MEL #062 | From Entry-Level Worker to Trusted Leader through Doing the Work and Developing Others with Benjamin Gassman

GASSMAN (00:00)
do your job and do it well. Do about half of somebody else’s and volunteer for every crappy job that comes along. make it competitive with yourself. You’ll, you’ll enjoy that. you will continue to get good performance reviews along the way.

You’ll grow, you’ll get new assignments, you’ll get true engineering assignments. You’ll get multiple opportunities.

ADAMS (00:19)
In this episode, I speak with Ben Gassman, Assistant Plant Manager of the Kentucky Battery Plant at Ford Motor Company. Ben shares how he entered engineering through an unconventional path, starting on the front lines in manufacturing and later moving into industrial engineering. A promise to his grandfather and strong mentorship helped guide his transition into earning an engineering degree later in life. His journey highlights how real world experience and education can reinforce each other.

In our leadership segment, Ben explains how effective leadership starts with clear goal setting, team alignment, and consistent follow through. He emphasizes the importance of structured planning, performance clarity, and developing people through stretch opportunities. Leadership, in his view, is about building systems where individuals understand expectations and can grow into future roles. Ben’s advice for aspiring engineering leaders, take initiative.

continuously learn and seek out challenging opportunities. He stresses the importance of humility, understanding your personal motivation and contributing to team success. His advice centers on ownership, resilience and creating impact beyond individual performance. Explore the full episode summary, including guest bio, key takeaways, transcript and recommended resources in the show notes at drangeliqueadams.com slash podcast.

Without further delay, here is my conversation with Ben Gassman.

ADAMS (02:04)
Hi, Ben. Welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

GASSMAN (02:07)
Good afternoon. How you doing today?

ADAMS (02:09)
I’m doing great. I am thrilled to have you here. Can you start by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

GASSMAN (02:15)
Sure, I of stumbled into it. I know that sounds a little odd, as a young person in my young teenage years, my grandfather really pushed me to get into mechanical engineering. There were some things happened. I lost him, not to be a sad note, but I lost him at a young age and lost my anchor in my North Star a little bit. And I’d actually promised him I would get an engineering degree. So that was in my mind for many, many years. As time passed and I started actually as a frontline operator in operations.

But later in my career, I was given some really cool opportunities as I moved through operations as a frontline supervisor. And I was actually put in industrial engineering without an engineering degree. That sounded a lot. I had a business background. I had worked on my business education at the time. I got put into industrial engineering and I got to work with a really, really strong mentor. This individual, she was a Tennessee Tech grad. She was a straight IE and she took the time to really mentor me. And I really leaned into it.

I started realizing that this is something I really enjoyed. It’s been, spent short time in that and you know, you get to the technical side of it. call it the people’s engineering. And then later when I started looking more of a technical degree path, when I reached out and look at leading the University of Tennessee space Institute, that caught my attention. And so that’s, that’s how I got into industrial engineering and it’s really helped me in my career in operations. I love it.

ADAMS (03:30)
Yeah, that’s amazing. So did you find that the academic studies were what you were expected given that you had some already some frontline experience and already some sort of on the ground industrial engineering experience? Did you find that when you started studying it that it was what you’re expecting or is there anything different there?

GASSMAN (03:50)
It was pretty in line with what I was expecting because it really, and what really helped with my academic studies was the real life examples I was able to bring into it. I finished my degree, my engineering degree later in my career, so I was like the old guy in the room, but I was, it was pretty cool. I got to use real life experiences and it brought more clarity to actually what I was doing on day-to-day basis.

ADAMS (04:09)
Yeah, that’s amazing. I’m sure the students around you probably benefited from having real life experiences.

So once you got the actual academic degree, what did that enable you to do?

