It’s the indispensable ingredient to success in this business. If an MRO company has it, they can soar. If it doesn’t, sooner or later they’ll shut the hangar door.
AMT interviewed a quartet of leaders at a like number of successful MROs, people whose job it is to recognize talent and develop it. What we discovered is a common perception as to what makes for good leadership.
The Essential Skills
“We really hire for values and character — and, of course, someone with adequate technical knowledge,” says Greg Sahr, president of family owned, Moline, IL-based bizjet MRO Elliott Aviation. That last element — technical prowess — is important. Someone who’s worked their way up through the ranks is preferable. Such a path begets “understanding and empathy with the technician,” says Sahr. And that, in turn, breeds a special species of credibility that’s born from having been there and done that.
Sahr’s situation is pretty typical among MRO leaders of all ranks. He started off in the business as an avionics installation technician and worked his way up the ladder.
“We have people who started out with us as apprentice techs and are now managers and directors within the company,” says Amy Henrichsen, vice president people at Seattle-based Aviation Technical Services, one of the largest third-party transport category MROs in North America.
“It’s essential that [prospective leaders] have a good understanding of the technical aspects” of MRO, says Wayne Jamroz, vice president of operations for AAR Aircraft Services. Jamroz operates out of the giant MRO’s Rockford, IL, facility. “We traditionally bring the best technical people [in] and move them into leadership roles.”
While not discounting the importance of so-called ‘softer skills,’ Per Karlsson, director of maintenance for Teterboro, NJ-based Meridian Jet Center, says, “There are always core skills required to be a manager. But, you have to know what business you’re in.” That business is demanding, competitive, and regulated with a focused ferocity precious few others are.
Communication
Once a future leader possesses the right technical skills, other attributes come into play. Foremost among them is communication. It starts with communicating with technicians down on the hangar floor and in the back shops. “I spent quite a bit of time avionics trouble-shooting,” says Sahr. “When I’m speaking with customers, I can quickly connect with the technicians in the process and understand what the issue is. I think this helps considerably.” And not just in better communicating with technicians, but the manufacturer, the customer and other players as well. That meshing of technical understanding and communication skills helped leaders at Elliott Aviation recently install the first aftermarket Garmin G5000 cockpit upgrade package into the pointy end of a Beechjet/Hawker 400XP.
It’s the ability to speak multiple “languages” — customer, management, manufacturer, regulator — that sets an effective leader apart from the pack. “To be a leader within our organization is quite dynamic,” says AAR’s Jamroz. That dynamism is pegged in no small part to the ability to communicate with lots of different people with widely differing perspectives. “You’re not only working with the project, you’re working with your own employees on that project,” he says. “In addition to that you’re also working with customer representatives, technical representatives, quality representatives — as well as the customer headquarters folks, the vice president, the head of planning … So it’s got to be a very dynamic person to be able to handle [issues] and be able to talk, manage, and lead through the issues that pop up on a day-to-day basis.”
It all begins, however, with being able to communicate with line employees and leaders. Each morning at AAR “we have toolbox meetings,” says Jamroz. Safety and the issue of the day take center stage as people exchange information the way they have since time immemorial: face to face. How effective is this old-fashioned, eyeball-intensive approach? In part because of just this sort of initiative, the AAR Aircraft Services vice president says over the last four years safety has been such that worker compensation costs have plummeted 98 percent, a not inconsequential number— both in terms of employee safety and the bottom line.
Other Leadership Musts
Communication isn’t the only soft skill. Jamroz adds to that list “patience, tenacity, and the ability to think on your feet.” ATS' Henrichsen says “courage” is right up there too. “The way we define that is that [leaders] are willing to make hard decisions. Maybe not the [the most] popular one — but the right decision.” She says at ATS, “We look for people who have demonstrated courage throughout their career.”
Jamroz contends the MRO industry as a whole historically has not done a very good job in developing such non-technical leadership skills — including critical thinking, “people skills that are required to manage the people issues” that emerge virtually every day.
That’s changing however, changing as more and more companies across the aerospace spectrum realize that there’s more to managing than simply mastering your own particular technical discipline.
“We recently conducted a leadership training course utilizing Global Jet Services [for] 30 of our managers and leaders. It wasn’t a generic, off-the-shelf [affair],” says Elliott’s Greg Sahr. The course was driven by employee feedback. Elliott’s president calls the course “very, very targeted training for our leaders and managers across the business.”
Has it paid off? Sahr is emphatic: “Absolutely,” he asserts, “we’ve made tremendous headway with our managers and leaders, and with our overall culture.” He’s quick to caution that there’s no magic bullet, “no one training sessions that’s going to be the be-all, end-all … There are many things we are doing to create leaders within our organization.”
Over at ATS, Henrichsen says they’ve worked with outside consultants to mold their leadership training as well as developed their own. “Our philosophy is that our leaders will be provided leadership development training at least one time per year. We want to make sure that each leader has the opportunity to continue to develop.”
