AEM team at 2023 Kelowna Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards Mentoring
While Wylie loves asking questions and says his Socratic method of management has led to some noticed successes, such as launching new products and entering new markets that increased revenue streams, these public successes are not the ones that gratify him the most. He says, “What I love most is watching people I mentor, develop their careers and move up in our business or even go somewhere else and accomplish great things while continuing their education. For me, those scenarios are easily the biggest accomplishments we have in the workplace.”
When Wylie mentors, he’s paying forward the benefits he himself received from his mentors. The ones he notes for special mention (at the risk of not acknowledging deserving others) are: preceding AEM CEO Brian Wall: “He really taught me to be aware of my audience and tailor my talk to them by asking: Whom am I speaking to and what do they want to know?”; Dale Botting: “He gave me space to challenge myself and helped me build confidence.”; and Wylie’s entrepreneurial salesman father, Mark: “When I was growing up, we always didn’t see eye to eye and it was challenging, but by the time I reached my 20s, nobody challenged and supported me more. He is great at helping me see things from another perspective.”
Career Climb
While he was being parented, Wylie was very active in most school sports (hockey, etc.) and board sports (snowboarding, wakeboarding, etc.). Yet, despite his love of sport, Wylie had an overriding career goal: “I didn’t want to work outside like civil engineers do.” So, naturally the young man studied to be an electronic engineering technologist at Okanagan College, which put him indoors where he assembled and tested products at Northern Airborne Technology.
After almost two years there, he came to AEM in 2009 as an electronic technician, and worked his way up over the years to his current executive perch. One reason for that rise: “Whatever my job, whether it was even sweeping floors and doing dirty work, I always tried to find something interesting about it and latch on to that interesting aspect,” he says. “I tried to make myself useful by doing the jobs that needed doing that no one wanted to do. You don’t need a title to justify your position. One thing I’ve learned in my career is that it doesn’t matter who you’re in a room with, you can find a way to add value to that room and show your worth.”
On stage at 2023 Kelowna Chamber Business Excellence Awards
14 Nov/Dec 2024
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