GASSMAN (04:20)
So it was a game changer for me, honestly, when I was in operations and even on that stint, industrial engineering, before I started working on my engineering degree, it opened up a lot of doors for me. And I mean by that specifically at the time, and I worked for Ford Motor Company, but the time I worked for Nissan North America, and my career had pretty much been entirely in operations. I did work in quality engineering, but it was in quality, it was in operations quality, but it allowed me to move from operations from middle Tennessee to

Farmington Hills, Michigan and work at the Nissan North America Technical Center and research and development. And what I realized, the technical side of my learning, know, the leadership skills you get from the degree, all those things, the people skills, the soft skills, all those leaderships are critical. You have to sweat the details. You have to understand how to be able to share the technical details, use the methodologies I learned in school. So it just opened up a lot of doors. And what it really allowed me to do was,

have that self-awareness when and when not to challenge the subject matter experts. Because when you think about testing of a vehicle, I want to say, it’s not like you have to make a mistake. You go out and sort a warehouse, you look for bad product, maybe like you would in operations. how many bad ones have you produced? If it’s wrong in testing, everything’s bad. So you have to really lean into the tools and understand what you’ve learned and how to make it applicable.

ADAMS (05:35)
So you’ve spent time in operations, sounds like you spent time in R &D, and can you talk a little bit about maybe the differences between the two and then what you’ve continued to do in your career since then?

GASSMAN (05:48)
Yes. So for me, when you think about operations, you think about operating rhythm and cadence and how important it is to have real, really specific clear objectives for the entire team. You have to be strong and make sure the team understands the vision, following through with follow ups. Follow up, it’s a simple basic, but you got to follow up and you have to have your objectives clearly laid out. You have to have your scorecards clearly laid out. And that’s important in R &D as well.

My point is you have an objective that set, you’re working on a product that was designed two to three years prior, in some case five to six years prior, and you have to really focus in on just making sure you develop a high product, high quality product, you you build it safely, you empower your culture, your team. Those things are critically important in operations. And I love it. I’m back in operations now. R &D, you do need a strong business plan. You do need to have objectives, but you really have to, at times, have to realize, when do I just change my strategy? You know, I think

You can change your strategy and operations and I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to do. And it’s important to always be thinking ahead and what’s next way to be better than the competition. But in R and D to me, the difference was what are the new ways we can do this to make a better product, test it better. know, a good business case, if you want to study one is from Hyundai. And they went from worst to first in quality. And it’s out there. can read this, but how did they get so good in their three months in service?

scores, how do they do that? They test it to failure. That’s a strategic change. That’s expensive change. You have to add in additional testing engineers, et cetera, and a lot of investment. But if you want to have that really, really good quality score, it’s obviously going to cost competitive. can’t out price your product. But that’s to me the big difference is, really the best way to run operations is have a strict time and data management, operating rhythm. You have to have quick check-ins, your frontline operators.

know exactly how the work they’re doing is tied to the objectives of the organization. You can pivot and change them quarterly every six months as needed, but you need to make sure the team fully understands what they do is tied and how it links and how their performance is helping us win or lose. And you have to be able to clearly explain your team when they’re winning or losing and make them have a culture that they’re okay with seeing some red on the scorecard and what help they need and and get those roadblocks out of their way. So that’s key to operations is key to R &D as well, but to me the biggest two differences are the

operating rhythm and operations versus really new strategic thinking and R &D.

ADAMS (08:06)
Yeah, I really appreciate the way you succinctly describe those two differences. And one thing I’m curious about since you’ve been in both worlds, so I came up primarily through the R &D world in a manufacturing one of the challenges that I often found was there weren’t very many people

could actually bridge between the two, So R &D might come up with some new way, but then somehow it has to be operationalized so that operations can then turn it into this thing that runs on clockwork and can be optimized and you can get the productivity, but you can get the quality.

And I’m just curious if you have any perspective on that.

GASSMAN (08:44)
Yes. So when I went to R &D, one of the not having the R &D background and design engineering undergrad and mechanical or electrical, my degree was in the business slash industrial engineering. So when I went there, I was specifically brought there to bring some of the, at that time we call it the Nissan production way, Alliance production way, it’s the operating systems and how we operate our business. It all comes from the Ford production system. But I brought a lot of those ideas there and we shared some of those things. That was really good.

