The teaching gap, why my foreman doesn't teach me anything, reveals broken expectations. Join passionate automotive trainer and coach Andrew Uglow as he explores the frustrating complaint that the foreman doesn't teach me anything. In this episode, you'll learn why this is often about unclear expectations rather than unwilling teachers. Discover what technicians really need to learn versus what they think they should be taught, and understand how to create effective mentorship and training systems in your workshop. Along the way, Andrew shares some great stories, including why Google can't replace hands-on mentorship and why workshops that invest in structured training create technicians who stay and thrive. I'm

your

co-host Anthony Pearl, and this is the Frictionless Workshop podcast. Let's get cranking.

Andrew, I think this is gonna be my favorite one to talk about. The big complaint, they don't teach me anything. Foreman just teaches me nothing. Is this real? Is this, I mean, you can hear them saying it, right? I can hear the technicians having this argument, but is it real?

It's, it's quite funny to watch this get brought up in a, in a classroom. So we'll be doing technical training with a, a variety of technicians at different levels. One of the elements that comes behind this is, well, I'm surprised that you people aren't aware of this or haven't been taught this. And usually what comes back as a, as a response, you know, like stimulus response is, I don't get enough training and or my foreman doesn't teach me anything. And they're kind of like different facets of the same box. And so again, if we, we take a, a diagnostic frame to this and we just sort of leave emotion out of it and leave. All of those pieces that we, judgment and that sort of stuff that we usually jump to and just look at it through a lens of curiosity and go, oh, well isn't that interesting? How is it that this person could come to that conclusion? How is it that this, this could be the complaint? What has to be happening for someone to make that statement? And, and so the question is, well, is it true? Well, sometimes. But other times not. And so we, we start to dive deeper into the idea of well, how much training is enough? Training? You know, and, and who's responsible for teaching me, you know, is, is that, is that my tafe? Is that my dealership, is that my foreman? Is that the people that I work next to? Is that the, the manufacturer who's training? Like, who's responsible for teaching me who, who owns that? Uh, and, and I want to. Flip that coin and go, well, who's responsible for learning this? Okay, I understand that there's teaching, but there's also learning like who's, who owns that part? And, and so you can appreciate that this isn't, this what's happening at face value, what's happening at the tip of the iceberg isn't necessarily the reality of what's going on. And so diving deeper, like we, we take that diagnostic framework and we go, well. Okay, let's, let's go and have a think about what's actually happening for the person. Let's peel back some of the surface layers and, and, and go, well, if someone's making this statement and, and they're authentic, all right? They're not just having a, having a whinge because, I dunno, insert all the reasons that people might complain about something, but there, there's actually, let, let's treat this genuine. Go. There's actually something going on. What's happening for that person that they would actually say this, you know, the, the training just doesn't help me. Now is, is that a problem with the training? Is that a problem with the person and their ability to learn? You know, are there cultural elements here? Are there behavioral learning challenges here? Is, is there language things that are in the way here? And sometimes the answer is yes to all of those. And, and certainly coming from a frame as a technical trainer, that's hard. I have a classroom of, you know, 8, 10, 12 people, and I have two people that are struggling. How do I manage that in a class of 12? You know, and, and you look at it and you go, well, English isn't necessarily their first language. It's probably their third or their fourth. And they understand it better than they can explain it. And so now I'm missing part of my feedback loop. I don't have the feedback I need to be able to figure out, well, where are they actually at? And they struggle to convert. From whatever language they think in, into English in a way that I can understand what's really happening. And so there's, there's a bunch of different ways that we go about addressing that, but that can actually be a thing that they genuinely feel lost and stuck and confused. And again, we've looked at the personal elements. What, what about the technological elements? I mean, what's your experience with cars, Anthony? Are they the same today as they were 10 years ago? Five years ago.

Absolutely not. I mean, and it's interesting how some of the basics have just changed so much, right? I mean, what happened to the old handbrake, right? You know, now it's a button. So, so there are obvious changes that, that are there that make it so different, and having to cope with those variables as well is, you know, an incredible part about all of this. Jenny, and I did just wanna ask you at all of this point as well, with this is. Are they even aware when training actually happens? Because if you're doing it, as you said, form formally in a tafe, so you are going somewhere and say, right, nine o'clock today, I'm beginning my training, and the training is on from nine till five. That is training. But if you're getting trained on the job, at what point is it that you're accepting that, oh, I was told that you know, I should use X, Y, Z tool to do A, B, C. Is that. Being thought of as training? 'cause it is.

