard like well this flight or this uh maintenance action this test event this whatever it's taking three hours in the past so we want you to do it do a eight-hour job in three hours i'm like do we are we are we our video games have a learning curve to them like my dog here solid teaches you the first chapter how to play the video game we don't do that too much in the real world exactly right you know like i don't get pop-up prompts right like like uh frisbee the chute webs or whatever call it the prologue we don't get a prologue and work yeah i mean i did in the air force but i can see how the the majority of the civilian world does not get that and it's it's concerning because i want to make sure that they know what they're doing before i let them sign off stuff yeah right and uh what's it and they actually give them like a little bit of wiggle room case they mess something up right oh absolutely they so i had a commander once that said you're allowed to make mistakes just don't make it twice mm-hmm learn from your mistakes that's that's all he wanted like okay cool yeah you screwed that one up let's see how you bounce back and then i feel that kind of that ties into like the mentorship piece of it right like if you have like a solid experience person to kind of like help you through the gaps and knowing that your boss isn't going to hold it against you while you're learning yes yes see this part louder please because i've had a time again right like we've all had this had this type of experience right when you mess something up one time because you literally did not know better and then you're going to go see the the big man or the big boss in in his in his office his or her office and then you get an ash chewing that you totally did not know you wanted and then now you're just learning out of fear like i don't want to do anything because i don't know what yeah you got to get your astute for doing something you didn't even know you did was wrong yeah and that's where tying back to the earlier conversation why i was saying like the rubrics and gen z they like to know what's expected of them beforehand so they can probably prevent themselves from getting the ash chewing on the back end of it you can go pay this part louder say this is this is like a freaking leadership one-on-one course in itself right and it definitely ties into like say the technical piece of it because if you're too scared to want to learn then your then your knowledge gap is going to just keep on widening at the more you progress until the point where like well you're you're fundamentally useless so let's just they just go count regs or or um and i've seen that with with the old lab that i was in they currently have a guy who is very scared to do work and he's their worst worker because of it not that he's a bad worker he just has zero confidence in his own abilities is this zero confidence stemming from just a lack of confidence in himself or has there been a past experience that would have pretty much tripped that sense of confidence right out of them i can't answer that one but i do know that as a manager with these texts my goal is to consistently show them that they know what they're doing so that they feel that they know what they're doing i don't care if they like that i like what they're doing they need to know that they know what they're doing if that makes sense it's kind of like you know like the ADHD buildup you know you got you got to trick your mind to be productive by doing lesser productive stuff you know i mean it's a terrible tactic but i've heard it sometimes with people who have ADHD like they have no energy to do stuff or they can't focus or they got they distract themselves creatively by trying to do something smaller easier low energy like i mean we have plenty of jobs like that manufacturing there's constantly jobs popping up that are just little minor things and that's where i start all my younger or i don't even want to say younger in this case because i have had older people who have had lack a lack of confidence i mean even up to boomers a lack of confidence and what they know what to do and they've been doing this for years and i attribute that to poor leadership in the past though like what you were saying nvp about like was this a bad that's something that happened in his life that made him incong non-confident or something that he's just not confident because this is a first aircraft kind of thing uh in this case the the the kid in the old lab his was he's just new to aircraft and nobody has taken the time to be like yes this is correct so they he knows he's doing well you know what i've seen that's also a major trip up for someone who has high confidence you know like they get so used to a system of doing things right like they know how this uh air data test set works they know how this string gauge system works they know how xyz happens you know that they they figured it out left and right and then you drop something new onto them but because aviation is forever evolving you drop something new and you're like what the shit is this right and then they're like uh like going from analog to digital that was a huge culture shock for a whole lot of people and like what the heck is this that's kind of where the manager needs to come in and know the people that are i don't know less stressed out about new things because example um i worked in the tool room and debrief and mobility equipment for a long time like three years when i was active duty and the first job that i had when i came back out to the flight line was testing the uh exhaust yeah sorry the exhaust gas temperature EGT gauge against the recording system for flight data in this case it was on the FDR CVR where they just recorded