But I remember being in operations before going to R &D, a lot of times we’d have an issue and we have on our tracking document the issue, know, date to green, who was working on it. And you’d have somebody standing in front of me and say, we’re waiting on R &D, we’re waiting on R &D. When you go into R &D, you realize, you you are waiting on them. And so, and some of the comments back forth into the group. So I felt like,

working on both sides of the aisle per se, you saw that in engineering, you may have a comment made, well, that plant doesn’t have any problem producing that product. Well, this one does. And then it’s easy to start saying, well, their training is not as good or the workforce not as trained properly. They don’t have much experience. Well, that may be true, but from a design side, what can you do to make that hard to fail? can you make that with? You may be bringing people into an entry level position. don’t, they want to do that job for 18, 24 months and they want to move on. So the next person comes in.

produce the same vehicle, the same high quality, that’s critically important. So to me, just seeing both sides of it and then the R &D side, what really opened my eyes was going, I always say go two or three layers deep. I work for my current mentors, Mr. Mark Haley is really good about saying, you what’s your plan A, B and C or going two or three layers deep, but thinking through. And that’s what I really felt in R &D was really, really strong. Like sometimes in operations, I don’t, everything shouldn’t be an emergency, but we’ll say we have to have emergency meeting and 24 hour response. And I believe in all those.

But in R &D, because you’re not producing a product every single day, maybe you have to launch eight to 10 vehicles that year and do it, extensive testing. You really got to see really smart people in the room really use their time wisely and get to the root of an issue and then put in a robust countermeasure. And I feel like I have taken that back to when we have an issue, cut it off, a 3-legged 5-wire, do all your methodology learning school year is, not, go to the root of the problem.

keep pilling it back, go back to the actually design of the equipment, make sure your next piece doesn’t produce the same bad product, and really empower the team to get to the root. It’s a lot of work. And when you find somebody that’s really good in your organization, empower that person to be train the trainer, because if there’s something to be said about you know that you’ve went to the root, and then you propose how to fix it. And maybe sometimes the permanent countermeasure is very costly, but if it’s worth it, the leadership will support it.

ADAMS (11:19)
So you mentioned that you actually went to and got into engineering a little bit later on in your career and you started out in front in frontline operations. Can you talk a little bit about that part of your career trajectory?

GASSMAN (11:30)
sure. It’s been many years ago, January of 1992, but I actually started in Smyrna, Tennessee at Nissan North America as a frontline operator. At that time, Nissan was launching the new Nissan Altima vehicle sedan and Nissan needed 2000 new employees to produce this. And I remember my interview they asked me, you know, what steps you aside the other 2000? I said, you don’t need 2000 1999 plus me. I was ready to grab fresh out of high school.

And I went to work there in the front lines and I, really I got, Nissan’s a great company. They allowed me to learn multiple jobs in each zone I worked in. But what I found quickly was I go to a new zone, I learned multiple jobs in the trim and chassis area of the plant. I wanted more, I wanted more. And then I moved into the engine assembly plant in Decker, Tennessee. We launched that new plant and I really enjoyed that part of the business is got to move into machining is a little more on the technical side of the business. Along that journey during that time.

And even though I was getting job satisfaction, I was raising a young family. There was something in me that leaned back to a promise I gave my grandfather and I was much younger to start on my education. So at that time I started in a business degree. And I’m proud of that. was, I call it the coal miners college, but actually it’s Penn Foster college where the coal miners in Pennsylvania used to go to get their foreman, get promoted to foreman and whatnot. I did a lot of that. The books were mailed to me. had a proctor.

I went through that process and I eventually got my bachelor’s in business. And during that period, I just continued to grow and I enjoyed every minute of it. But when I started really, like I mentioned earlier, leaning into the industrial engineering side, the technical side of the business, I knew I wanted to fulfill that promise to get my engineering degree. started that back in 2014, the University of Tennessee Space Institute campus there in middle Tennessee, in California, And it just is a game changer for me. And it empowered me just to continue to grow and to this day, I just continue to.

is an extension of my education and it’s been a blessing.

ADAMS (13:17)
given that you had so much frontline experience, is there anything that you think new engineering graduates maybe don’t understand about what the work is really like in your environment or how to maybe onboard or influence people on the front lines that you might be able to share with them to give them that perspective?

