PROFILE Continued from page 14
“But you can’t troubleshoot a fault if you don’t know the
system,” he adds. “The first place you need to go is to the tech pub library. If you don’t know how the system works, you can’t troubleshoot it.”
MANAGEMENT TIPS We asked Wilken if he had management tips he could share with our readers. “Don’t ask somebody to do something you wouldn’t do yourself,” he says. “Treat people like you would like to be treated. Treat everybody fairly. Personnel issues are always tough. You do your best in the interview process, but if you hire them, it’s always a chance it won’t work out. Understand that everyone is different. Encourage them to grow.” Wilken says there is one thing that he never does as a manager: spoon-feed his employees. “The worst thing I can do as a manager is spoon-feed the employees,” he says. “I have had technicians come to me with a problem they couldn’t figure out. I knew what was wrong with it, and could have just told them what it was. But was I helping them out? Right then and there, yes. But in the long run, absolutely not. What I do is work with them and encourage
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them to sit down and read the manual to understand what is going on. Maybe I give a pointer or two along the way. In the end, they will become better technicians and be able to grow more.”
ONE-COMPANY CAREER For many years, Wilken often thought that maybe he didn’t have a good perspective of the aviation industry because he had only worked at one company his whole career. Once he got into sales, he had his answer. “Once I got out there and visited with my counterpart peers, I learned that the same things I was dealing with, they were dealing with. If their business was slow, ours was probably down, too. I realized it’s a very small world in aviation.” Wilken had a parting thought on being in sales. “If you
don’t land a job, lose gracefully,” he stresses. “You don’t want to make a person feel bad about his or her decision. What you should be thinking about is ‘How could I have done that differently?’ and ‘How can I get another shot at their business?’ Customers remember. Act professionally — win gracefully and lose gracefully.”
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