[shadowwolf007]

To be honest a lot of your suggestions are probably very solid but come off like the "Find a mechanic you can trust" solution.

By that I mean the advice of "find a mechanic you can trust" only is applicable to someone already familiar enough to know how to determine if a mechanic is trustworthy.

A lot of your advice is probably 100% valuable, but as someone working through a lot of these same concerns I'm stuck wondering "Well, how do I know I'm actually doing that?" It leads me to wonder if I'm actually successful at any of this or just Dunning–Kruger-ing my way through it.

[mikekchar]

Our mechanic was ripping us off. There's this scam where they overtighten the screws on the oil pan and crack the gasket. Oil leaks out very slowly and in some cars ends up on the leads to the battery. This corrodes the leads. They then charge you for a new battery and tell you that there is a electrical problem in your car that will cost thousands of dollars, etc, etc. Luckily I knew about this scam and when our car started losing oil directly after an oil change and the mechanics refused to do anything about it, I was able to tell my wife what was about to happen. This convinced her that the mechanics were scamming us.

So the question became, who do we send the car to. There was a young guy down the street. He was taking apart cars and putting them back together again. His friends were all into racing and while he had previously worked at a dealership, he quit to live the dream of repairing racing cars. Of course he was broke. I told my wife to wander over and see if he wouldn't mind looking after our car. Great mechanic and saved us thousands compared to what the swindlers were doing. Previously the car was breaking down all the time. After we switched it never had a problem. When we replaced our car recently, we gave him our old car as a thank you. Good mechanics are worth keeping happy :-)

It's not really a science for finding people who are good at what they do. There is not a thing that you can pinpoint and say, "That person is definitely good and that person is not". But I think if you start with the proxy of, "That person loves what they do and sacrifices a lot in order to do it", I think you are more likely to find someone good. Not 100%, but you've got a much better shot at it.

Edit: I misinterpreted your post and assumed you meant that you were looking for a good lieutenant to help you. I need more sleep! But either way, work at being that good mechanic in the same way -- love what you do and work hard at it. You'll definitely make progress, so don't worry about it.

[shadowwolf007]

I'm really glad you were able to avoid that scam. That's super scummy.

I built this premise because I do read a lot of car forums and, quite frequently, people would ask "Hey my car is doing XYZ" and a lot of responses would be "Take your car to a mechanic you can trust." To me this is basically telling them "Already know the answer to your question."

One time a guy answered basically saying "Hey, go find a guy who has a car in his driveway he works on every weekend, bring a 6 pack, and ask him for an opinion." It totally opened my eyes to how different types of advice really change people's perspective.

I believe that the value is in explaining what a person who loves what they do actually looks like.

[softfalcon]

I was recently recommended a couple books called "Extreme Ownership" and "The Dichotomy of Leadership". They tackle the idea of how to be a leader and what that means in the day to day.

They break down the communication with your team into a principle you want to strive for. Then you're shown an example of how that happens in the real world.

Once you've seen the patterns, you notice them everywhere, and you begin to unravel the issues, one hurdle at a time. It's like seeing a great design pattern, seeing where it fits and how to apply it, except now you're doing it with communication instead of code.

I think this might help you "find a mechanic you can trust" and get to the heart of what it takes to lead your team.

[mharroun]

That is a fair criticism, my tips were just a list of the top notes I could think of to help. I could dive extensively into each and every bullet.

I will say if you constantly questioning whether you are doing a good job and if you can do better... you are probably above average at least.

[shadowwolf007]

A struggle I've had is I'm used to casing performance in terms of errors or negative feedback. So far the feedback I've had is almost all positive (team is far above previous performance, flight risk is far lower than other departments, etc) but I don't feel like that's helping me improve cuz I don't know how to actually deal with positive feedback.

Some personal introspective criticism I've been wrestling with.