The Leadership Mistake Every Construction Owner Makes

Explore common leadership mistakes in construction and learn how career conversations and tailored training boost retention and team success.

Key Takeaways

Regular career development conversations prevent unexpected employee departures.
Leadership in construction needs to address both project management and team dynamics.
Micro conversations and timely feedback improve employee engagement and retention.
Generic leadership training is insufficient; construction leaders benefit from industry-specific programs.
Leaders who show genuine care and mentorship build stronger, more loyal teams.

What the video covers

Leadership mistakes that seem efficient can drain initiative, ownership, and retention over time.
High performers often leave first when leadership breaks down.
The importance of career development conversations to retain talent and support growth.
Managers often avoid career talks fearing they might coach employees out of their roles.
Joel Hilchie's feedback framework CATS: conversational, actionable, timely, and sensitive.
Micro conversations are powerful tools for ongoing feedback and engagement.
Construction leadership requires specialized training tailored to industry challenges.
Eric Anderton offers The Shift, an online course designed specifically for construction leaders.
Leaders must balance task-focused and people-focused responsibilities, both short-term and long-term.
Effective leadership in construction means working on the business and teams, not just the work itself.

Chapters

Why do high performers leave construction companies according to the video?

High performers often leave when leadership breaks down because their initiative and ownership are quietly drained over time without proper career development and engagement.

What is the CATS feedback framework mentioned in the video?

CATS stands for conversational, actionable, timely, and sensitive feedback, a simple framework designed to improve communication and employee development.

How often should leaders have career development conversations with their employees?

Leaders should have at least one career development conversation per year, ideally during performance reviews, to understand employees' goals and support their growth.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

Speaker A

If you've ever hired a great person, got them up and running, wiped your brow, and then realized you never once asked, "Where do you want your career to go?" This episode is for you. Today, I'm joined by Joel Hilchie, a leadership trainer and author of The Six and a Half Habits of Highly Defective Bosses. And we dive into the leadership mistakes that seem efficient in the moment but quietly drain initiative, ownership, and retention over time. We talk about why high performers leave first when leadership breaks down. The power of micro conversations and Joel's simple feedback framework: CATS—conversational, actionable, timely, and sensitive. If you're leading people in construction and you feel the tension between being good at the work and being good at leading a team, you're going to get a lot out of this episode.

Speaker A

Let's dive right in. [music] This is Eric Anderton, and you're listening to Construction Genius, a leadership master class. Thomas Edison said that genius is 1% inspiration [music] and 99% perspiration. If you're a construction leader, you know all about the perspiration. And this show is all about the 1% inspiration that you can add to your hard work to [music] help you to improve your leadership.

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Welcome to Construction Genius. Great to be here, Eric. Wonderful to have you on. You've spent years working with leaders across different teams and organizations.

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Early on, what leadership mistake did you personally make that you didn't realize was a problem at the time? I'm early.

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So, I'm early. I hired my first assistant about, oh, about 10 years ago, and it was a part-time role, and things went very well. I got really lucky with who I hired. She was a great employee. And

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about two years in, she called me one morning and said, "I've taken another job, a full-time position available at this other place." And I was really caught off guard by this. I was not expecting it. And with about three minutes

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of thought, I realized that I should not have been caught off guard by this because I had never once asked her, like, "Do you consider yourself being in this position from now until, you know, forever?" Like, I'd never once had a career development

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conversation with her. And it seems so basic now, but I probably should have assumed that she was thinking, okay, what's next for me? She was a young professional, you know, and for me, this kind of fits into the broader category

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of what are our jobs as a boss, as a leader. And I sort of think of it like there's the task-focused jobs, but there's also the people-focused jobs, and then there's short-term and long-term, if you want to break it down

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more than that. So, I had forgotten the long-term people focus part, which was career development. You know, we didn't have much of a team. So, the short-term people development, the team dynamics, that was fine, you know, and we were

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certainly getting things done, and I was being strategic. That's the kind of long-term task-focused side. But for me, I just hadn't had any conversations about, you know, where do you see yourself going? And I think a lot of

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managers don't have those conversations because they worry, like, what if the person says, "I'm looking to leave," or "I'm looking to grow," or "I want to move on."