Absolutely it is. And I, it's a, it's a really good question. I think this is something that at a dealership level or a business level or a workshop level, um, this is something that we can do a lot better in framing the learning as it's happening. And we've spoken in previous podcasts around the idea of learning out of place. As in I go somewhere to do my learning manufacturer's training, technical training somewhere, you know, TAFE college, which, whichever the case may be, or the idea of learning in place. That is, I'm in the workshop and I'm being, um, I don't like to use the word instructed, but I will, and I want to call out a really important distinction in just a second, but I, I'm being instructed on how to be effective, how to be efficient, how to. Fix things the first time, and often, not always, but often, this can come across, uh, abrupt because of the time pressure. You know, the foreman goes, Andrew, that's not how you do that. You do it this way. Okay. That, that's actually a learning lesson. Now, did the foreman do it well? Well, there's opportunity there to improve, but at the same time, who's responsible for the learning here? Who owns that? If as a tech. I take the responsibility, I take the power for my own learning. I can go, okay, appreciate the foreman's a bit, cro crotchety, bit crumpy, bit time stressed, whatever. But that's a really useful lesson and that will help me be better. And, and, and I I wanna pull out the, the distinction I just made then. That's not about doing better. Sure. I wanna do better, but I want to be better. And, and I'm, I'm gonna take that idea of ownership around who's responsible for learning. Well, that's me, that's the tech. If I hand that off to someone else. I lose all of my influence or power or ability in, in doing that. If it's their job to teach me, well, this becomes like an arm folded, you know, unimpressed impressed me. You know, teach me, go, well, yeah, okay, that's not gonna work for anyone. You know? And again, like decades of time in a learning environment, I've had people like that. It's like, you know, I don't need to be here. Impress me with something. You know, it's like, well. You, you can do that if you want to, or you could take ownership, which will be wildly more useful. And, and this, this thing gets back into, well, how are we doing learning, you know, all that sort of stuff. So I, I like the idea of, of calling out, Hey Andrew, let's just pause the job for a second and do a micro learning on how to be more effective here. Alright, now I've got the person, I've got a good frame to work with. Let me explain what's going on. So that takes a skill for the, the foreman, right? Because, uh, I don't know too many foreman, actually, let me be blunt. I don't know any foreman that have ever done, uh, a basic learning on how to do training, how to do teaching, how to facilitate, you know, knowledge transfer, whatever frame you want to call it. And I would offer that in the past. That was a thing, right? The foreman's job was to develop, not teach, develop. The technicians, especially the apprentices. You know, you go back far enough, we used to have an apprentice master and his job was to make sure that you learn your trade and you would pay attention. When he rocked up and said, no, no, no, Andrew, you're not doing this well. This was like, oh, oh, okay. I, I better pay attention you 'cause this is about my professional skill. This is about my competence as a tradesperson. And I think that element has been missed entirely and, and abandoned. I, I would argue largely by the industry. I would offer that there is an enormous value in shifting form and from their reactionary world that they operate in, and using them as the makeup for people's gap in technical skill or ability and going around filling in the gaps for all of the people in the workshop and actually reapply that time, that thinking. A way of rather than just filling in the gaps and getting cars out, well, why don't we turn that into micro learning? Why don't we teach them how to, not just to train their people? Sure. But let's go, let's go beyond that. Let's, let's not play at the tip of the iceberg. Let's go into how do I develop my people? How do I install good thinking? How do I install good frameworks? How do I encourage. The individual to take responsibility for their learning and then give them opportunity after opportunity, after opportunity to, to, to really not just hear stuff, but to take it on board. You know, to take it in. 'cause, 'cause this gets back to one of the other ones that the, the other frustrations that we had from informant. I tell them and tell them and tell them and tell them, and they don't do anything clearly. Telling's not working. Maybe you need a different strategy.

Yeah, and it is an interesting one because I can see two different things that need to happen here. I mean, one is is as you say, the being proactive and the slowing down in the learning side of things requires the workshop itself to say, well, it may take a little bit longer to get some things done in the short term because we are training people, but longer term that has huge benefits. Because you've got people who are fully trained, who are therefore gonna function at a higher level and be able to deliver better for you.

Yeah.

So there's that side of things, and then there's the other side of things is that how do you take note of what you are learning? Because if you keep being told the same things, you kind of want to say, well,

hang on a minute.

