5 Leadership Lessons for Leadership in Automotive Workshops from Kosta Kantilaftis

Guest: Kosta Kantilaftis

Episode: Season 2, Episode 2

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Kosta Kantilaftis started his first automotive repair shop at 19 and has spent nearly two decades since building it into two workshops and a nationwide community of almost 6,000 technicians and workshop owners called The Garage Network. Along the way he’s had to unlearn some early ideas about what leadership actually means.

Here’s what he now knows about leadership in automotive workshops:

Lesson 1: Leadership Is a Responsibility, Not a Hierarchy

Kosta is upfront that he got leadership wrong in his early years, treating it as a title rather than a duty of care. What shifted his thinking was recognising that the job isn’t to sit above people, but to give them the clarity and standards they need to do good work, and the room to become leaders themselves.

“It’s not a hierarchy of, ‘hey, I’m the boss’. It’s more of a responsibility, and it’s a responsibility to give a lot of clarity, some clear standards and also expectations to those that you are leading,” he says.

That reframe changed how he ran his workshop from the ground up, and improved his effectiveness as a leader.

Lesson 2: Letting Go of Control as an Automotive Business Owner

When Kosta first started hiring, every decision ran through him, which felt necessary until he realised it was the exact thing stopping him from ever stepping back.

Building out clear processes gave his team a standard to work from, which meant they no longer needed his sign-off for every call.

“If I really want true freedom, which is what business is all about for me, I had to find a way where I don’t have to be involved in every single decision being made,” he says.

He admits it was hard to hand over that trust at first, but the team’s decisions turned out to be at least as good as his own.

Lesson 3: Creating a Safe Space for Mistakes in Teams

Kosta recalls a new hire who was visibly stressed after a job went wrong, braced for a reprimand that never came. His response was matter-of-fact: they’d fix it, loop in the customer honestly, and talk afterwards about how to avoid it next time, no shouting, no corner.

“There really isn’t a big problem, but we’re gonna communicate it,” he says of how the team handles slip-ups.

That approach, he’s found, actually encourages innovation: team members will suggest better ways of doing things precisely because they’re not afraid of getting it wrong.

Lesson 4: Adapting to Change in the Trades

Kosta sees workshops investing in AI-assisted quoting and customer communication as the ones staying ahead, while others risk being left behind by changing customer expectations and a workforce that wants more than the trades have traditionally offered.

He’s just as clear-eyed about the generational shift inside the workshop, where a new generation of techs wants clean facilities, faster communication and a workplace that feels genuinely supportive.

“It’s either evolve with the times… or you can accept the fact that I’m gonna do this for five or ten years and I’m done,” he says, framing the choice as a genuine fork in the road for any business owner.

Lesson 5: Mentoring and Collaboration Across Workshops

Co-founding The Garage Network showed Kosta a side of the industry he hadn’t expected: seasoned operators mentoring people brand new to the trade, often late at night, with none of the old secrecy about “safeguarding” business knowledge.

“We all sort of elevate together,” he says of the shift he’s seen across the network, a long way from the closed-door mentality of the generation before him.

For Kosta, that peer support isn’t a nice-to-have on the side of the business; it’s part of how he sees leadership extending beyond his own four walls and into the industry.

Kosta’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

Kosta’s advice comes down to one word: accountability.

“Be accountable for your actions. If you make the wrong call or decision, be okay with it and voice it,” he says, adding that he’s still fumbling his way through leadership himself and always will be. Owning a mistake openly, he says, is one of the strongest things a leader can do, it’s not a weakness to hide.

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