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Sometimes people have said they even feel like they're coaching the person out of the role. Does this come up? I mean, in the construction world, you want good people, and but do leaders assume, "Oh, if they want to be on my team now, they

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probably want to work here forever." I think what happens a lot of times, you hire someone and you get them up and running and then you kind of wipe your brow and move on to the next issue.

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Yes. Yes. And so I think a good question to explore is, when do you start having these career development conversations?

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And some people, they begin those immediately in the interview process. Yes. And they try and explore with the person where they want to go. But once they're established in the company, I think that's when the career development

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conversation needs to begin. Yeah. You know, I think it doesn't hurt to bring it up in the interview to try to get a sense of, like, what does this person want? You know, are they looking for stability? Are they looking for just

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making a buck? Are they looking for a foot in the door maybe and that they're willing to do something that's maybe not quite what they really want to do, but, you know, it feels like they're on the right

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track or they're into the company. My suggestion personally is have at least one conversation about this each year.

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You know, most people have some sort of annual performance review. Yeah. And it doesn't have to look like anything really complicated. It can be really conversational, but say, "Hey, where do you see yourself in a year? Are

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there any new skills you want to learn?" Even if that's not something that we can provide, I'd love to know. And that manager or boss becomes as much of a mentor as they are sort of a project manager of the day. Well, I think one of

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the reasons why people don't want to ask sometimes is because if the person has an ambition for a position that we don't think they're a fit for or that position isn't available, then it creates an uncomfortability in that situation that

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people would rather avoid than confront. Yes. The way I think of this is it's going to be uncomfortable one way or the other sooner or later because people are thinking about it, and while it's a little bit uncomfortable to have the

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conversation and say, "Oh, you want to learn something? I'm not sure that a year from now we're going to have a spot for you." It's probably more uncomfortable when that person calls you up a year from now and says, "I'm out of

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here. I've taken another position." I mean, your choice is whether you put your head in the sand and pretend it's not happening or whether you want to be part of that conversation. When I've had these conversations with people since,

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they've actually responded very well. You know, as much as I've been nervous about it, say, "Hey, do you want to be working here in a year? Is this enjoyable for you? Or are there things you want to grow?" and they say, "Gosh,

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I hadn't really thought about it before. I do think I want to learn this, but I appreciate you asking." Isn't it nice to have a boss who cares? That's a secret weapon.

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Think about the last time you promoted someone into a leadership role and it failed. Why did it fail? I can tell you one reason. People know how to build projects, but they don't know how to build and lead teams of people.

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Construction comes with its challenges that only insiders truly understand. Generic leadership training doesn't cut it. You need a program to train your leaders built specifically for construction professionals led by an industry expert. And my online course, The Shift, is exactly that course. It

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has five modules. It'll teach your people how to control their calendars and reduce stress and embrace chaos and accomplish their critical tasks. It will teach them the three essential messages they have to communicate every day in order to motivate and lead their team

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effectively. It'll show them how to build and lead a high-performing team. Give them a framework for running effective meetings so they'll be able to solve problems in less than an hour and also give them a higher perspective on

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their leadership that will enable them to work on the business and on their teams and not get stuck in the weeds micromanaging. So go out to my website the shift.constructiongenius.com, read all about the course, and then enroll yourself and your leaders in the

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course, and I guarantee that it will transform your leadership. If it does not, you take the whole course and you didn't get benefit from it, you just send me an email [email protected], and I will cheerfully refund you 100% of

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your money. I'm really confident this course will transform your leadership. So again, go out to the website t

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effectively. It'll show them how to build and lead a high-erforming team. Give them a framework for running effective meetings so they'll be able to solve problems in less than an hour and also give them a higher perspective on

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their leadership that will enable them to work on the business and on their teams and not get stuck in the weeds micromanaging. So go out to my website the shift.constructiongius.com read all about the course and then enroll yourself and your leaders in the

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course and I guarantee that it will transform your leadership. If it does not you take the whole course and you didn't get benefit from it. You just send me an email [email protected] and I will cheerfully refund you 100% of

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your money. I'm really confident this course will transform your leadership. So again go out to the website the shift.construction constructiongenius.com, learn more about the course and start taking it today.

