As an avionics repair team chief, I have seven avionics technicians working for me, including two sergeants. When I first took over this position, I learned the hard way how important it is to clearly assign roles to the members of my team, especially when you’re faced with a new and unfamiliar task.
Shortly after I got to the unit, we received notice that we were being sent to a Central American country as part of a Mobile Training Team to deliver training to the country’s avionics technicians.
The country had recently purchased UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters from the U.S. and had requested maintenance training assistance.
My unit was tasked with developing training lessons and training aids for the country’s maintenance technicians. Not only that, but we needed to work with a translator to write up any materials we developed in Spanish.
I was so concerned with meeting the deadline and getting the training off the ground that I failed to take the time to clearly assign roles and responsibilities to my technicians, none of whom had worked as designated trainers before.
As a result, some duplication of efforts occurred that could have been avoided – several of my technicians took it upon themselves to plan maintenance lessons and also develop training aids, but because I didn’t clearly lay out who was doing what, they ended up working at cross purposes.
For that reason, we weren’t as efficient as we could’ve been, and my technicians were frustrated that they’d wasted valuable time on the same tasks.
If I had to do it over again, I would’ve clearly assigned roles, identifying the most proficient technicians to design the maintenance lessons, one person to get the test equipment together, and a team of technicians to develop training aids and work with the translator.
