Is there really no career progression in automotive? Andrew Uglow destroys this myth by revealing the countless paths available to skilled technicians—from his own journey to business ownership, to opportunities in training, consulting, and beyond. Discover why automotive skills prepare you for almost anything in life.

Main Topics Covered

1. The myth of limited career progression in automotive
2. Career progression vs. personal development: understanding what you really want
3. Andrew's journey: apprentice → workshop controller → trainer → national training manager → business owner
4. Why automotive skills are highly transferable to other industries
5. Alternative career paths beyond service management
6. The complexity of automotive as preparation for life's challenges
7. Why the best technicians often make poor managers
8. How to support technician development without forcing management roles
9. Leadership vs. management: understanding the difference
10. Entrepreneurial opportunities for skilled technicians

Key Insights & Learnings

1. Career Progression vs. Development - Most technicians who complain about "no progression" actually want personal development and skill growth, not necessarily management positions with more responsibility.
2. Transferable Skills - If you can succeed in an automotive workshop with its complexity, time pressure, and customer demands, you can excel at almost any career challenge.
3. Multiple Pathways - Career options include: staying technical and becoming a specialist, moving into training/education, consulting, starting your own business, or transitioning to other industries using your problem-solving skills.
4. The Management Trap - Promoting the best technician to foreman or service manager often fails because technical excellence doesn't equal leadership ability without proper training.
5. Define Your Goals - Before seeking "progression," technicians need to ask: Do I want more responsibility, more money, more recognition, or simply to get better at what I do?

Stories & Examples Shared

1. Andrew's Personal Journey - From leaving school at 15 as one of 200 applicants for an apprenticeship, through workshop roles, into training, and ultimately business ownership—demonstrating the diverse paths available.
2. The Complexity Advantage - Why mastering automotive technology, with its density of information and time pressure, prepares technicians for challenges that would overwhelm people in "easier" careers.
3. The Promotion Disaster - Real examples of excellent technicians promoted to management who became miserable because they wanted to fix cars, not manage people.
4. Skills Beyond Automotive - How technicians have successfully transitioned to business consulting, project management, technical writing, and entrepreneurship using their automotive foundation.

Action Items for Listeners

For Technicians:

1. Define what "career progression" means to you personally—is it position, pay, recognition, or skill development?
2. Assess your transferable skills: problem-solving, diagnostic thinking, time management, customer communication
3. Consider alternative paths: training, consulting, specialisation, entrepreneurship
4. If you want management, actively seek leadership training—don't wait to be promoted first

For Workshop Owners/Managers:

1. Stop assuming all good technicians want to become managers
2. Create development pathways that don't require leaving technical work
3. Offer leadership training before promoting to management roles
4. Support technicians exploring alternative career paths—they may return with valuable skills
5. Recognise that retaining a happy specialist is better than creating an unhappy manager

For Career Counsellors:

1. Understand that automotive offers diverse career opportunities beyond the workshop
2. Help technicians identify their transferable skills
3. Challenge the assumption that "progression" means management
4. Support exploration of entrepreneurial and consulting opportunities

More information

Andrew has a variety of free downloads and tools you can grab.

Discover if your workshop is Retention Worthy© here or visit his website, https://www.solutionsculture.com where the focus is on bringing reliable profitability to automotive workshop owners and workshop management through the Retention, Engagement and Development of their Technical Professionals.

Co-Host: Anthony Perl

This podcast was produced by 'Podcasts Done for You' https://podcastsdoneforyou.com.au.

How automotive skills translate to countless other industries and discover the difference between career progression and personal development. Along the way, you'll hear some great stories, including Andrew's own journey. From apprentice to national training manager to business owner, and why the skills learned in automotive repair, prepare technicians for almost any challenge life throws at them.

I'm your co-host, Anthony Pearl, and this is the Frictionless Workshop podcast. Let's get cranking. Andrew. Let's talk about this whole idea of. Career progression. Is there enough career progression for technicians? What is the progression even look like? You know, where is it that they start? Where is it that they want to go to?

Is it even the same for everybody? How do you actually encapsulate that whole idea? Because there is a perception, I gather from the feedback you've had, that there isn't enough progression. This is a mixed basket,

Do you wanna become dealer principle of a dealership? Because you could, there is no question. I know of several people who are dealer principles, but you have to develop more skill than just the ability to fix funky cars or talk with unhappy customers. You need to develop financial acumen. You need to develop people skills, you need to develop leadership.

And I wanna highlight that one. Like we don't need more managers, we need more leaders. They're not the same, that they're like absolutely different things. One is about managing a system, the other one is about leading people. People don't wake up in the morning and go, gee, I'm, I'm so looking forward to being managed today, or I'm non-compliant.