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I think that's also a good way for you to actually filter people in and out of the organization because if you do have a career development conversation with someone and you pick up from them that they're just kind of paycheck

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pickeruppers and they don't really have ambition, but you need them to be more ambitious, more more driven in their focus, that can give you some good information for you to be able to to make choices based on. 100%. And a lot

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of this comes down to understanding what people really want. You know, when a lot of people want stability in their work and so they may not be looking to move on to the next best thing, if they're getting the work that they want and they

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they feel good about it, especially in the construction field, the trades in general, one of the great things about the trades is that people can often see the results of their work. And this is something I think in more quote

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unquote white collar work, you know, the office work where a lot of people are left at the end of the day wondering, did I do anything today? Did I accomplish something today? And I think that leads people to feel like I want to

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progress in my career, maybe with the job title that I have. Whereas my brother-in-law worked in construction and he found it quite rewarding to just be making things and to be able to drive by and say, "Hey, I I built that thing."

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and he was quite happy doing that for many many years. It's interesting because I think that one of the challenges that comes up with with the this question around career development is the way we perceive people and the way they perceive

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themselves. Yes. And sometimes there's a disconnection there and of course we're afraid that we're going to lose talent if they if they want to do something that's not within what we do. But at the same time, I think there needs to be sort of a, for

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lack of a better phrase, an openheartedness in employees and a sense that I want what's best for this person.

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And if this person is not does not want the position that they have in my company for a long period of time, then I should not want it for them, even if in the present time it's expedient and

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it meets a need for me. 100%. 100%. this is uh it's a short-term strategy if you're playing that that game. And I mean often one of the things that people want is a boss that pays attention. And and so just doing that will set you

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ahead and you'll probably gain a few extra months or sometimes years of retention because of that. But you're totally right that openheartedness like what does this person actually want? And if I want what's helpful for them and can help them get it, they're going to

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be loyal. They're going to work harder. They're they're going to be more diligent. And um I I don't think anybody does their best work when they feel like the boss doesn't really care about them as a person.

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Yeah. And I think another thing with a career development conversation is sometimes we see in other people what they do not see in themselves.

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Very true. And and if we take time to sit down with them, see what they want, and then even explore with them areas in the business that they could find success in that perhaps they hadn't thought about. That

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can really open up doors for them within your own company. That's so true. That's so true. I heard a nice analogy the other day that there's rock stars and superstars. And I don't know where these names came from, but rockstars are the

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people who are doing the same thing over and over again. And they rock at it.

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They are they're going to play that same tune day after day. And superstars maybe are the people who are always looking for the next thing.

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What's the next option? and both of them are incredibly necessary, but you don't want to get one in a pos in a role that the other would thrive in. Then you end up with like, oh, I want more from this

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person and they're not giving it to me. Oh, maybe that's not their strength. And sometimes, uh, the person who says, what's new, what's new, what's new. It's like, just do this again and, you know, get consistent at this. That might not

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be their strength. So, I agree. Sometimes somebody comes in, they're not really sure where do I fit. and a manager who's got just a bigger sample size of people that they've worked with, they can tell early, ah, this person

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would be great for this type of role or for that type of role or with this type of thinking or that type of work or or skill. Yeah.

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Yeah. It's interesting. I was just thinking about a couple of young men that I know who are making career choices and and just based on my own experience, I can tell that one individual would be excellent excellent in business development while the other

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individual would need a more process-based job in order to be effective. And so you can apply that logic, you know, throughout someone's career.