everything so you can see what was happening during flight and there was no technical guidance on how to do this but there was like we had a a direct uh heck data that told us how to run it the EGT system from the ground without running engines and then we just added a couple extra steps to make sure that that the FDR was recording the same way and if it wasn't we knew we needed to change our part but that was like brand new nobody knew how to do that and it was my first day back on the flight line and i'm like yeah we can do that so you need somebody with strengths that can think of yes the the can we do that yes we can do that or absolutely say no if it's against tech data i will never ever make one of my techs do it because i am will never ask them to put their career on the line i'm really glad you made that point because there's many a times that we as we have all seen where we would have individuals who feel like they're smarter than the than the technical publication like i've done this before all my life i've seen this done a million times lawsy does he does he you know uh playing to um well what's the what was the phrase MVP and in one of our sessions that we sat into uh murphy's law you're playing into murphy's law um and it's not that if it can't go wrong it will go wrong it's it you're playing your your your chances to the point where the only thing that you're gonna run into is the failure and and uh sometimes you know and and these uh these chances are cumulative so if someone else burned out all the chances and you're the lucky one to freak to to roll the zero then i mean that goes back to what i said earlier with like to quote setting the environment sometimes you have to do some logistics ahead of time to make sure that you're going to be successful if you're not doing that it's gonna fail hmm absolutely and and especially like for a lot of these newer technologies and i'm sure you're seeing a whole bunch of it with the test realm if it's not dialed in right you're gonna get false readings all the time all the time it's funny you mentioned new technologies because one of our one of the things that we have going for us right now is we have this um engineer he's a contractor currently who has retired from like the three big d-o-d contractors he's been doing flight tests since the 50s yeah his his knowledge on flight test like i would love to just sit down and interview him sometime just to hear some of the crazy stories because i've heard other stories before like um i know virgin galactic at one point their instrumentation system to show some people that were interested in their instrumentation system um they faked it to show that yeah look our our system's on they it wasn't on neither confirm or deny that one but to be fair and this is why i didn't say anything about it at the time instrumentation systems 99.999 repeated then percent of the time will not cause a crash like our stuff is just glued onto a wing to to measure the flexing kind of thing like we're not doing anything that's going to down an aircraft other people are doing that that it's to set up to the test right like they use the wrong they use the wrong glue or they put it in the wrong spot yep we got really good with some of that stuff like um our ndi my time in the military ndi only came out to look at cracks our ndi at this corporation will come out and do precise alignments with a laser it shows exactly where we need to be putting down the strain gauge and that's really useful it's really cool and like what are what are the type of like uh high speed stuff i mean i guess it's not high speed now but what's uh what sort of uh innovations have you have you been seeing lately i mean i don't see a lot of innovation these this is all very old technologies so like a strain gauge is just a flimsy piece of film with some metal running through it that as it stretches the resistance becomes higher and changes the room cell ones with the xyz axis girl on them or those what are those things called um anyways i didn't hear the beginning of it sorry i didn't hear it i said are those the um are those the rossell strain gauges so yes we do some of those where they have multiple angles to them they can be like at 90s or 45 degree angles we have singles where we put them on and we'll put them on different areas so they can get different angles of the the stretching i know that the newest aircraft our corporation has been working on has well over 2,000 strain gauges on it and it's not a very big aircraft i believe it i've been involved in some testing before where every like we were cutting holes into you know bays but there was no access panels they were just wearing like you would put the spars and everything together and then you would lay up over top of them so you would never see them again but at some point we had to cut holes back into them to be able to put those gauges in to chase chase out the cracks and the stresses where everything was going well that newest aircraft i was talking about our corporation did they have glued off some areas that made me question whether i was like why don't we have access to that area because it's right behind a fuel tank wouldn't couldn't you get a leak there off areas big areas of a win i didn't close my mind that nobody ever thinks hey we may need access to this sometime i mean they'll figure it out when they have to drill holes to put it back on yeah that's when they're like okay we'll send a depot team out there to cut this panel and spend all this money on something that we should have already had in the first place that's when they find out that they cut into a bulkhead or uh not uh not uh yeah i think that's what it's like one of those reinforcement rabs yeah the