How Service Managers Earn Technician Respect

By Anthony Calhoun — 25-Year ASE Master Technician, Former Dealership Service Manager, Author of “Why Technicians Are Leaving and How to Keep Them”

My son asked me once how you respect someone who has not earned it. I told him the truth: you give everyone basic dignity. But real respect — the kind that makes a technician run through a wall for you — that is earned. And the difference between a respected manager and a tolerated one is night and day in shop performance.

Jocko Willink said it better than I could: “Demanding respect from people often leads to a loss of respect.” I have watched managers demand respect from their title alone and wondered why their best technicians kept leaving. The answer was staring them in the face every morning.

The Gap Between the Desk and the Bay

Many service managers come from sales, advising, or other industries. That is not a character flaw — it is a context gap. They have never been flat rate. They have never had their entire paycheck depend on how efficiently work flows through the shop. They count hours sold, CSI scores, and gross profit. Technicians count tenths — six minutes equals one tenth of an hour, and every lost tenth is $8 to $15 out of their pocket.

One technician described this disconnect perfectly:

“Think of it as a boat. There is a captain, a navigator, and the crew that rows. The captain has no idea how hard the crew works to get where he needs to go. But rewards the navigator for getting there. The crew who had to bring their own oars feel like they are on the lowest part of the totem pole.”

If that quote made you uncomfortable, good. It should. Because that is exactly how your technicians see it when leadership is disconnected from the bays. Understanding this perspective is the first step toward earning respect.

Be a Doer, Not a Desk Sitter

The fastest way to earn a technician’s respect is to show them you are not above the work. Pull cars. Help with diag when the board is stacked. Grab parts from the back. When a technician sees their manager willing to get dirty, it sends a signal that no speech or meeting ever could.

I am not saying you need to turn wrenches all day — you have a department to run. But the managers who never leave the desk, who never walk the shop floor, who never ask a technician how their day is going — they are tolerated, not respected. And tolerated managers have high turnover departments.

Learn the Vehicles

You do not need to be an ASE Master Technician to manage a shop. But you should understand what your team is working on. Ask your senior technicians to teach you. Ask them to explain a diagnosis they just completed. This does two things: it builds your knowledge, and it sends a powerful signal that you value their expertise.

Resources like APEX Tech Nation’s free training library can help managers build technical context without taking up technician time. Understanding the basics of how systems work helps you write better ROs, ask better questions, and dispatch more intelligently.

Defend Your Technicians

When a customer complains about a repair, your first instinct should be to defend your technician — not throw them under the bus. I always went to my techs’ defense first. If we messed something up, we would make it right. But I never let a customer berate my team without standing between them.

Technicians notice this immediately. They know which managers have their back and which ones will sacrifice them to keep a CSI score clean. The managers who defend their people build loyalty that no pay raise can match. The managers who do not wonder why their technicians keep quitting.

Protect Their Time Above All Else

On flat rate, time is money — literally. Every interruption, every vague RO, every slow approval costs your technician real dollars. If you want to earn respect, become obsessed with protecting your technicians’ time.

Audit your shop for time wasters:

• Dropping jobs mid-flow. Pulling a technician off a job to start something else destroys their planned day.
• Vague ROs. “Check noise” is not a repair order. It is a scavenger hunt.
• Slow approvals. A technician waiting 45 minutes for customer authorization is a technician not flagging hours.
• Frequent status checks. Walking to a bay every 20 minutes to ask “how long?” is an interruption, not management.
• Poor dispatching. Sending the wrong job to the wrong technician wastes everyone’s time.

Now replace those with time savers: smart dispatching, complete ROs with symptoms and history, fast approvals, pulling cars to bays before the technician needs them, and asking one simple question every morning — “What does your day look like, and what can I do to help?”

That question alone separates great managers from average ones. For a deeper dive into how flat rate time management affects retention, read our guide on flat rate vs. hourly pay.

Recognition That Matters

Recognition does not mean a $25 gift card at the Christmas party. It means being specific, genuine, and timely. “Great job on that driveability concern on the Tahoe yesterday — the customer called back specifically to say how happy they were” hits different than “good work this month, team.”

Recognize the right things: not just production numbers, but helping a colleague, identifying a systemic problem, tenure milestones, and personal growth. The technicians who feel seen and valued produce more than the ones who feel invisible.

The Compound Effect of Earned Respect

When a service manager earns genuine respect from their team, everything changes. Technicians communicate problems earlier instead of hiding them. They stay late when the shop needs it because they know the favor will be returned. They refer other good technicians because they want to work with people they respect. Comebacks drop. Flagged hours go up. Turnover goes down.

It does not happen overnight. It happens through consistent, daily actions over months and years. One conversation at a time. One defended technician at a time. One pulled car at a time.

If you are a service manager reading this and you are not sure where your team stands, do one thing tomorrow: walk into the shop and ask a technician what is getting in the way of their day. Then actually fix the thing they name. That is where earned respect starts.

Need help building a leadership approach that keeps technicians? That is exactly what I do. Reach out at awc@awcconsultingservices.com.