GASSMAN (13:42)
Sure, the best engineers that I worked with were ones that were extremely intelligent and had high energy, know, the entire integrity. One of Buffett mentions that they had all those three things, but they were humble. A lot of them come to the front lines and say, I want to learn this job with you. And especially like doing time studies and whatnot, you know, we have a job that’s at 84 % or 92 % workload. You want to make sure that’s consistent and you’re counting for all the work and you’re not having one station that’s at 102 % or 104%. And the next one’s at 70%. You want to

You know, Yamazumi, want to balance out the work. Yeah. So what I found was a lot, sometimes engineers would come in and they just didn’t maybe even have that direction or maybe that opportunity to go to the front line. So I would encourage any engineer that’s out of school, fresh, you know, lean into your education. You you worked extremely hard for that. No one can ever take that away from you. That’s what your foundation. But like I mentioned, it’s just your career as a continuation of education. You learn every something every single day.

and make sure you get your frontline operators to give you input. They are the subject matter experts of executing that job. They don’t may have the solution, but they’ll have really good ideas and work with their leadership to have small focus groups and maybe get maybe it’s a 24 hour operation. They would take two or three people off the day shift or the people off the night shift. You come in as an engineer, know, jot down their ideas, do a true Kaizen with them. And there’s a lot of pride. You’ll receive pride as an engineer. Like I’m part of this, but you’ll see the pride of the team.

And that means more to them than a dinner. You do all those nice things and the swag and all those things, they know they improve their jobs. It’s a great feeling for the engineers, well for the team. it helps you build lasting partnerships as you continue to grow in your career.

ADAMS (15:27)
Ben, can you give us an example of how you use leadership skills in your work?

GASSMAN (15:30)
Sure. One of the things I would say when working on a master’s in engineering at University of Tennessee, we really talked clearly about setting a really good business plan, hosin-connery, however you want to say it, and really setting clear goals and align the team around the priorities. So to me, leadership, management, there’s five functions of management, plan, lead, organize, control, develop your people. Well, to me, that leadership part of the planning is so critical.

that you have to take the time to let’s just say, whatever you do, say your company is January, is the start of a new fiscal year. You you need to be looking at the end of the previous year, right? And having those sessions, you do the look backs, you do your SWOT, what went well, your strengths, you have to spend the time. A lot of companies will send people off to an offsite or whatever, whatever it takes, but you’re to have to block out your calendar. You’re going to have to treat it just like you would an executive visit. You’re to have to treat it just like you would if you had a customer that was completely shut down, a quality issue. You have to prioritize around that.

And that is your job as a leader. And I didn’t always know this, you I wanted to go do it, tactical, but this is part of that strategy that you have to really as a leader, you have to take the time to make sure the team buys in and then you have to give them deliverables, right? You have to say, well, these are the deliverables I’m expecting. So to me, like if you have a team and you’re the leader in it and everybody sat down, they contributed and they said, these are our objectives and they’re smart objectives. And if you execute on that, the team executes and they do all that the course of the year.

when it comes down to performance ranking, they met the expectations, right? It wasn’t like they said them, that was it. They said them, now they met them. So it helps them understand their performance as well. And then I always like to say if somebody does all that, plus this is where the leadership energy, you want to push your team, you want to be one, teach one. Like Denzel Washington, like they be one, teach one. You have to be, who can step in and take your place if you leave the company or win the lottery tomorrow? Who’s gonna take your place? You want a team.

People that just want to just continue growing yourselves. You got to get the right people obviously you have the right people They have to have that you have to give them the leaders lead be a leader for them to understand what it takes to be successful So it’s you met the expectation when you fulfill the objectives, right? And then if you I was like to say maybe you were double-capped the employers double cap for the quarter Maybe that plus they’ve met the expectations. Maybe that was above expectations here more They’re the go-to person the organization for their level there you know say they’re a mid-level manager and they’re the

or the senior engineer and they’re the highest performing one, they’re the go-to person. Well, then I would go to them and say that that person was above expectations that year. If you want to be the outstanding and you can share this with them when you’re setting the objectives that way they got 12 months to work on it and you have your check in. And then if you want to be the outstanding employee, that’s not going to happen every year in the organization you work in. And it’s just not going to work like that. But if you want to be that outstanding employee, which you know, your team wants to be that person, put in an improvement.

that is return on investment. that individual leaves a company that’s been used for years beyond the future, it’s a new technology, a new advancement. So just lay out the objectives and then show them what it takes for the team to win.