ribs yeah why is this aircraft flexing why is it leaning more like oh that's when that's when you get stress analysis team in there right they explain the thing like oh no that comes out well you're missing the rib i mean it's it's why it's uh it's why access is like 10 degrees off like what terrible terrible yes world but but again that just that just uh emphasizes a from the technical side of things right you got to understand the equipment and the only way to understand it which goes into like the the leadership piece is to give them time to learn it right and and i feel i mean i'm probably answering the question for you but like that has to be one of the biggest challenges right uh as a manager especially i want to put it in the perspective of a manager for now because a lot of people a lot of people like really split hairs and mix mash the definitions between leaders and managers but from a manager standpoint right your your objective is product right whatever that is to start with i would like to say that every manager is a leader yes whether it's good or not like you can be a bad leader and get the people there they may get there on their own i it won't be smooth but it'll get there and and again like it's going to like that service and product right whatever it is right your product is 50 deliveries in under 45 minutes next to impossible or your your product is a service where like you're you have a uber driver that's available within five miles of you or something like that right so i watch each of my texts to see what their strengths are and some of them are really good with my new work which string gauging is very like micro soldering kind of stuff you can't you can burn a gauge out really quickly if you leave a soldering iron on there um so i have an idea of who i can put on string gauge jobs versus who i should put on like a wiring harness job and that could work out very well for me because it may be that attention to detail is the person that's on the string gauge and this person who's working this harness has this completely other different strength that helps build that harness to you know what i mean like i try to read my people to see what situations i should put them in now i don't just only put them there i do try to get them like a breadth of experience but when i put somebody without like attention to detail on a job i'm not going to expect that detail to come through to me like i i don't sit there and expect them to send me something that i know they can't send me right this is the time for them to learn and i love and i love that part right because and i feel like that's a that's a lesson that we all really should learn like hey what am i actually good at right or you take an honest assessment of yourself because let's be really like a lot of us like to talk up our own game like yeah i can do that right or um what's the thing uh fake it so you make it right like yeah absolutely i can do that and then you like look it up or go google it real quick like how do i do this i mean good initiative don't get me wrong good initiative you know for you to try to learn but if you generally don't know just flat i'll say i don't know but i'll give it a shot i would love for my text just to tell me they don't know they all want to give it a shot they all think that they can do it because i feel like they're scared to say that they they can't do it and i would much rather hear that they can't do it and i can give them some additional training well that's it i mean you're absolutely right right like uh and then i feel like that's uh that's a culture for aviation that we just need to continuously adopt right you we say it out loud but it's rare or they're rarely given the time of day to actually exercise it right like hey if you don't know something say something right but most times you know we're like hey we don't got time for you to dick around like get this thing going so we can get this flight out or hurry up and move this move this along so we can go to step b and see that's where i step in and i'll straighten up tell the project manager and be like okay we ran into problems yes we're going over hours and i apologize for that but none of this is our fault either like sometimes it's engineering rework that they hate they found out this uh example that we were building racks to record all the data from a flight test and the coax wires were too thick to go through a hole so they had to go back and replace all that coax wire with the smaller gauge coax wire it's not the text fault that's engineering is fault but it's for some reason it does come back on the text still i don't and i fight that because it's that is what really sets apart between good management and or leadership and bad leadership is having their backs um like i said earlier i won't make them sign off and i would never make them sign off anything i tell them if it's something i need signed off i will ask them how can you go about making this so you're willing to sign this off like what work can you do to this to ensure you're willing to sign it off but i will never just tell them to sign something off because again we take people's lives in our own hands and i don't want that to fall back on anybody or have to go through the legal side of it you know that's a breath of fresh air man because i mean i've made jokes about this and we've done so with our insta with our social media hat knows we're like like shut up and color and freaking just sign it off right and we and some people have said flat out said to us like we'll never do that your license or your certificate has all the weight and laws you know like i agree it has the way to stop the to stop the show however you know we that's where i come in i'm kind of