5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies Leading Apprentices from Apprentice Mentor David Mehmel

Guest: David Mehmel

Episode: Season 2, Episode 12

Listen here

David Mehmel has spent 16 years in and around the automotive industry, and the last three working full-time as an apprentice trainer and mentor in a dealership environment, a role most tradies only ever do on the side of their actual job.

Here’s what he’s learned about leading apprentices in the trades.

Lesson 1: Understand Learning Styles When Training Apprentices

Dave’s starting point with any apprentice isn’t the task, it’s the person.

He wants to know whether they’re hands-on, whether they need things written down, whether they can hold five instructions at once or need one step at a time, before he ever begins showing them the job.

“There’s no point in giving someone a bunch of paperwork and documents to read… if they struggled with reading, or giving someone five instructions at once,” he says, arguing that mismatched teaching styles are often mistaken for a slow learner.

Taking the time to understand how someone thinks makes all training efforts easier.

Lesson 2: Treat Apprentices as People, Not Cheap Labour

For Dave, the fastest way to build a working relationship with an apprentice is to have a genuine conversation about what brought them to the trade and what they actually want out of it, not just their output for the week.

He’s found that one conversation early sets the tone for everything that follows.

“It puts them in the category of, this is a person, try and figure out what makes them tick,” he says, and it builds the strong relationships that support effective mentoring.

Lesson 3: How to Build Confidence in New Apprentices

Dave remembers being a young mechanic certain he’d diagnosed a fault correctly, but too afraid to quote the part in case he was wrong, until his mentor told him plainly to just quote it and see.

That moment stuck with him enough that he now tells the same story to his own apprentices, showing them his own uncertainty rather than pretending he never had any.

“It is normal to fail, or it is normal to try and not succeed… And if you didn’t succeed that time, try again,” he says of the lesson he still passes on.

Showing apprentices your own mistakes, he's found, does more for their confidence than pretending you never made any.

Lesson 4: Improving Apprentice Retention and Workplace Culture

Dave has seen young apprentices identify a toxic workplace almost instantly and leave just as fast, usually because they’ve already come from somewhere they didn’t want to be, and they know the signs when they see them again.

Consistent relationships and visible backing from management are what keep people around long enough to actually develop.

“If you are in a toxic workplace, they will highlight that immediately, and they won’t be there very long,” he says.

Culture, he says, is the single biggest factor in whether an apprentice stays.

Lesson 5: Self-Care as a Mentor or Leader

Dave’s advice for anyone trying to mentor or lead starts with self-compassion, talking to yourself the way you’d talk to a friend, not beating yourself up over an off day.

He illustrates the standard with a story about a dealer principal who, two months into the role, grabbed a squeegee himself to clear a flooded basement so Dave (still an apprentice) could keep working on a car instead.

“He wanted me on the cars working, and he would squeegee the floor,” Dave says, still struck years later by what that moment modelled about valuing someone else’s time.

Dave’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

Be kind to yourself first, because you can’t run on empty and still show up properly for someone else.

“How can you help someone if you’re not running at a hundred percent, or if your hundred percent is sixty percent for that one day, that’s okay,” he says, setting a standard for yourself before it’s ever a standard for anyone you’re mentoring.

Catch the full conversation with David Mehmel on Tradies Who Lead for more leadership lessons for tradies, out now wherever you listen to podcasts.