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Yes. Beautifully said. Beautifully said. At what point did you realize that being good at the work is fundamentally different than being good at leading people early on? Well, so I started in the training and development world really as

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a soloreneur. A lot of trades professionals do that also actually. They're good at this job and they they do it and they get busy and that's exactly what happened. And I was busy enough for me that I needed help. I

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needed an assistant. There were too many things to manage. And I realized I mean I had a good working relationship with my assistant but I knew that my strengths were not in the organization side and my weaknesses started to emerge

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with our working relationship. As our team grew over the past 10 years we're we now have we're relatively small still. We have five full-time people and about [clears throat] a dozen contractors. But that sort of like working unit size, you know, 10 15

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people, I think is common for people. And what I've seen more and more is that I just need to do different things than I used to do. You know, looking ahead at what creates a good team is very

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different than going and and doing the presentation, doing the training gig for that's in the training and development world. Sure. Um I think I had a a good conversation with one of my teammates at one point and I'd hired him originally

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to do training and I said, "So do you think you can also be responsible for having a sustainable facilitator team?

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Like if in a year from now you've done great presentations, that's great, but what I really need is a sustainable team of people who can do great presentations." And he said, "Oh, that's really different." And I said, "Yeah,

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and I don't really know how to do it either. As the business grew, I started having these realizations that like, oh, this is different work than it used to be.

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Yeah. Are there points, I mean, when people in construction kind of rise through the ranks, is there a moment when they tend to realize like, oh, this is not just about getting the job done anymore? This is now about either quoting or budgeting or

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client relationships or and managing professionals, getting the team on on site. Are there are these like moments of truth that come up for your people in in the construction industry? I think the the the main one if I'm working in a

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company is when I move from building projects to leading teams of people and that shift that someone has to make is is fundamentally different because like you said earlier many people get into construction because of the enjoyment they get from building and being able to

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say I built that and the that that they're referring to is a is a physical material object a road a building whatever the case may be whereas building people is a fundamentally different skill set and though you may

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have technical skills in construction that doesn't make you a good leader or a good builder of teams. And so that's one of the fundamental challenges that that people have.

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Yes. Gosh, the first time I was watching other people present what had been my material originally, you know, we we do career skills workshops and I knew other people, but watching somebody else do the work in their own

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way was really hard for me. That was probably one of the moments where I realized, oh, this is different than just being good at it because I knew what I didn't like and I knew what I thought it should be like, but I didn't

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really know how to engage with the person to get what I needed from them.

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And that process of like giving feedback, of guiding people, and then once we started expanding a little bit more, now we had to worry about consistency across the team. This guy does it this way, that guy does it this way. And it

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would be great if they did it kind of the same because sometimes they're going to work together. How much consistency do we need? And how much freedom does each person have to add their own parts to it, add their own way of doing it? I

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think that's probably something that lots of leaders see originally. They have this moment where like, oh, their hands are off the project and there's a real temptation to put the hands back on the project because it's not playing out

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quite as they expected it would if they had been doing it themselves. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker A

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truly. And I know you'll really enjoy it. So, go out and get the book. And now, back to the interview.

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From everything you've observed, what belief about leadership causes the most harm, especially among well-intentioned managers? I think a lot of people believe that if you get good people, they should just know how to do the work. They shouldn't have to train

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anybody. They shouldn't have to tell people how to do it. They should, you know, in their words, they should be grown-ups. I'm not here to babysit here.

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Right. and especially so what's the difference between between babysitting and supporting and providing good leadership?

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Yes, everybody needs a certain level of competence and skill to do their job. But that does not guarantee that everyone's rowing in the same direction.

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It doesn't guarantee that the way different people work are are going to jive with each other. So I think the type of feedback somebody had described it to me once as like thruster adjustments. You're not massively steering the the ship in a new

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direction, but you're stepping in just at the right time and go, "Oh, little nudge this way. Oh, little nudge that way to make sure people are moving in the right direction." And if you have a belief that they shouldn't need any

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guidance, that gets in the way. And the way I see it come out to be honest is through frustration and almost like contempt for people. They should know how to do that. They didn't know how to do that. So whatever that that was your

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choice now as a manager is was how do you want to approach this? And I think a lot of people get turned around in their mind and frustrated. They're like, well, this person should just be better, but they're not better. At least not yet.

