"My foreman doesn't teach me anything" - is this about lazy teachers or unclear expectations? Andrew Uglow reveals why this complaint stems from broken systems and mismatched expectations, and shares practical frameworks for creating effective mentorship that actually works in busy workshops.

Main Topics Covered

• The "foreman doesn't teach me" complaint diagnosis
• Teaching vs. mentoring: understanding the difference
• Why foremen are promoted without teaching training
• Unclear expectations on both sides
• Classroom learning vs. workshop learning
• Why Google can't replace hands-on mentorship
• Generational differences in learning expectations
• Creating structured mentorship systems
• Setting clear learning expectations
• Teaching moments in busy workshops
• Balancing production demands with training needs
• Technician ownership of learning journey
• Documenting tribal knowledge
• Creating effective training protocols
• Building a culture of continuous learning
• Measuring training effectiveness

Key Insights & Learnings

1. Expectation Mismatch - Technicians often expect classroom-style teaching (spoon-feeding information), while foremen expect self-directed learning (asking questions). Neither works without clear communication about expectations.
2. Untrained Teachers - Most foremen are promoted for technical excellence, not teaching ability. They've never been trained in how to mentor, coach, or transfer knowledge effectively.
3. Teaching vs. Mentoring - Teaching is structured information transfer. Mentoring is guiding someone's development journey. Workshops need both, but often provide neither systematically.
4. Google Isn't Enough - While information is freely available online, context, application, and hands-on guidance can only come from experienced mentors. Knowing what to search for requires understanding you don't have yet.
5. Shared Responsibility - Effective learning requires both parties: foremen must create teaching opportunities and be approachable, while technicians must actively seek knowledge and ask questions.

Stories & Examples Shared

• The Promotion Without Preparation - Real examples of excellent technicians promoted to foreman who had no idea how to teach, creating frustration on both sides.
• The Google Generation - How younger technicians expect instant access to information but lack the context to apply it effectively, while older foremen assume "figure it out yourself" is sufficient training.
• The Teaching Moment Missed - Examples of busy foremen missing opportunities to explain "why" while showing "how," leaving technicians able to copy but not understand.
• The Question Culture - Workshops that punish questions ("you should know this already") versus those that encourage them ("great question, let's figure it out together") and the dramatic difference in learning outcomes.

The Tribal Knowledge Problem - Critical workshop knowledge that exists only in senior technicians' heads, never documented, creating vulnerability when they leave.

Get in touch Andrew:

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.

Production:

Co-host: Anthony Perl

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

Rather than unwilling teachers discover what technicians really need to learn versus what they think they should be taught and understand how to creative. 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 Perl, and this is the Frictionless Workshop Podcast. Let's get cranky.

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? I mean, you can hear them saying it, right? You know, I can hear the technicians having this argument, but is it real?

So we'll be doing technical training with a variety of technicians at different levels. And 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 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 take 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 could be the complaint? What has to be happening for someone to make that statement? So the question is, well, is it true? Well, sometimes, but other times not. And so we start to dive deeper into the idea of, well, how much training is enough training?

And who's responsible for teaching me? Is that my tafe? Is that my dealership? Is that my foreman? Is that the people that I work next to? Is that the manufacturer who's training my, who's responsible for teaching me? Who owns that? 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 owns that part? And so you can appreciate that 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 take that diagnostic framework and we go, well.

Okay, 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 go, well, if someone's making this statement and they're authentic, all right, they're not just having a whinge because, I dunno, insert all the reasons that people might complain about something, but there's actually, 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 that a problem with the training? Is that a problem with the person and their ability to learn? Are there cultural elements here? Are there behavioral or learning challenges here?

Is there language things that in the way here? And sometimes the answer is yes to all of those. And certainly coming from a frame as a technical trainer, that's hard. You know, I 10, 12 people and I have two people that are struggling. How do I manage that in a class of 12? 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. 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. 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 about the technological elements? I mean, what's your experience with cars, Anthony?

Are they the same today as they were 10 years ago or five years ago?

Different and having to cope with those variables as well is an incredible part about all of this journey. Now, 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, 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?

And we've spoken in previous podcasts around the idea of. Learning out of place, as in I go somewhere to do my learning there. A manufacturer's training, technical training somewhere, you know, TAFE college, whichever the case may be, or the idea of learning in place. That is, I'm in the workshop and I'm being, 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'm being instructed on how to be effective, how to be efficient, how to fix things the first time.

And not always, but often, this can come across. 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'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 crotchety, bit grumpy, bit time stressed, whatever. But that's a really useful lesson and that will help me be better. I wanna pull out the distinction I just made then that's not about doing better.

Sure, I wanna do better, but I want to be better.

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, in a learning environment, I've had people like that. It's like, you know, I don't need to be here. I impress me with something. You know? It's like, well, you can do that if you want to, or you could take ownership, which will be wildly more useful.

This thing gets back into, well, how are we doing, learning, all that sort of stuff. So 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. 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 skill for the foreman, right? Because I don't know too many foreman, actually, let me be blunt. I don't know any foreman that have ever done a basic learning on how to do training, how to do teaching, how to facilitate knowledge transfer, whatever framing you want to call it. In the past, that was a thing, right?

The foreman's job was to develop, not teach, develop the technicians, especially the apprentices. You go back far enough, we used to have an apprentice master, and his job was to make sure that you learnt your trade and you would pay attention. When he rocked up and said, da, da, da, Andrew, you're not doing this well.

This was like, oh, oh, okay. I better pay attention here 'cause, 'cause this is about my professional skill. This is about my competence as a trades person. I think that element has been missed entirely and abandoned. I would argue largely by the industry, and 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.