a smart ass and an asshole to my boxes and i really enjoy um for lack of better term malicious compliance so i i have no problem one of my previous jobs i upgraded a diagonal that should have been an ex to an ex and forced one of the directors to come out and um downgraded for the flight it wasn't going to be an issue i didn't think it was going to be an issue but the tech data said it should be an ex and if anything had happened during that flight didn't matter if it was related to the issue that happened the kid who put it under a diagonal would have lost his career yeah and i and i applaud you for doing that and to emphasize the point that you have some individuals who are very horse blind to the objective than it is to you know the people actually doing the work uh example was like that that one joke we said like where uh nothing stops ops and we said we said half hardly as a joke because it has and does happen where you will make this happen you will do this i don't care what it takes right but those but though though worded in such a way where it's it's not so much as telling you but it kind of just like guilt trips you know and and thankfully you know we had a lot of individuals in that one comment who really voiced them is like f that man like uh yours it's your certificate it's your career it's your license it's your livelihood by all means yes that's the right answer every time if it's not what the regulations or it's now at the standards or whatever say then you need if we can pull the plug but uh we've we've all been in situations or we've all been in organizations where we've had those types of uh objectives that just for one reason or another just has to get hit we have to make this happen we have to do this in a life or death situation like say a fire or EMS uh situation sure right i i get the onesies and toosies but if if the well what's the phrase with the exception becomes the norm then we've already failed and i don't i don't know any other way other than what you're saying to where just people just do that right and i'll take it's going to take people down to lowest level to say no no we're not we're not doing that and i'll tell you why and yeah you're going to complain and cry sure but what are you going to do i'm still following process and procedure i'm still doing my job uh i'm just telling you that i'm not doing it within your delusional time frame i'm doing it under this and here's the reasons why and yeah you're going to be mad but at the end of the day you can't touch me yeah right or any if you want if you want it to a solid product yeah i think if you wanted that bad you signed it off i mean don't know i i told my man is with that maybe a month or two ago well go ahead and hurry up and do this now if you want that bad fan go ahead and sign it you knock yourself out and lo and lo and behold surprise surprise uh the top priority all of a sudden didn't become it wasn't really that serious after all well i guess we'll just wait and see what they decided to do oh crazy you were going to have me do it and then you take all the credit and say look what i did but the minute you had to put your name to you're like well we can probably hold off and see really what the best decision is that engineering comes up with right exactly yeah exactly the point and then again like to to be like what rod said being like that that meant malicious uh what was compliance yeah the malicious compliance right that doesn't come just on a whim right you have to like kind of learn that stuff and i'm not saying learn it in a bad way but you you learn it through like really sticking to what's right and and say and you typically find that in in your standards and your regulations and your manuals and so forth if it's not there then doesn't technically doesn't exist now i'm going to probably get all these individuals who might just argue with me and say like well it doesn't tell me i shouldn't do it i got you i got it i was going to say is is aviation is kind of aviation is science right and people have all these grand ideas oh i want to do things this way and if we do it like this then we can you know save so much time and money great go ahead and do it oh well no i mean i'm telling you and then you know and oh in hopes that i'll do it i'm i'm like well i just think it would be the best way we could really increase mission capability rates and all that fine but again aviation of science and the difference between science and screwing around is writing it down and i tell everybody on the programs i support i said you can damn near do anything you want to around here i said the only thing you have to do is you have to write it down in a process and then at that point it becomes law but until then you're just you're just dicking around i mean you kind of run into gray areas because of that that gray area has saved a lot of my at least in the military a lot of their careers because i would use that gray area to allow them to to bend rules kind of thing so that's how i view myself right in my current role i always say you know i'm um terrible from from my departmental standpoint what i do but for operations i'm the best because i find the greatest of the gray and i operate within that and i help people to operate within that but again what i'm telling like the crews that are out in the field and stuff like hey we got this idea and we think we can pull it off and if we can it's going to be you know great list that and the other said cool you just got to write it down though i said we can't just go and do this without without whatever so makes the gray reality all right so i remember there's so many challenges and you can go well yeah but doesn't say doesn't say uh specifically that we can't