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It's interesting because the idea of micro conversations comes in here where as leaders, we have this rhythm of meetings that we have, especially to sort of the formal times where information is exchanged. And yet these the micro conversations are often

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the places where you share an insight, you give a moment of support, you give an observation that sticks with the person far more than just the the humrum of the daily or weekly meeting flow.

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That is so true. You probably probably almost everybody can think of one of those conversations, you know, one of those things that stood out in your mind. I I remember I worked at a at a cement plant for a summer as a laborer.

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Y and I had a great supervisor, a great foreman who I remember we were hooking up something to a a crane at one point and I put my hand on the pulley and this guy Mike was his name. He basically

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whacked my hand away and said, "Oh, Joel, never put your hand on a pulley." You know, if that guy up there in the crane, if he misinterprets one of my signals or he bumps the something like he starts up the crane, all of a sudden,

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you don't have a hand anymore. Like, we want you to go home in one piece, right?

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And that was a little moment, not a formal meeting. It was a small interaction, bit of feedback. He What did he show? He showed that he cared about my safety. He showed that he was willing to step in and help

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out in an emergency. I didn't feel like he looked down on me for it. I didn't know. I was like 19.

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Nobody had ever told me that before. probably a lot of people have memories of these little moments where a mentor, a guide, maybe even a colleague Yeah.

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has offered them something and micro conversations is a great way to put it. That's what it feels like. These little moments. I have a sort of a model in my mind for feedback. There's a million models out there, but sure I like this

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model. Cats, uh, cats, you change the order, make it cast or tax if you want.

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I Let's go with cats. So conversational, actionable, timely, and sensitive. So the first one, conversational, it's much easier to get information into somebody if it feels like a conversation rather than sort of a reprimand. The actionable part is like, what do you want me to

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actually do differently? Uh otherwise, it feels like we're just criticizing somebody's personality. The timely part is that it needs to feel relevant to the thing that we're giving feedback on. the closer we can be to the actual event

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that happened. It it would be really weird if you said in a annual review, gosh, 11 months ago you did this thing and it was just awful. You say you've been sitting on this for 11 months doesn't build trust and then sensitive

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is just the way that we would deliver that information knowing that this is going to have an emotional impact too.

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And of course, if you're conversational, it makes all the other things easier. These micro conversations make it more timely and usually more actionable and usually more sensitive.

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So, let's dive into each one of those at the moment. In your experience, and this may vary from leader to leader, but which one of those three or four, conversational actionable timely and sensitive, do people most struggle with

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the sensitive part? Maybe because it's that mindset like they should know this. They should be better at it.

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People say, you know, well, if they can't do their job, that's their problem. So, there's probably a macho sort of approach that says, well, you know, toughen up and just take the information.

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where that comes from because we just want to give the feedback and sell it plainly. The issue is that that doesn't necessarily help the person receive the feedback in a way that actually creates the change that we want. So, we're

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shooting ourselves in the foot by saying, "Oh man, you only an idiot would would have connected that like like that. What were you thinking?" And you may have delivered it the message, but that's going to trigger a lot of

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defensiveness in people. They're going to say, "Well, you don't know. Well, my old place, we did it like that. We do like this all the time. I've been doing it this way for years. And they actually get defensive and protective of how they

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they did it. Rather than going, "Oh, show me what you mean." You know, there's a different way to ask that or give that feedback. Say there's some connection that's not done well. You say, "Ah, can you explain to me how you

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connected these things? Just make it conversational." Well, we did this interesting. Why do you do it that way?

