CEO PERSPECTIVE, RAILWAY AGE APRIL 2025 ISSUE: When I think about great teams, I think about great players. When I think about great businesses, I think about great people.
In business, I’m not sure there’s anything more important than developing people. Putting our team members first is fundamental at Watco. One of our core principles is Value Our People, which includes helping our team members develop their skills, broaden their experiences, and have opportunities for advancement.
One way we do that is by having a strong management development program. When it comes to the most important thing we’re doing in human resources (known at Watco as People Services), I would point to our ongoing effort to enhance our management development program.
Watco University, our training program designed to help our team members develop their leadership skills and advance throughout the organization, was established in 2010. This program has evolved as Watco has evolved. It started as a program that simply taught our leaders core management principles and today is a program that helps our leaders be great communicators, coaches, decision makers, problem solvers, and mentors to the next generation of Watco leaders.
Watco University has been a key tool that has helped us grow the company from within by investing in the great people we have at Watco and providing them with the key resources they need to perform and grow. These courses equip managers with the tools necessary to lead effectively and ensure that they’re well-prepared to address the challenges of the transportation industry, which we all know are constant and ever-changing.
One key course offered in the Watco University program is titled Foundations of Leadership. Foundations of Leadership is designed for our team members who are new to leadership or who we’ve identified as a potential supervisor or manager, when a new opportunity arises. This course is important because no matter where we operate, our leaders hear the same message. Watco operates with a decentralized approach across North America and Australia. We’re made up of many business units performing many different types of activities and services. Because of this, our leaders need a lot of autonomy in their decision-making — and they have that — but Foundations of Leadership gives everybody the same playbook with the fundamentals of our business, like how to onboard and manage talent and how to build and lead a team.
Foundations of Leadership also helps drive home our culture. The team at Watco has likely heard me say that I believe culture beats strategy. We’ve always talked about our culture and leadership in general, but we didn’t necessarily go into the details in a standardized way. Foundations of Leadership does just that.
Since introducing Foundations of Leadership content, we’ve noticed more promotions being filled internally and our retention has improved. I believe that one reason for that is this course. A new course, titled Coaching for Managers, launched in 2024. This was created as a direct result of Watco team member feedback. We survey every team member who goes through our courses, and overwhelmingly, everyone coming out of Foundations of Leadership requested additional training on coaching. So, our Watco University team created a two-day workshop that takes a deeper dive into the coaching skills introduced in Foundations of Leadership.
I have a deep appreciation for coaching. Having spent decades in baseball, I feel like I have a unique perspective and appreciation for how our managers can benefit from this training. The instructors dig deep into aspects of coaching and teach our managers how to strengthen their coaching approach. One way they accomplish that is by having managers do a self-assessment where they examine their own style and determine how understanding their style can change how they coach others.
I’m very proud of the work that’s been done in terms of developing our managers to lead our team members out in the field. It’s effective. Managers who have undergone these development programs are better equipped to understand and anticipate team member and customer needs. This leads to more personalized and efficient service. Our management development is helping to build stronger relationships across the company, and it’s also positioning Watco as a trusted partner in the industry.