do it like this it just says do this you know no i'm not getting that that's just because it jumped off a bridge should i well you know at a previous job i saw some of that happening where they we had texts who didn't want to go out and do a job because the tech data was written in a very weird way um it like referenced putting this panel on with a different job entirely because the you could put two different panels on um i just started you know what i need this done for tomorrow so this aircraft can fly go to the customer or whatever so i'm i just started putting an email like here's your written guidance go ahead and use this other tech data and it's on me if something goes wrong uh and that's how it should be i feel like i'm the manager i'm the responsible one i'm the one who should be taking the chances here yeah and i would agree with that i've done that before as well where you go what's your biggest hold up is it because you want you don't want the owners to fall on you you're afraid to make that decision if that's the case just tell me i have no problem to shoulder in that responsibility but just tell me up front so i could i could have sent this email to you four hours ago my biggest thing i found that's helped me the most in all this is how can i make everything be true like the policy and what i'm being told by say an engineer and the ability to fly tomorrow how can i make all those standards be true to make it meet what i needed to do and if i can't do that then that's not flying tomorrow yes absolutely i love the fact that you mentioned that and that definitely inspires like the confidence in everybody like okay now so now it's not just lip service it's not just hey fill it out this this ojt sheet or dude whatever the case may be you know like just the check in the box slash gap fills that we've all seen and done time and time again right and going back where i'm i'm kind of highlighting a lot of that stuff like that listener was mentioning you know like when you're just kind of left to the weeds to figure it out or you have a lead that you know like it's over tasked to kind of dump that knowledge on you that kind of falls onto the manager's piece or whoever that that leader of that section to like okay pump the brakes let's let's uh either a give you more time to figure things out or put you on projects where it kind of leads you up into stuff like this right that that incrementally jesus i had a hard time saying that uh advances you to that level of knowledge instead of just throwing you into the weeds and saying well you got an amp cert let's figure it out friend you know you have the general knowledge sure i have a general knowledge of how to stick panels on a plane or i have general knowledge of how an engine runs i mean assessment does not operate the same way as a 737 right exactly right i mean like well you have general aviation knowledge you know okay let's let's take a time out here a histin engine is a little bit different than this turbo jet fan engine right here just you know we did a couple parts here that are just slightly different like like i don't know like uh this freaking uh giant tanka freaking uh hydrazine you know you know you know don't be some slack here yeah and when it stops burning that's when it starts becoming an issue yes yes now we're going it there we go it's a hazmat stuff for all the feelers out there man i i do not envy you guys' job one bit feel feelers you have 100 percent my respect and oh absolutely they they have a rough job yeah and especially the ones that have to do the tank dives for fuel cell maintenance uh oh on case you went 35 that was a major job like we had we were nothing but fuel tanks um some of those fuel things i can stand up in and i'm almost six foot tall yeah i can imagine i can imagine i remember i was on a deployment and we had a forward body issue where it was leaking and we didn't have any fuel tank certified people but the one of the lat or one of the other um aircraft maintenance units did and it was similar to our aircraft so she had jumped up this tech and she jumped in there without a mask on and i was just like whoa hold up you need a mask like my eyes were burning three feet away from the hole going into the forward body she just jumps in there like it's nothing oh my god walks out unscathed like freaking Superman like don't ever do that again that'd be doubt she didn't even smell it anymore like how jpa jade has very strong smell yes we i can smell that shit from at least multiple tens of feet away and she's not smelling it going into the fuel tank that's terrible that's a terrible thing like you are not allowed to be anywhere near a fuel tank right anymore and and they're real proud of that fact that they can you're like no no that's that's a damage to your body you know but to be fair some of the and i'm not saying that this is against them or anything it's probably just part of the environment some of those people or some of the oddest people hasn't been fast they've been bombed some type of adaptation you know right uh what they just lost them more brain cells from the field right yeah they drive their brains like it's like the Galapagos island you know they just they develop qualities that exist nowhere else oh yeah these people kudos to anybody who can do fuel cell maintenance because those guys like you go on to a reserve tank those are small tiny like you may not even be able to fit all the way to the end and you have to find somebody smaller than you who can go out to the wing tip so that that's kind of going on to people strength like you're small yeah oh we keep those people around as well because uh the new aircraft we were working with the uh one of the bays we had to go into was just