Not every MRO has got the girth to establish formal leadership training efforts. But that doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of leadership mentoring. The whole of Meridian, a well-respected aviation player, has some 250 employees. Per Karlsson says about a dozen of them work for him as technicians in the Jet Center’s repair station.
“You should always have some sort of [leadership] training. But we don’t have the formal training that some of these corporations have.” Instead, Karlsson keeps a keen eye out for talent. That means, “We start to try to groom them right away to become inspectors.”
Again, the preference at most MRO shops, be they global or family run, is to promote from within, to marinate the employee from the get-go in company culture.
“Everybody thinks they can go out and hire a good manager” from outside the company, says Jamroz. "They’re not as readily available as you might think.” That’s why “we’ve developed our leaders internally, so that we can promote from within. It’s taken several years to do that.”
Nothing is instant in MRO, especially developing the folks in whose hands you entrust the company’s fortunes.
Workforce Training in Germany
Some 500 young people are currently undertaking either traditional or dual-study training programs with the Lufthansa Technik Group in Germany. Around 15 different vocational training programs or fields of study are available for selection. The most important training locations at Lufthansa in Germany are Hamburg and Frankfurt. 157 apprentices and dual-track students (a specific part of the German “Ausbildung” educational system) started with Lufthansa Technik in 2015 while approximately as many again will commence in August 2016. The selection process for 2017 is already underway in parallel.
With an ever dwindling cohort of future workers, caused by a downward trend in birth rate, and the sinking numbers of candidates for training, Lufthansa Technik has intensified its HR marketing efforts in recent years. This also includes collaboration as part of the Hamburg Aviation initiative, in which the Hamburg aviation industry joined forces with the city of Hamburg and universities. Lufthansa Technik is closely cooperating with seven German universities. Thanks to these measures and the increasing interest shown by young women, currently approximately 15 percent share, in aviation-related professions, Lufthansa is still receiving sufficient applications in order to fill all training places with suitable young candidates. In addition to professional standards, aviation-related professions also require special character-forming qualities.
Lufthansa Technik fills a large percentage of technical positions available in the company from the ranks of its own trainees and dual-study students. A funding program exists for the purpose of studies following on from the training for especially suitable trainees. A separate technical training organization (Lufthansa Technical Training) ensures continuous education and qualification of the specialists throughout their entire working life.
MTU Germany isn't noticing a widening gap because an aging technical workforce structure. At MTU some experienced staff will be leaving the company over the next few years, but MTU will be able to fill the vacant possitions.
MTU hasn't been particularly affected by a shortage of aviation/aerospace talent. It has great school and university programs, which helps create and maintain contact to young talent. Though, MTU has noticed that it is becoming more difficult to find qualified and interested applicants for apprenticeship-type jobs that are a part of the German “Ausbildung” system, as many young people are choosing study over more vocational training programs.
MTU is of course, looking for an incredibly specific profile and skillset, so to find the right person can take some time and effort, but that is the same in every sector and industry.
In Hannover, Germany, MTU has a number of programs to attract and keep talents. It has the Maintenance Laboratory (Maintenance Labor). This is a collaboration with the Technische Universität Braunschweig (Technical University Braunschweig) that combines theory with practical experience for engineering students. It covers lectures and workshop visits and enables students to really get hands on. MTU also has a master’s program, through which current employees can apply to receive a grant for studies. These employees can stop working and study full time, and they are guaranteed a job to come back to – this future job is decided upon, and agreed to in advance by the employee, company, and future department respectively. Additionally, MTU offers a grant for a part-time course alongside employment. These employees also receive a financial contribution and days off for educational purposes. MTU offers the “JET trainee program” which is an 18-month program across the company and sees graduates getting to know every area of the business before taking up a role in a particular area. A dual study program is available which combines vocational training with a degree. And MTU offers a large number of internships and student jobs, including the opportunity for students to join us and write their bachelor or master thesis here on a paid basis.
MTU collaborates strongly with schools and universities. MTU has very good ties to the TU Braunschweig, but they are also well-networked with three other higher-education facilities in the Hannover region: the Leibniz School of Business, the Leibniz Akademie, and the Weserberglund University. This is similar at MTU locations in Ludwigsfelde (close to Berlin) and Munich.
MTU also has connections to local schools and cooperates with them through visits to schools, work experience days, and informational materials etc. It also has what they call “Centers of Competence” with various universities throughout Germany with a focus on technological innovation and development.
- Marino Boric
About the Author
Jerome Greer Chandler
Jerome Greer Chandler is a two-time winner in the Aerospace Journalist of the Year competition's Best Maintenance Submission category; he won in 2000 and 2008. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2017 Aerospace Media Awards in Paris, France. His best-seller 'Fire and Rain' chronicles the wind shear crash of Delta Flight 191 at DFW.