ADAMS (18:22)
Yeah, I think that’s so important. mean, so many organizations do performance management poorly. and people get surprised at the end of the year that they didn’t meet objectives or that they’re not going to get the bonus. And I love the way you’re laying it out very concretely. You know, we’re going to put the objectives together. We’re all going to have buy in. They’re going to be very clear. And then you have even gone.

the next level to say, here’s what it’s gonna take to kind of get these different levels of the performance management. So I just really appreciate you laying that out so clearly for us. One question that I have for you that you mentioned was around succession planning. You alluded to that where you said, who can take my place? Who can fill in for me? Whether it be a short term, maybe vacation coverage or something, but then who are you actually grooming to help?

bring up to the next level. And so can you talk a little bit about what you’re looking for in those types of people that you’re trying to help become the next level leader and what, if anything, you do as a leader to try to help foster their development towards being your replacement.

GASSMAN (19:32)
Very good question. ⁓ there’s a book by Tim Grover. It’s called relentless. He was actually Michael Jordan’s coach. It’s really good read. He talks about look around the office, see the, if you’re the last person to leave, you look around, see another person there. That’s, that’s a person is it’s going to about as messed up in the head as you are. But you got to find first of all, the person that wants it. can’t give that everybody has career aspirations, different goal aspirations, different mindsets. This, you know, some people are really good.

outside the organization, some have that skill set inside. So first of all, you have to find the right people that want it. But then you realize you have somebody, you have multiple people like that in your organization, what you’re looking for, and I’ll go back to what I mentioned earlier, the intelligence, integrity, the energy, and none of those matter without the integrity, obviously. But the energy needs to be high energy. It needs to be positive energy. I say this, it’s nothing about age. I always say like bring that mid-level energy.

mid-career energy. I mean, we people all the time in their mid-70s and they’re going wide open, right? But if you want to, you got to bring it. And you know, when today you stop bringing it every single day, it’s like, you feel like you’ve arrived, but it doesn’t work that way. So to me, it’s like, you’re looking for those folks that are hungry, there are quick studies, and then you realize that they, you learn from them, you learn from them, right? And then they, you can tell they’re hungry and you stretch them. You don’t want to…

give them so many stretch activities, you start hindering their self-confidence, but you want to give them a really challenging task and you don’t want to tell them exactly what you want. You want to lay it out there and see if they can handle some things, not to set the culture of failure and their team failure, but you want to stretch activity. back with that’s what I do. I feel like that I really try to take the time to know your people and it’s you have to have meaningful one-on-ones when I mean a meaningful one-on-one. It shouldn’t be just, let me just check in on this project, this project got to really set the time on the calendar, check on their wellbeing.

and have those touch points, there’s no surprises toward end of the year, I want to say.

ADAMS (21:17)
I really appreciate what you’re saying about they have to want it, right?

I think so many people think they’re just going to get tapped on the shoulder for these sorts of things I don’t know if that’s exactly what you’re saying, but raising your hand and saying, I want this, and let me prove to you how I’m going to be willing to go after it is an important signal to a leader to be like, OK, yeah, they’re serious, So I appreciate that. You also mentioned something.

A couple of times now you said you’ve got to protect your calendar to do the strategy for the planning. And then you also have to protect your calendar to do the one-on-ones. And then, of course, you meet with customers and you meet with executives. So you’ve got a lot of demands on your calendar. And so I’m just curious if you could talk a little bit about how you actually manage that such that you can do all of these things that you’ve said are important.

GASSMAN (22:01)
So if I can do it in five minutes or less, I do that then. And I had to think back to when I was a frontline operator, we were installing windshields on the Nissan Maxima, the Nissan Altima. And I had a counterpart on the other side of the line and we had to go over there and clean the windshield and the robot would put the bead of, they would clean the windshield and get it prepped if we put on, put the urethane on it and whatnot. And then we would go in and we would depth the front windshield.