You know I say that you haven't told me and you say you have told me. You know, that's. It's kind of one of those things who's, who's right in that particular case, but you know, this, is it formalized enough? Is there enough, you know, at the end of the day saying, well, what did I actually learn today?

Yeah, so there's, there's, like you say, absolutely two chunks here and, and I love getting to the bottom of something like this is, this is being the thrill of working with technology, certainly for me. For years as I, we, we, we start off with this concern, this complaint, this dissatisfaction with something around cars. And we actually go back to find out, well, how is the vehicle actually behaving? And then what's causing the vehicle to behave that way? And, and then what's the source of that, you know, operation that's causing the symptom. And so if we take the same idea here and we go, well, what's actually going on here? It's funny. Whilst this is about learning, this concern is about learning. People genuinely feel lost because of the technology, because of, because of the complexity, because of the number of variables. Like it's, it's, it's really quite overwhelming what's actually being complained about here. Whilst, yeah, sure. It's learning and, and, and learning will help soul or mitigate this concern. What's actually really going on is that it's about safety for the technician, and this is not something that I have ever seen anyone else talk about. There is personally, for technicians working on high technology vehicles, an enormous risk of screwing up. Like if you look at the environment that they operate in, it's, it's time poor, it's information dense. There's, there's rarely, and this goes back to one of their earlier complaints, there's never time to do it properly, and that the whole point of doing properly is isn't that. We're doing shifty, shonky, dodgy things. It's about reaching that point where I can be personally confident in the quality of my work, that it won't come back and bite me on the butt, you know? Now, that's not to say that the work was done badly, but I haven't reached that point where I have that sensation of confidence or reassurance as a technician. Uh, this one will be fine. I've just got get it out or, you know, I, I like to double check. I like to be certain, and if I'm not given that opportunity, it's disconcerting. And so we have an element here around safety and we talk about, or if you, if you wanna be less polite, faux food, which is fear of screwing up. And it's a real thing. Workshops are a, workshops are a culture, workshops or an environment workshops. There is. Peer pressure. There is all of these social elements at play that when I make a mistake on a car, it doesn't just stay my mistake. Everyone knows, oh, Andrew screwed up that white car. What a peanut, you know, anyone should have been able to do this. And so I take a hit socially. I take a hit emotionally, I take a hit mentally and, and this is Victoria, is in the short term just now releasing. A whole psychological safety piece around requirements for workplaces. And this is not something that we talk about in, in automotive workshops. And so you go back to the good idea of training. How do technicians get safety? How do they, how do they get, they get to that point. So they get it through knowledge and skill and. When they're complaining, and we tested this with the guys in the, in, in training. I said, well, you say you're not getting training. You're here today. What's going on? He goes, no, no, no, it's not, it's not the same when I'm at work. And you start to unpack what's happening for them. It's, it's the fear of screwing up. It's the fear of making mistake. No one wakes up in the morning. Certainly no reasonable technician. Wake up in the morning and goes Right. Today I am gonna send our bottom line backwards at speed. I am gonna screw up, I'm gonna. Throw every conceivable part I possibly can at the car, whether it needs it or not. You know, I'm just gonna cost, but no one wakes up and does that. They do that because that's the best option available to them because of high technology. Lack of confidence, lack of skill, lack of learning, lack of clarity around what to do, how to do a lack of frameworks. There's a whole variety of pieces. Don't get installed. We just allow quote unquote experience over time to develop those. And I think that's, well, there's a word that I would like to use, but I can't for the sake of polite language, but I think that's just profoundly poor and harmful. And so I go back to the idea of, well, let's go and install those pieces. Let's go and give them. Good frameworks that they can put new thinking into. Like you, you can't use old keys to open a new door. Right? You've, you've gotta have a good new, modern framework to be able to take on board modern tactics and, and so let's do that. Let's install that. Let's have our form and take the lead on that, because we used to do that and we used to produce really good quality people and you know, all of the reasons that happened. All of those things around, you know, the quality of people that we have, you know, the, the, their preparation for the workshop, for the workplace, all these sorts of things that play into this. This is a fairly big dynamic piece, but solving this issue goes beyond just simply doing more training. I, I, I argue that the solution comes out of let's, let's do better develop. I think that's the piece that is underpinning what the concern really is.

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I mean, part of it's you need to train the trainer as well. Of course, aren't you? I mean, that's. That's the thing here, isn't it? Because you have to have people that create not only the opportunity to deliver information, but an atmosphere in which to deliver it in, because part of the reason that people screw up is because they feel like they can't ask for help because they feel like they should know the answer. And they're being entrusted to do things that if they do go and ask a silly question that they're gonna get wrapped over the knuckles going, you should know that,

right?

