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74 The PCB Magazine • October 2017 role a world-class quality manager should not only fill, but embrace. Converting this tribal knowledge into a sustainable system is part of preserving how your company "makes its sau- sage," and is critical to a company's long-term survival. 8. Personality that fosters trust and confidence I have seen a great many technically com- petent quality managers epically fail because of their people skills. This goes along with cha- risma in that the way you relate to others will greatly impact your success. It is critical that em- ployees, management, suppliers and customers trust the quality manager, and have confidence that he/she will be a good steward of their inter- ests. You can build trust by being honest, using good judgement, being consistent, and focus- ing on the problem, not the personality. 9. Ability to remain calm under extreme pressure Now this is a skill that is mandatory for a world-class quality manager to possess; as they say, never let them see you sweat! By defini- tion, working in quality is a nonstop, high- stress environment where emotions run high when discussing things that went wrong. It is imperative for the quality guy or girl to remain cool, calm and collected in the face of prod - uct quality challenges and be seen as the adult in the room. The ability to manage your emo- tions and remain calm under pressure has a di- rect link to your performance. A recent survey by TalentSmart that included more than a mil- lion people found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in con- trol [1] . Calmness is contagious, as is agitation. The quality manager often needs to keep people focused on finding a solution without finger pointing, fault finding or creating drama. Prob- lems are hard enough to manage on their own without adding to the problem with emotion. Let's take a lesson from sports; it's not the best athlete or team that always wins. Instead, it's the athlete or team that is best able to maintain their composure and stay calm under the heat of intense competitive pressure that is most suc- cessful. 10. Ability to be part of the solution I work with a lot of first-time quality manag- ers, and one of the first things we typically need to overcome is the tendency to feel their job is done once they identify and communicate a quality problem. For example, issuing a correc- tive action to manufacturing with the "get this back to me when you figure out what happened and have fixed it" attitude. There is enough nat- ural conflict between quality, manufacturing, engineering and sales without creating a qual- ity silo; we are all on the same team and want the same thing—customer satisfaction. Did the quality manager create the problem? Probably not. Does he or she have significant engineer- ing or manufacturing expertise? Probably not. But they can damn sure be part of the solution! World-class quality managers roll their sleeves up and get their hands dirty right next to the operator and figure it out together. One of the most powerful questions a quality manager can ask is "How can I help you?" World-Class Roadmap I have put pen to paper outlining Steve's Particular Set of Skills for quality managers that want to step up their game, but also as a type of job description for companies looking to hire a world-class quality professional. Good ones are hard to find; exceptional ones are even harder, but following this roadmap makes it possible to grow your own. Relentless dedication to devel- oping these 10 skills will guarantee results and put the average quality manager on a path to achieve greatness. PCB References 1. www.talentsmart.com Steve Williams is the president of The Right Approach Consulting LLC. To read past columns, or to contact Williams, click here. STEVE'S PARTICULAR SET OF SKILLS (TO BECOME A WORLD-CLASS QUALITY MANAGER)