Great Question: A Manufacturing Podcast Empower and engage employees with honest conversations and servant leadership
Ashleigh Walters earned a chemical engineering degree from Auburn University. Several years later, she found herself taking on the challenge of reviving Onex, a 50-year-old industrial furnace service business based in Erie, PA, which was owned by her husband's family. After she succeeded at Onex, she wrote a book about the experience called Leading With Grit And Grace, that recounts her journey and the lessons she learned along the way. Plant Services editor in chief Thomas Wilk met Ashleigh at the 2023 MARCON Conference, which is run by University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Reliability and Maintainability Center, where she shared her story,. Thomas and Plant Services managing editor Anna Townshend recently spoke with Ashleigh about her experiences in the industrial sector and her unique style of leadership.
Key takeaways
In this episode, you'll learn:
- How Ashleigh rebuilt and reimagined her family's company
- Why her company adopted a “coach approach” to management instead of a “command and control” leadership style
- Why you need to empower your employees to make mistakes
On the record
"I think the other piece of that is we've never thought as leaders that we should be serving. We've always felt like we should be served, right? And when you flip that around and you start serving others, they do serve you, they serve you more because they respect you and they trust you. It's a two-way street, respect and trust, and when they feel that, they know it's OK to make a mistake. You can't ask somebody to try something new to experiment and not allow for failure."
-Ashleigh Walters
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