Manage me, you know, manage me harder, manage me harder. No, people don't do that. People go, leave me. Help me. I'm struggling with this. And leaders help leaders serve and we take a management frame, not a leadership frame, and it has a suboptimal outcomes in their business. And so back to the idea of career progression or where do you wanna go?

Do you want to be a leader? Because that would be more useful. And so if that's the case, if really as a tech, if that's what you want, you want to be, you know, known, recognized, appreciated, you know, stopped in the street and asked for your autograph, if that's your thing. Well short, by all means develop your technical skill.

'cause the foundations for that are gonna stand you in good stead for everything else you do in or outta the industry. Conversely, let's not just stop there. Let's start with helping you lead you like you want to progress, right? Let's get you leading you well. Once you are leading you well, now we can give you unofficial responsibility.

You can be the team leader, you can be the workshop. Supervisor, you can be the whatever sub thing that is in the workshop that we can give you that gives you more responsibility to demonstrate your leadership. And now we have a, a gap. Well, maybe you work this part of the workshop and someone works that part of the workshop right now.

Why don't you start doing leadership with customers? Why don't you start doing leadership financially? Why don't you start doing leadership? So I, I'm gonna argue there, there is and there isn't. And it depends upon what do you want? When you say there's no progression, what's that really about? Because if we just deal with that, as you know, I start as an apprentice and then I become a tech, and then I become a senior tech, and then I become a foreman.

Then I become a service manager, and then I become a fixed operations manager, and then I become a general manager. Is that the progression you're looking for? Like automotive is not corporate? You know, I don't become a, a subs, semi prime candidate for partial leadership. Like there's so many levels and sub levels in corporate.

This isn't that This, this is about solving you. You wanna know what a workshop's about? A workshop is about encouraging customers to invest in positive, reliable ownership experiences of their vehicle in this business with the skill that this workshop has. That's what a workshop does. Customers don't come because they've got great workshop management.

Customers don't come because they've got outstanding profitability. Customers come to get stuff fixed on their car 'cause it is or isn't doing something, or they just can't afford to have the car go bad on them because it's too much stress. And so they just want that stressor added their life. And so our job as technicians is to do that.

Is to provide that skill so the customer can jump in their car, drive it, come back 12 months later, and they haven't had any problems that they love their car, that it's a great vehicle for them. It's, this is what we're selling. And so you go, well, there's no career progression. Okay, sure. Where do you wanna go?

And the flip side of this is, okay, so you wanna go wherever that is. If you don't have the skills required to be a good tech, there is no way that you can progress. There just isn't. Because the skills that put you in good standing for anything else you do. And I, I say this out of personal experience, what I've learned as a technician, how to think, how to think for myself, how to manage myself, how to deal with stress, how to handle angry customers, like all of these skills I learned in the workshop.

I went them at the cliff base. Yeah, sure. I went back to school and I did, I studied at Swinburne. I, I did some really useful stuff. I then went and did a whole bunch of other stuff that fits outside of the conventional thinking, because the conventional thinking I found was lagging, but because of what I learned and how, not what I learned to think, how I learned to think, but just that was the foundation that allowed me to progress.

So I love having this conversation with Dex. I love having this conversation with Dex, oh, there's no progression. Great. Where do you want go? Where do you wanna go? And, and, and how committed are you to that?

The conversation could easily come from, Hey, I really want to get to here at one point. Is there any way the company can help me get there? I've thought about doing this course, or that course, or, you know. Doing some extra hours and sitting in here to see what other people are doing. It's the way that conversation is held can be everything as well.

Absolutely, and, and with all due respect,

Ha. Right? And I don't know if you missed that or not. Let's train you on that, and then we'll pro promote you. Let's give you some skill and then let's try that out and see how that works. Whereas usually they just go, oh, here you go. Go and work with customers. I tell you what, there's a world difference between customers who answer back, who have emotional days, who illogical, irrational, and unreasonable, versus cars that aren't sure.

Cars do weird things, but they don't have bad days. They don't turn up late. They don't. Abuse you because who knows why? Global warming. I don't know what it was. You know the, the customers just do some of the worst things and not all customers. Most of them are really good, but some of them have, or maybe some of them could go to someone else's business and upset their staff rather than coming to my business and upsetting my staff.

I, I look,

And I like, I've, I've seen this, I've worked with this, I've spoken to customers. It's, it's funny the feedback I get from customers, Hey, you know, oh, what do you do for a living, Andrew? Oh, I help technicians conquer automotive technology. Oh, really? So you're teaching them how to work? Yes. Oh, I had this car and this problem and they did this to me.

And that it just, it's always comes out and I, I love it. Abs like, give me feedback, let me know how we're going. I, I think it's fantastic. And so we have, as an industry, as individual businesses, we have opportunity to improve. Customers pay us money. They don't make us money. They pay us money, and so we need to look after them.