And, and that fear is real, right? And it, and if you don't have a reference point, then you are going to take the odds to it and go, well, it could be A, B, or C, and I'm going to go with A and hope the hell that, that doesn't screw everything up. And if suddenly, you know, the whole thing blows up. Then you're in trouble, but you're playing the odds with it. And that's, I think that happens in the workplace, doesn't it?

Sure. Or they, they just follow the process and do what the process said without any awareness around what the process was actually asking for. You know, I had this code, I followed the process. It said, do this. So I did, which is a very linear thing, and it's like, well now I've got an out, now I'm safe, quote unquote, because. I did what it told me to do, and not my fault. It's the, it's the process's fault. So this is teaching foreman, how to develop people as opposed to train them all, or even teaching foreman how to coach people. Um, and if you wanna look at this, we need to shift the onus of learning from the, the foreman to the individual first. As, as a step one, you're responsible for your own learning. This is on you. You are struggling to learn, no problemo. Let's figure out why that is. Is it language? Is it culture? Is it you know, cognitive function? Is it like what's actually happening? And then let's find a way that works for you. Um, and we see this in in technical training all the time. I have people who I go through a theory session and they have no idea. We take them to the car and they start handling, touching, listening. I won't say tasting, but they're using their senses. And now it clicks Now. They can go, oh, I can see when you said this. Now I can see what it is. They needed those two parts to do this. Other people are quite okay with watching an animation and listening that they're visual audio learners. And so this then comes back to if we taught our foreman how to do this.

It's a bit like music, isn't it? There are some people that can, you know, that can read music and know the theory and way they go, and then there are plenty of people that have never learned how to read music and are still amazing musicians, right? It's, it's a different way of learning and depends on the, on the different people and the, and the opportunities around that. Which doesn't mean you don't need to know the theory. Oh, for sure. If you are performing at a particular level, but it's how you begin that process, right. Could be a world of difference.

And, and giving, giving people, technicians specifically, 'cause we, we are talking about technicians, but even foreman, giving them a framework or a strategy to work from, Hey Andrew, when we go into a learning thing, here's the strategy that you can use to absorb information more effectively. And step one, step two, step three, you know, just nice and simple. And I do the same for the foreman and I want to pull out the differences between telling someone some something, teaching someone something. Training someone on something or simply developing them and developing is by far the most effective. And there is a framework for development. It's not just this random thing that drops on the person in front of me outta the sky. There is that actual framework that I use and that they use being to absorb the information. And this is, this is where development comes from. And we haven't done it. We have not done this well. We haven't done it necessarily well at a TAFE level, the TAFE too well, but there's opportunity to improve. Manufacturers generally do pretty good at learning. I would offer that that is a, a step above what TAFE do. Not the TAFE do bad, but like we go from really good to moving into the excellent realm generally speaking. But we've never taught our foreman how to do this. We, we, we've never passed on this knowledge. We've never optimized for micro learning in the business. We haven't done that. And I'm gonna argue that is a underpinning element for why we get these complaints. My foreman doesn't teach me anything. Probably because, did anyone teach him how to teach? Did anyone teach him how to develop people? Did anyone give him a framework for micro learning? And, and if the answer is no, fine, but let's go and beat the foreman for this. Let's go and resource the foreman for this. You know, and I go back to the, the person who is struggling to learn who's, who's dealing with all of this emotional stuff that we never talk about in terms of furious growing up. It is, it's a absolute real theme. Like I see it even in the practical activities that we do in a training environment, which is largely safe. You know, if you accidentally set fire to a training car, like we care about that, we'll put it out. But it's, it's not a customer's car. It's not, and, and look, we set up the training, so it's almost impossible to do that. You'd have to go out of your way, but, but it's not a customer's car. Does that make sense? It's, it doesn't have all of those consequences. No one's gonna be going, Andrew, why did you fit this patent and charge me $6,000 for it? I, you know, not being able to answer that, like, that's traumatic, you know, traumatic service advisor, traumatic, like, that's a hard conversation. So even in this safe training environment, there is still this undercurrent of foso. Um, and I, I think that's something that as workshop management, we need to be mindful of and we need to go and address in how we go about developing our technicians. And I would offer that when we do. We would solve several different complaints that we hear we're certainly gonna solve this. One of my foreman doesn't tell me anything or doesn't teach me anything or, or, you know, you know, I don't get enough training. Okay. So there's, there's that, but it's, it's also, I don't get time enough to do the job properly. Recognition and appreciation. There's no career progression. Well, I'm gonna argue that career progression versus career personal development. Sure. We wanna get paid more. And career progression, I guess, is a subset of that. But if I feel that I'm learning and I'm feeling that I can contribute, well, isn't that progression?