filled with components and we had this one really small Filipino girl who when we had an issue up above all the equipment she was the only one who could fit I'm sorry I'm sorry but you know I mean I made sure that she got like uh we give out bonuses and stuff like that for for hard work and everything since she was the only one and I didn't want to burn her out on it I was like well I gotta give her a good reason to go in there so I made sure I gave her a bonus for that I might imagine so like hey uh don't worry about it here's here's six percent or or like here's an extra uh 18 hour yeah here's an thank you for doing what you're doing I may need you to do it again I feel like that's all of our aviation careers like thanks for you doing it I may need you to do it again that should be a shirt I'm gonna do that now I'm gonna just coin this now word so uh wrapping up the wrapping up this we kind of we learned a whole lot about uh leadership for one uh the the effects of good management and leadership the how technical stuff can just really benefit from having that mentorship tree and then just calling the a for one calling the flag that you don't know anything or don't know something and then vice versa calling out the flag when you know something is wrong what advice would you give for someone aspiring to enter the field of aviation and or aviation testing um at first be ready to listen but later be ready to be the the squeaky wheel I guess we had an aircraft once that we were trying to sell to the military that was when they hit the brake it was going off to the right like 13 degrees which was out of tolerance it was only allowed to go like 10 percent or 10 degrees something like that and I remember when they told us this like everybody in the offices was sitting there nodding like oh okay well that's that's not good um and then the pilot one of our pilots is like yeah if you just pump the brakes it'll be good though and everybody's just like oh okay well that makes sense yeah we can we can do that and I was the only one who stood up and said we shouldn't that shouldn't be a thing on a brand new aircraft like that's not even something I should have to do on a brand new car so at that point because I said no a lot of people other a lot of other people at that point started following sometimes you have to be the first person who steps out and put yourself on a limb but you if you do it with the tech data guiding you or the the regulations guiding you you're not wrong I love that part and especially being the squeaky wheel and it definitely helps too when you have a manager that's or a leader that's uh there to at least like either a back you up or not berate you in front of everybody that's what I'm trying to fix sir so I want these techs to feel safe and doing their job to their knowledge I appreciate you we appreciate your efforts in doing so in any of that uh do you have any any follow-ups or anything else you like to add mr mvp um oh mr mvp go ahead run I just lost it um well there very go fod walk to find it I don't do fod walks anymore I haven't done that shit since I was active duty hilarious and what's so funny is is you and I were talking about it earlier today well at least at least on metric side of it we were yeah yeah I haven't we don't work the flight line my guys I actually I have several techs who've never touched an aircraft and that bothers me like we all work aircraft but they've never touched one I mean I could see that because that because especially like the backshop dudes yeah they're live we work on pieces you know like your your your uh your existence of aircraft is just knowing that these parts will eventually find its way to a airplane that that's about it you know yeah and I mean we have a part of the manufacturing process over one of the aircraft at our site and I mean we have we do everything because like I said we're not attached to any program we do testing for other aircraft and everything and I just lost my tripod I give them a double a kick in my ass tonight I love it uh any anything else Mr. MVP no well I'd say here it goes I say no and then I keep talking so yeah sure um uh appreciate you coming on Rod and talk with us and I appreciate the sanity checks we uh talks we have on a daily basis oh absolutely sir I love them I look forward to you messaging me I know that recently I haven't been online too much and that's about the end again so our morale is about to uh increase for both of us again okay because I've I meant to tell you that earlier today I went almost my mother Francher look who's finally online yeah I've been prepping for a project and I've been I will say this I've gotten a lot of kudos for my organization effort for all these parts because I just built it to kit and like we know every part number name and spot that everything's in and I don't think any of my coworkers have ever seen that that's what I was so busy with but we know exactly what we're doing right now so that's like a first time for even my co-worker my co-manager he's never even seen this before I'm here to the real question do you think that will reflect in your review absolutely not but I go to every year expecting to only get a successful and nothing higher like the bare minimum because I know I'm a pain in the ass like you said you know the squeaky wheel you gotta be the squeaky wheel like in the military they kind of appreciated that they wanted somebody to point it out but my boss isn't he's not accustomed to that and when I point out stuff he's just hearing he has more work so I like I said I'm just going to every year expecting to get that to successful performer nothing like a top performer exceeding or anything like that just because I'm a pain in the ass but I