That's only fair and reasonable. We need to give. Genuine value for what we do. Conversely though, customers could be, what's the word I'm looking for? A bit more open at times. You know, and the reason they Google and go to forums and chats and stuff is they, they're trying to find information because information is power.

Knowledge is power. You know, they've been handled in the past and they don't wanna get handled again. And sure, you know, maybe they're trying to solve a problem, but at the same time, be open, particularly at a dealership level and even independent workshop level, we have access to information that you don't, we understand cars at a level that you just simply don't.

So help us, help you, you know, help us work with you like we want you, and this is the good business. We want you to have the most pleasurable ownership experience in your car as you possibly can, or we, we don't want you to have a second thought about the reliability of your car. In order to do that, we need you to invest in the skill in this workshop on your vehicle, and this is how we believe it should happen.

And take that on board, you know? Sure. It's about the money. Don't get me wrong, we're not a charity, we're not a sheltered workshop. Although you could argue that for some places it's a business. We're here the money, but at the same time, we're here to give genuine value. We're we're here to delight customers.

They don't necessarily know what's going on, so there's not necessarily an opportunity for recognition to follow through, and therefore the opportunity for that to be recognized as being there something that they've done and therefore get some career progression as a result of it. And I had this personally just recently where I had my car and I was on a longish journey and.

The warning light came on. Yeah. And an engine warning light. And I'm like, I don't know. And I was on the freeway and I managed to get to the destination even though I was losing some speed at, at times, get to where I was going, pull out the manual as you do. What does this actually mean is the question it said.

And so the interesting thing was it said it might be that you haven't tightened your fuel cap. That can get rid of the problem. Well, that's an easy fix. I can get out of the car and I can do that. Did that, no, that didn't do it. And when you, you know, eventually was in touch with the dealership and said, what's going on?

Oh yeah, you shouldn't drive it much. Bring it in. We'll look at the problem. The short version of the story is, I went to the dealership, couldn't get in there for two weeks, got in. Even though I still had to make some other trips with this engine warning light coming off and on, get in there and I waited in the dealership from eight o'clock in the morning until two 30 in the afternoon when they said to me, oh, I'm really sorry sir.

We didn't get a chance to have a look at your car. Can you bring it back in? In a few more days? But what's really interesting, and here comes the good bit, I bring it into the dealership the next time and. I didn't have to wait too long to find out that when they did eventually look at it, all it needed was new spark bugs.

What? It was a very quick fix. Well, that was good, right? Which was great. Right? And it was great that it was done that way, but. The interesting thing for me is, is I'm left with the sour taste because it took so long to get to that point. But on the other hand, I want to actually recognize the technician that went in there straight away and fixed the problem in no time at all.

So whilst I'm negative about the fact that the whole management process took too long, but the actual recognition that could have happened for that technician to say, you identified that problem really quickly, you fixed the problem, I would love to. Give you some recognition for that. And that opportunity actually wasn't available to me as the client to be able to do that.

Yeah, that's, they do

You want career progression as a chippy, what does that look like? You know, you want career progression as a, a HVAC technician, what does that look like? I, I go back to the idea of what are you actually looking for? And with progression, I think often, certainly being my experience, that they confuse the idea of recognition with progression and they fuse progression with development.

Really what we're looking for, what they're saying. And again, test by asking, well, you are looking for bigger aggression. Do you want more responsibility? Or do you want more development? Do you want to be better at what you do? Do you want more skill? Do you want broader skill? Like what are these things?

And not always, but often. And it does depend upon the person, but very often I find talking to texts, they go, actually, no, it's the development. And we can talk about that in the next episode. And again, this is another area that I think automotive has opportunity to improve. The idea of training versus developing, what are we doing?

You know, because developing is about planting people, growing people as opposed to training, which is about producing a financial outcome, speed, and efficiency.

I wanna run my own plumbing business and I want to have a team of plumbers that's career progression. That's a different thing, setting up a business and doing that and, and if you're a technician and that's what you're looking to do, that's a different idea. But sometimes it is also recognizing that, as you say, career progression is just about more information, more knowledge, the ability to be better at what you do rather than necessarily shifting jobs.

Yep, absolutely. That concludes our look at career progression opportunities in automotive. Here's where things get really interesting. Next episode, we are diving into the communication crisis that's costing dealerships over a million dollars a year. In staff turnover, Andrew exposes the hidden cost of promoting technicians without leadership training and reveals why your best technical minds often make terrible people.

Managers will share shocking data from KPMG's research and practical solutions. For developing real leadership in your workshop. The workshop Communication crisis drops shortly, so make sure you are subscribed now so you never miss an episode. This is The Frictionless Workshop podcast, produced by podcast done for you online.

All details in the show notes.