Actually reapply that time, that thinking in 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 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? Then give them opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to really not just hear stuff, but to take it on board.

You know, to take it in. 'cause this gets back to one of the other ones that, the other frustrations that we had from Foreman. I tell them and tell them and tell them and tell them, and they don't do anything. It's like, well, clearly telling's not working. Maybe you need a different strategy.

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

And then what's causing the vehicle to behave that way? And then what's the source of that 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. And people genuinely feel lost because of the technology, because of the complexity, because of the number of variables.

It's really quite overwhelming what's actually being complained about here. Whilst, yeah, sure. It's learning and learning will help solve 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. If you look at the environment that they operate in, it's time poor, it's information dense, and this goes back to one of our earlier complaints. There's never time to do it properly and that the whole point of doing properly is isn't that we are 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.

This one will be fine. I've just got get it out. Oh, you know, I, 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 a, an element here around safety, and we talk about foso. If you wanna be less polite fu which is fear of screwing up and it's a real thing.

In workshops are a, workshops are a culture workshops or 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 this is the Victoria just now releasing a whole psychological safety piece around requirements for workplaces. And this is not something that we talk about in automotive workshops. And so you go back to the idea of training.

How do technicians get safety? How do they get to that point? So they get it through knowledge and skill. So when they're complaining, and we tested this with the guys in the in training, I said, 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 the fear of screwing up. It's the fear of making mistake. No one wakes up in the morning. Certainly no reasonable technician wakes up in the morning and goes right. Today I am gonna send our bottom line backwards at speed. I'm gonna screw up. I'm going to, you know, throw every conceivable part I possibly can at the car, whether it needs it or not.

You know, I'm just gonna cost 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 that 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 gotta have a good new. Modern framework to be able to take on board modern tactics, and so let's do that. Let's install that. Let's have our foreman and take the lead on that, because we used to do that and we used to produce really good quality people and all of the reasons that happened.

All of those things around, you know, the quality of people that we have, 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 argue that the solution comes out of let's do better development.

I think that's the piece that is underpinning what the concern really is.

Now, back to the show. I mean, part of it's you need to train the trainer as well, of course, aren't you? I mean, that's the key 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 you know, they're being entrusted to do things and 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 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 I think that happens in the workplace, doesn't

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 with not my fault, 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.

And, and I like, if you wanna look at this, we need to shift the onus of learning from the foreman to the individual first. As, as a step one, you're responsible for your own learning. This is on you. If you are struggling to learn, no problem. Let's figure out why that is. Is it language? Is it culture? Is it cognitive function?

Is it like what's actually happening? And then let's find a way that works for you. And we see this 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, 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 form and how to do this.

It's there are some people 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. It's a different way of learning and depends on the different people in the opportunities around that.

Which doesn't mean you don't need to know the theory if you are performing at a particular level, but it's how you begin that process could be a world of difference.

Step one, step two, step three, you know, just nice and simple. And I do the same for the fortman. Pull out the differences between telling someone something, teaching someone something, training someone on something, or simply developing them and developing is by far the most effective. And there's 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. That they use then to absorb the information. And 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, a TAFE level that TAFE do well, but there's opportunity to improve.

Manufacturers generally do pretty good at learning. I would offer that is 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'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. Mm-hmm. It 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, let's not go and beat the foreman for this.

Let's go and resource the foreman for this, you know, and I go back to 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 fear growing up. It is, it is absolute real thing. 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, 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 part and, and charge me $6,000 for it? And I, you know, not being able to answer that, like, that's traumatic, you know, traumatic service advisor, traumatic, like, that's hard conversation. And so even in this safe training environment, there is still this undercurrent of foso.

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 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 personal development. Sure, we wanna get paid more. 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?

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. 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 increase in their self-leadership, in their team leadership?

Where is their ability to navigate this insane high demand, short time, high consequence environment that they're responsible for? You know, they're running around like the blue ass fly. And playing this reactionary game. And no one's taught them 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 a 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 given them these skills and and ability. And if we flip out of the perspective of the workshop form and into the view of the 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?

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. Getting people to that stage. Why wouldn't you speed that up? Why would you wait three years for that to develop when you, 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. 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 think that's really poor. And so we're launching the professional foreman method.

You could call it a school for foreman if you'd like to. Really what we're doing 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 businesses, all of our data to date suggests that this is a six figure change to the bottom line of the business in a relatively short order.

Sort of six to 12 months. If there isn't another six figures on the bottom line for no extra, for no significant outlay, I'd be genuinely surprised. 'cause it's all the difference that makes the difference.

'cause by the time you're listening to this, you might even be ready to enroll someone.

It's not gonna work. So we're gonna be very niche, very boutique, very personal, hands-on. And we're actually, for the people who pick this up early, we're actually going to add some personal one-on-one coaching for the individuals, because this is hard. Foreman, if you thought techs were hard, being a tech was hard, this is harder.

And so they need 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 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 early adopt.

Thanks very much. Frictionless is a skill

that almost brings our technician series to a powerful conclusion, but Andrew's got one more critical insight to share in our next. Episode we are diving into what happens when the diagnostic approach meets real world implementation. We'll explore the complaint that management doesn't understand what it's really like and reveal practical strategies for bridging the communication gap between technicians.

And decision makers Andrew, share specific tools for translating technical challenges into business language and creating win-win solutions that actually work. Plus, we'll look at workshops that have successfully implemented these challenges and the dramatic results they've achieved. The implementation gap drops soon, so thanks for being part of the journey.

Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and we look forward to your company then.