I accept that why would we accept that that's just does innovation in general you know you know like you know like as long as I don't uh as long as I don't go less I'm good I mean the only more I can go is like an actual negative review and I'm okay with that like I said if I'm meeting the goals of my boss but I have a team that responds to me really well and even when we've had overtime they're like okay cool well we got it I feel like those are the people that I would rather promote than somebody that like meets all the bosses demands at the expense of the team yeah I can agree with you but that's why that's why those people don't get promoted yeah I know because the boss takes that and says hey look what I did without me doing what I did he wouldn't be able to make that team offering as efficiently as they did I literally ran into that the other year yeah it was one of those like hey here's the team I did and their response was yep and if I didn't hire you know that would have happened and you're like jesus great you can't even just say not even a thank you you can't even just give me a thanks and I mean that's part of what I teach is making sure that leaders know that we can appreciate our people even when they're just doing their a successful job I mean there's nothing that says I can't say thank you for doing your job out there right and you know by the same token they said well if I didn't hire you you wouldn't have you know then then so you know by me hire you is what made the team great and you're like yeah I don't think you understand the kind of power I have that I can also be that one person who makes who brings the entire team down just as I built it I can also collapse it oh I've learned my people before because they're not always on the same team and I appreciate that my team is always on the same side and when they're fighting amongst each other I will straight up tell them if you need me to be the bad guy I will be and that goes back to like you know being that uh that cloud in the room right like we're all good to go or someone does just has to be the bad one it just makes everything suck if somebody else wants to be the bad one I can up that game and make all of them against me and put them on the same team again yeah I love that building nothing nothing brings people together like a common enemy I can be that asshole I don't like it but I can be that person for them if they need it to be there's a new Wizard of Oz movie coming out it's called Wicked and it's kind of the uh origin story of the Wicked Witch of the Winston Galinda right and uh the Good Witch Galinda and basically uh the Wicked Witch of the West became who she was because they needed a common enemy the land of Oz needed a common enemy to unite against and uh so that's that's kind of how it was so I mean I signed up to be a manager and a leader uh I know how to lead in different ways and I would much rather lead in my personal favorite which is very respect based just knock my headphones out of my ears um I would much rather lead a team based on respect because they always respond so well to it but if I need to if they're not on the same side and I need to get them on the same side there are methods to do that oh yeah I'm all about that I'm all about that too Ronnie Liz definitely a fun time we definitely need to do this again I would love to it was great this is uh like I said earlier before all this is my first podcast I'm this was fun I ended up so so what where can uh people find you broad like as far as like some of your leadership courses or leadership so I my business is known as leadership AF that's a double entendre or a two-fer for those who don't know what a double entendre is um it has two meanings one yes it absolutely means as fuck leadership as fuck um but it also means leadership Air Force because that's where I was bought my leadership and where I really found my leadership how it worked well for me I'm on LinkedIn TikTok and Instagram um I've been really focusing on LinkedIn lately as I'm trying to build this business so we can teach um new managers existing managers existing executives generalized leadership so our our teams and ourselves will have a better output if that makes sense because I mean a a bad executive can have just as much negative impact as a bad manager or a bad member of a team will you agree with this I 100 agree with this so if I can get everybody on the same page of respecting people using policy to make decisions objectively rather than subjectively like these are some of the things I go into and I've found that when I made decisions objectively and was transparent with it with my technicians they always were like oh okay that makes sense and they were more willing to do the job than I needed them to do I really love it so for everyone out there just follow rod leadership AF on LinkedIn Instagram TikTok and I think I said them all right yeah you got them I said them all okay I keep I keep feeling always missing one follow him he has done a lot of great tips a lot of a lot of great lessons and for those who are willing you can sign up and actually take a course with rod on leadership AF but hey let us know what you guys think like what sort of stuff like uh really uh makes you want to learn what sort of stuff uh helps you on the technical side have you ever had a manager that was good bad or one of those like he's their assigned manager but you actually have a what you call a silent or unofficial manager that you actually go to for stuff because I've got those two oh I have some of those guys loaned out right now so yep let us know what you're talking about definitely let us know in the comments on our social 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