For quick lube operators, empowering managers takes more than just delegating. Shop owners must provide clear expectations, authority, financial education, coaching, and systems if they want their team leaders to succeed.

In a recent interview conducted by Ratchet+Wrench Editor-in-Chief Christine Schaffran, Bill Snow, vice president of marketing and franchise development for RadAir, discussed the perils of the “run it like you own it” mindset, and he offered several tips for how operators can better prepare their managers to lead.

Here are five key takeaways from that interview.

1. "Run it like you own it" is often bad management advice. Snow argues that owners frequently tell managers to "run it like you own it" without providing clear authority, training, expectations, or decision-making boundaries. This ambiguity creates stress, confusion, poor customer experiences, burnout, and turnover.

“I think they're saying, ‘Run it like I would run it and I'll see you later,’” Snow says. “And then what ends up happening is the managers are sitting there thinking, ‘I've never run a business before. I've never gone to business school. I don't know how to make these sort of decisions. How much am I allowed to spend to fix an issue or if something breaks?’ So, it's very ambiguous and it can lead to problems down the road.

2. Great technicians do not automatically make great managers. Promoting top-performing technicians into leadership roles is common, but management requires a different skill set. Snow recommends giving prospective managers trial opportunities, shadowing experiences, and training before making permanent promotions to ensure they are both capable and interested in leadership.

“A shop owner (may) have career plans for their employees, (but) sometimes you need to test those plans,” Snow says. “So, we always execute upon those plans. Let's get you a little bit more training. Let's get you experienced, maybe shadowing somebody in that role that you want to aspire to. But maybe sometimes we need to put them in that role and see how they do before they actually get that promotion. They might say, no, this is not what I wanted. Let's find something else to do. And you could do that when someone's on vacation or maybe someone goes off to a conference, slide them in, let them get some of that experience. … But yeah, sometimes, those star performers, they might be a great quarterback, so to speak, but they can't be a head coach.”

3. Managers need guardrails, not just responsibility. One of the biggest leadership mistakes is giving managers responsibility without clearly defining their authority. Snow stresses the importance of establishing spending limits, personnel decision guidelines, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) so managers can make decisions confidently without constant owner involvement.

“A good example is we had a manager contacting us for every little thing he needed to buy for the shop,” Snow says. “And we finally said, listen, $500, you don't need to come to us. We trust you, make it happen. If it's a bigger purchase than that, let's just have a quick conversation about it. Those interruptions multiple times per day stopped.”

4. Financial transparency and KPI education are essential. Managers cannot effectively run a shop if they don't understand the numbers. Snow recommends regularly sharing key metrics such as car count, average repair order (ARO), effective labor rate, productivity, and sales trends. Consistent coaching around KPIs and financial performance helps managers connect daily decisions to business results.

“When we share (financial data with managers), we give a little bit more transparency and we share what's happening below that line,” Snow says. “Hey, here's some of the constraints we're dealing with or those four things that we messed up last month. We missed the rotted subframe. We had to buy the client a new subframe. This tool broke because we didn't use it correctly.

“When the team understands how that actually impacts the ultimate bottom line, then the light bulb goes off and they say, OK, so when that breaks, Bill doesn't have this big magic pile of cash. He just pulls from him and buys things.”

5. Successful leadership depends on coaching, systems, and feedback. Rather than telling managers to "just handle it," owners should create SOPs, hold regular one-on-one meetings, review KPIs, provide ongoing feedback, and set the tone for the organization. Snow believes managers are most successful when they have clear processes, regular coaching, and a feedback loop that identifies problems before they become crises.

“Nowadays, with AI, it's very easy to go out and create an SOP and then tweak it specifically,” Snow says. “And over the years, what I did was as I was running my own store, as I came across something that maybe needed to be structured, I had a template and I would just start writing an SOP.

“An SOP doesn't have to be a book. It can be a paragraph. It could be three paragraphs. Whatever it takes to make it very simple. If someone reads that, they know what to do. But with AI now and so many great resources in our industry, writing an SOP is very easy. And then once you write a couple, they just keep flowing.”