Inside the Role of a Performance and Accountability Team Leader [RR 1110]

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is The Automotive Repair Podcast Network.

Carm Capriotto (0:06)

Hey everybody, Carm Capriotto, Remarkable Results Radio. So good to see you and have you with us. I hope you appreciate that we call what we do episodic education and our goal is really to advance the professional automotive service industry. And we do this one episode at a time, and we always say, listen to learn just one thing and then implement it. So if you're driving in your car, listening to this great episode today, and I know, and I hope you don't have a pen and paper to write something down, please don't, but try to figure it out and try to remember it somehow. Maybe there's somebody driving with you and says, hey, remember, I got to do that. That's what this is all about. We do this for that reason. So we all get better. Hey, thanks so much to Napa Auto Care and Napa Tracs for sponsoring this episode.

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Hey, I want to remind you all about our cool, really cool listening app. You can find it at the URL, arpn.app.

You know, say favorites, build a category library, create your own playlists. It's so much fun. Version 2 is coming out real soon. And today we are talking about leadership and how it relates and integrates with culture. And with me is Nate McDonald. Hello, Nate.

Nate McDonald (2:16)

Hi, Carm. How are you today?

Carm Capriotto (2:17)

I'm great, Nate. Nate McDonald is with Empower Automotive out in Traverse City, Michigan. I mean, do they call that the Upper Peninsula thing? What do they call that?

Nate McDonald (2:26)

You know, I've heard people say basically we're Canada, but no, we're in the Northwestern Lower Peninsula.

Carm Capriotto (2:34)

Oh, that's a mouthful.

Nate McDonald (2:36)

Yeah, it is.

Carm Capriotto (2:37)

Okay. Nicole Benikoff is the CEO of Empower Automotive. And Nicole and I, we just spent some time talking together, and she brought me a couple of great episode ideas because she so totally respects the people she has. And she says, you know what, Carm, I think they'd be great having it be on the show. I got to understand a couple of things about you, Nate. He's got this incredible title, and it goes on for like 40 words.

He's the sales manager, the inspection team leader, and performance and accountability lead. That's an awful lot of responsibility.

Nate McDonald (3:13)

Yeah, it is. I think most of that, I think, stems from the inspection team lead. I get to work with a lot of the Gen Z population. To me, that's been the most fun part of the job.

It's actually been quite easy to have accountability within that generation as well.

Carm Capriotto (3:32)

How does a sales manager thing work with you?

Nate McDonald (3:35)

I wouldn't really call it a sales manager. I guess I would prefer to call it a hospitality type management. If there's something that I can do to make any type of process easier, I might be in the back doing inspections most of the day. But if I come up front and I see somebody's being checked out, and they need their car pulled up, or they need things loaded into their vehicle, or they need assistance just getting in their car, I'm happy to help with any of that.

Carm Capriotto (4:02)

How long have you had with the company?

Nate McDonald (4:03)

I've been here between nine and 10 years.

Carm Capriotto (4:06)

Wow. Okay. Let's stop and take a little bit of a left shoot.

Because you said working with Gen Zs, and recently there has been so much discussion about having an apprentice person be supporting the inspector of the vehicle. Is that what you're speaking about?

Nate McDonald (4:29)

Kind of our setup that we have here, Carm, is I've got four total individuals that are part of our inspection team, not including myself or the estimator, and three of those four individuals are part of that Gen Z population or generation. I've been really impressed with their work ethic, and you always hear these sayings that they don't want to work hard, they just want to sit around, but I've found out of these group of guys here, I have found the complete opposite.