Mentoring

We have a departure from our normal cover story this month. Instead of profiling a D.O.M.magazine reader, we decided to start a discussion of how we can help prepare the next generation of maintenance managers.

One of the themes that developed as I started to ask some of my industry contacts for their input for this month’s cover story was that of mentorship.

I am thankful that I have some great mentors who have helped me along my career path in aircraft maintenance. It started when I stepped on the hangar floor as a green aircraft mechanic helper. My supervisor Cyndi Christensen, who has since passed away, was a patient mentor who helped me grow professionally. She stressed the importance of doing every job the right way. She allowed me to do just about every job on the aircraft within a short amount of time, something uncommon for new mechanics. Each time I was assigned a new task, she would have me go to the maintenance manual and read about the job. Once I was done, we would then discuss the job. She was teaching me the importance of referring to the maintenance manual for each task and developing my communication skills by showing how to discuss a topic to ensure the other person completely understands what he or she will be doing.

I wasn’t perfect. I made some mistakes, as we all do. But Cyndi helped me learn from every mistake I made to help ensure that I didn’t make the same mistake again.

After a few years of working under the supervision of an A&P, many of my peers and supervisors encouraged me to get my A&P. Thanks to that continued encouragement, I took my FAA exams and got my A&P certificate. Although having an A&P was not required where I worked, I understood that having an A&P certificate in my pocket would help open up doors of opportunity in my career. After getting my A&P, many of those same people stressed the importance of getting my Inspection Authorization, which I did a few months after I had met my time requirement.

Once I became a supervisor (thanks to having my A&P and IA), it was time to start giving back. It is human nature to want to do a task you know well (in my case, engine rigging) instead of taking the time to train someone new to do the job. But if I was out on the flight line rigging an engine, I wasn’t doing my job as a supervisor, so I made it a point to share as much as my knowledge as possible. I wasn’t arrogant, thinking I knew it all. Instead, I was willing to help out the young mechanics any way I could. All the while, I continued to get encouragement from mentors, which allowed me to continue my career growth as I moveed into quality assurance and eventually landed a job as an editor.

And here we are today. If you think about it, D.O.M.magazine is one big mentoring project. We have a great team of contributing writes who take the time to help mentor our readers each month by sharing their expertise in varying subject matters. Our profile stories aren’t meant to put someone on a pedestal, but rather to share that person’s knowledge and lessons-learned with our readers.

As I said in my opening paragraph, we wanted to start a discussion of how we can help prepare the next generation of maintenance managers with this month’s cover story. This discussion doesn’t need to end here. In fact, we can’t allow it to end here – this needs to be a continuing discussion within the aircraft maintenance community. What are you doing to help prepare our future leaders? What is your company doing to help attract, retain and grow the talent we need in this industry? We’d like to hear from you as we continue this discussion!  

Thanks for reading, and we appreciate your feedback!  –  Joe