We go back, get the rear windshield. And we did that every 60 seconds. Wow. Every 50 seconds. I was 50 % on the front windshield and 50 % on the rear. It’s hard work. it’s the best diet program out there. You could pretty much drink a cold drink and you can’t bar break it. And we’re about putting on any weight. None of those things. And it’s not a lot of strategic thinking. It’s not deep thinking. It’s physical work. I tried to.

back into have a little reminder on my desk. Remember that Ben, I tell myself, remember so when I can do something as quick as possible and do it accurately, I try to knock those things out. I also, I learned this along the way is I have a little on my planner. I’ve got one, two, three. We all have these long to do lists, but one is I have to do it. There’s nobody else I can assign to do it. No one else I can delegate that out to. I’m just going to have to make time to do that. So that becomes a priority. And I tried to do my hardest work early. If it’s something I have to do, but I like there’s somebody else in the team I could

delegate that or empower them to start doing this. I can make it do it in 30 minutes or an hour and it may take me an hour and a half with them. But if I teach them, then they’ll be able to do it in the future. I call that a two. The three is the wish list. You it’s like, want to get that done. Then when I have strategic time, I’ll go back and put those on action plans.

Time and data management is something that I’m learning. You mentioned vacation earlier. know, something as small as that. If you want to be entrusted to manage a multi-billion dollar project, you need to know how to manage your vacation. You need to be able to say, it’s not well, I’ve earned it, I’m taking it off. You need to be able to look a couple, say, is my boss going to be off that day? You know, so I can be able to plan this, get away and turn my phone off and really get some downtime. You need to look at your organization and say, is my…

Team gonna be here as it might be all right, clearly defined, they’re be able to step in and run that. So you can have those refresh times cuz you need that. You have to take time to take care of yourself. Nobody, there’s nothing to be proud of, say I don’t get any sleep. You need to get rest, you need to get recharge, right? And then you need to make sure when you’re there, you’re on, you’re focused, you’re in between the white lines. I’m sport enthusiast, but you gotta be in the game that day. It’s not like every 30 minute block counts. If you don’t schedule an hour meeting, you’ll knocked out in 30 minutes.

Our company has recently started doing something, starting meaning it’s like, instead of like 1 30 PM, it’s 1 35 PM. But you think about in school, we didn’t have to go and we’re in middle school or high school. We didn’t have classes that were running over each other. had five minutes to to a locker, use the rest of the next class. So, but be, you know, just be punctual. Don’t have meetings just to have them and then put some execution time on your time and data management plan. You know,

You have your objectives, have your certain cadence of meetings that have to happen. You say, there’s white space on the calendar. Go ahead and just block it out and it execution time. That execution time is actually going to the GIMBA, getting things done. And that’s, I do my best with it. I’m not saying I’m perfect. You have any stretch. I try to learn every single day. I feel a lot of tools out there that could help you. You can use your outlook. Outlook’s amazing tool just, you know, to categorize your items, set the reminders and whatnot. But I try to start every day with three things I want to get done.

And honestly, some days I don’t even three things really I want to get done, I make I know the ones I have to get down to try to build before lunch.

ADAMS (25:33)
All right, Ben, as we wrap up, what advice do you have for engineers who are interested in pursuing leadership roles?

GASSMAN (25:40)
So in layman’s terms, and this is going to sound funny when I say this, but do your job and do it well. Do about half of somebody else’s and volunteer for every crappy job that comes along. That’s advice. I would make it, make it competitive with yourself. You know, want to be the best version of yourself. You’ll, you’ll enjoy that. You know, you will continue to get good performance reviews along the way. You’ll grow, you’ll get new assignments, you’ll get true engineering assignments. You’ll get multiple opportunities.