I tell you what, there is so much more that we could unpack in all of this, and particularly in the in training and the way people learn, but I, I wanted to just make sure we wrap things up by you giving a little plug for where you are going in terms of foreman school. Do you want to tell everyone a little bit more about where that's. Where that's gonna take people.

Yeah. Look, we're, we're super close to actually, uh, reaching out to people and going, Hey, look, if, if there is, we, we talk about skills gap in workshop. What about the form gap in workshops? No one talks about that. You know, we, we take highly skilled technical professionals who are gurus with technology, and now we have them run a team and they're not the same skillset teams. You can't plug a scan tool into a team member. You know, you don't download fault codes from a team member. So they're different skills and, and we don't resource that foreman. Well, we really don't. They get technical training and they should for sure. But where is the development for foreman? Where is the, the increase in their self-leadership, in their team leadership? Where is their ability to navigate this insane. I demand short time, high consequence environment that they're responsible for. You know, they're running around like the, the blue ass fly and, and playing this reactionary game. And no one's taught them how to, how to not do that. How to own their time, how to do better, how to lead themselves, how to run their own in a game, how to teach other people to run their inner game, how to do delegation, how to have really high quality, challenging conversations with your team, with customers, with parts, with management. No one's, no one's given them these skills and and ability. And if we flip out of perspective of this workshop foreman into the view of a service manager, wouldn't you love to have a really great right hand person who just solves 90% of the challenges before they even show up at your desk? Wouldn't you like to have someone that you can genuinely rely on who just gets stuff done, who the team love and respect, and produces outstanding results? And hits the numbers as well and delights the customers and, you know, wouldn't you like someone like that in the business? Like, wouldn't that be a profoundly useful resource? Now, I'm not suggesting that it doesn't happen, but I am suggesting that we don't do well in getting people to that stage. Why wouldn't you speed that up? Why would you wait three years for that to develop when you, if you can get it in wildly less time than that and have them be more effective? And so this is the intent of the professional foreman method. We called it PFM for a reason, because that's kind of what we expect of them. You know, we have all these high expectations of what they're supposed to do, but we don't teach them how to do it. And I, I think that is, I think that's really poor. And so we're, we are launching the professional foreman method. You could call it a school foreman if you'd like to. Um, and, and really what we're doing is, is going after all of those things that are expected of them, but they've never been taught how to do. And the difference that this makes in, in businesses, all of our data to date suggests that this is a six figure change to the bottom line of the business. Quite relatively short order, you know, sort of six to 12 months if, if there isn't another six figures on the bottom line for, for no extra, for no significant outlay. You know, I'd be genuinely surprised 'cause it's all the difference that makes the difference.

I love it. It's going to be a big thing. We're going to make sure we include some details on how to get in touch with you, of course, in the show notes so that people can find out more as they're listening to this. 'cause by the time you're listening to this, you might even be ready to enroll.

Look, I would, I would expect, expect, you know, in the next week or two we we're gonna be taking live enrollments and there's gonna be limited places. I don't want to do, you know, fear of missing out and all that palava, but I just simply can't take. 200 people in a class is not gonna work. So we're gonna be very niche, very boutique, very personal, hands-on. And we're actually, for the people who picked this up early, we're actually going to add some personal one-on-one coaching for the individuals, because this is hard. You thought techs were hard. Being a tech was hard. This is harder. And so they, they need some support. They need some meaningful support that can help facilitate their development in, in a really short space of time, because that's what's expected of them. So let's, let's, let's not just meet that expectation, let's exceed that. And so we're offering to do that as a bit of a bonus for the, for the early adopters.

Fantastic. Well, everyone listening in, you heard it first, so follow the links below. Make sure you get in touch and be one of those first people to sign up. Andrew, thank you so much for this episode of the podcast, and of course, we've got many more to come into the future, so thanks for being part of this

one. Thanks very much. Frictionless is a skill.

Thank you for listening to the Frictionless Workshop podcast. For details on how to get Andrew working with you and your technicians, take a look at the show notes. There's also a link to some special content you can access. I'm Anthony Pearl reminding you to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.