A couple of years ago Dave Clanton joined Quality Textile (QTS) Services in Raleigh as its chief engineer and immediately made a mark—albeit not a good one—with his inherited staff. “I started out wrong,” he says today with a serious laugh. “I tried to tell them what to do and how to do it, but that got me nowhere, fast. I even jumped in took over some of the fixes and repairs and not relying on the others. As it turns out, that was not a good way to get started.”

So, after those first impressions, he took ...