You’ll set yourself apart. got to understand everybody in the organization is really good. They wouldn’t be there. And it’s not about trying to beat that next person. You’re trying to make the whole team elevate the team members around you to be the best organization. But that would be my lamest term of advice. It gives you so many opportunities to get onto the programs, new Greenville programs. I’ve been on multiple ones in my career. could travel the world on the company’s dime. know, those are things are nice. So that would be, and I would also say,

Always be thinking about how do I continue to learn? know, don’t get stagnant. Don’t say, I went to school four or five years ago and I’m set for the rest of my life. You need to continue to learn. I enjoy reading the one book I’ve read last year. The team is reading right now. I was a group. It’s called Flatlined and it’s around setting objectives. It’s really good by Mark Delusio and it’s really good. And I recommend that one. It’s why lean transformations fail and what to do about it.

So you can’t be stagnant trying to get your organization to top 2%. A couple of the books I would recommend that I’ve read and I’ve read a lot of books is I mentioned earlier about the lit list and Tim Grover. He also he wrote the book Winning. They’re very good just the mindset and good habits. One by David Asprey, Dave Asprey called Game Changers where he sits down interviews. I believe it was three to four, three to 400 and successful leaders where they’re being the religious realm, business realm, academia, whatever.

and he gets their top two or three things and he does like a word graph and it really, really helped me. There’s some of the things I took away from that book that I use in everyday practice. And so that one, the enthusiastic employee, you know, people here, it’s all about the people, but you got to have a culture that people want to come to work. And so I would give advice to really lean into the technical side of the business as well as the culture side of the business. I can go on about other books, but that would be some things I would, I would recommend. Other advice I would give.

and would be understanding that.

It’s a journey. You hear a lot about that, but a lot of times I feel like when new engineers get into an organization, say you graduate from college and you’re 22 years old, you go to work and you’re 27, you look around like, what’s next? You know, don’t wait for somebody to come tap you on the shoulder. Find you somebody that you can trust in, your people leader, share your goal aspirations that you want to continue to grow in the company and let them work with you. And it’ll really help.

and be open to constructive feedback. Understand your why. You know, I mentioned automotive and I currently work for a motor company, but it took me a long time to share my why. And I had a mentor that said, no, Ben, I want you to tell me why you got into this business. And I kept kind of just dancing. No, why are you specifically an automotive? And when I peeled back and went my way back to when my single mother’s car failed and I was a little young person and it broke my heart to see where the car broke down and she still had to pay payments on it and the warranty expired.

those types of things that started coming out. And then you know your wife, you know, and that’s where you may be personally. But then when you start making really good living wage and you’re able to support your family, then what, what, why are you still doing it? Is it to, know, for me, like where I’m currently working at is I can sit, go to Kroger and see people going in with a buggy empty and come out in the buggy full of groceries. Hey, we’re making an impact in the local community. We’re able to do things so that, know, know your why is important. Focus on your team success.

That’d be my advice. know, don’t think so much about and you’re going to go through different stages of your career. Be a.

But kicker, not a butt kisser. There’s a difference, but let other people brag on the job you’re Be, be respectful to hire you go in the organization. The nicer you should be, you know, be firm, but be fair. Really, really lean into making sure you have a diverse team. You know, make sure that you’re not looking just for somebody that’s exactly like you, the same college or whatever you want diverse backgrounds. You want that you want to look for challenging your team.

I can go on and on. I just want to say that my advice would be be open. As an engineer, you stepped out there and you became.

susceptible to a lot of criticism because you’re the engineer, you designed something, you’re going to have failures along the way. That’s okay. Learn from it. Learn from it. The clear and snap mentality. I want to say like when you make a mistake, get over it pretty quick. Learn from it. You know, don’t, when you get into leadership and management, when somebody makes a mistake, you know, have patience with them, long as they’re teachable and coachable because it makes you a strong organization. Just enjoy the journey. It’s just, um, it’s, it’s amazing for me. It’s been an amazing career. wouldn’t trade it. I love it.

I’ve been in this auto industry for many, years and I’ve seen it. been in electric vehicle side of it. We see a day I’ve seen different administrations coming to go. I’m now starting to get into the energy storage sector, which is not technically automotive, but I look at it as like I’m learning something new.

something to stretch me a little bit further. So I would just say be open to continuous learning and bring passion, build a strong team and don’t be afraid to fail. You’ll get better from it.

ADAMS (31:00)
Ben, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today.

GASSMAN (31:03)
Yes, ma’am. Thanks, Angelique It’s pleasure talking to you.