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One of my concerns is is this thing. You know, I'm not sure if that like do you think that's as strong? What do you think? Let me check on that. I don't know. our standard of the way we do

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things is this way. Let me show you. Especially hopefully that person comes away with the conversation kind of resonating in their mind and saying, "Ah, that is maybe a better way to do that. Yeah, I could see that." Not just,

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"Okay, I'll do it this way because the guy says so." Yeah. Yeah. So, the idea of of conversational is asking and answering questions and and getting into that mode.

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I think it's interesting when we come to timely and sensitive. One of the reasons I think that conversations are more difficult than they need to be is because of that element of time. And the more time that people allow to pass, the

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more tension can build, particularly if a behavior is repeated again and again before I address it. And then that leads me to addressing it in a way that is inappropriate or too direct because I haven't been timely enough in dealing

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with it when it was a small issue in the beginning. You're so right. You're so right. I did this myself not too long ago. I had had this feeling, this nagging feeling inside that I should say something about

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this. I don't but it's not a big problem. Maybe I just I don't want to deal with that today. And sure enough, the day that it became a big problem and I had to deal with it, it was indeed a

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big problem. It was it had snowballed. That's a thing I'm I'm trying to do better these days. notice when things are feeling a little bit bad or when I have a little issue and try not to hold that in just for the sake of trying to

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smooth over the relationship or or because I don't feel like doing it today like ah this is this is part of the job I could I bet I can have this conversation and so that's where the micro conversations come back in. So instead

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of having some sort of formal sitdown with someone you might just be passing by their desk or whatever and you'd be able to have a quick chat with them and just point something out.

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Totally. Totally. Yeah. One practical technique that might be helpful with this is if you're needing to have a little conversation or and you're not quite sure how to bring it up. It feels like it's going to be awkward. You can

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label the role that you have to play at that moment. So you say, "Oh, hey Jim.

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How's it going? You know, oh yeah, good day. How was the night last night? Where I see a movie? Hey, let me put my boss hat on for a moment or let me put my foreman hat on for a m let me put my

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supervisor safety manager hat on for a moment. I got to mention this thing that I saw yesterday. It would be irresponsible of me as a safety manager to not bring this up. Do you want to talk about that? By just labeling the

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role that you have, it can depersonalize it a little bit for people. Yeah. Interesting. You've seen high performers and average performers respond very differently to leadership. Who tends to leave first when leadership breaks down?

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And what does that do to the team and the culture that remains? Oh yeah. Okay. Okay, so the short answer is that your high performers almost certainly leave first. And that's bad for lots of reasons. First of all, why

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do they leave first? Often high performers know they're high performers. They know they're employable and they know that they've got other opportunities if they just want to look for them. So that's reason number one.

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The other reason they leave fast when leadership breaks down is because the other matters a lot to them [clears throat] what their leadership is like. You know that old phrase, people don't quit jobs, they quit bosses.

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Yeah. Yeah. And for high performers, they know, okay, I can do this work and I like this work and it's meaningful. But often those same people are quite committed to what they're doing. They're committed to the company and to the team that they're

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on. That's part of what makes them a high performer. And so if the if the boss becomes sort of a adult and they stop caring or they start messing up or start sherking responsibility or blaming everybody else, that high performer

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says, "I don't know if I want to work for this schmuck anymore. This doesn't feel like the way I'm going to get ahead." One little example, one of the habits from this this book, we'll talk about that, but mediocrity mongering. So

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when bosses have kind of general low standards, high performers really don't like that. They want to fly. They want to do their best work. A young woman told me a story. She said, "I had this boss at one point." They said, "I did

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this project and I came back in two days and the person said, "Gosh, that would have taken everybody else on the team a week. Like, slow down. You're making the rest of us look bad." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A

And while it's quite understandable from the boss's perspective that in fact they might have been feeling a little bit insecure because this person just showed them up, this young professional, the young woman said, "I don't want to work

Speaker A

for that person." Yeah. like that's I want to do good work. Why couldn't they recognize me for doing something and say, "Well, let's help everybody else do it better then if we if there's a better way." Want to do

Speaker A

good work? Yeah, it's interesting. How do you know your culture is starting to tip in the wrong direction then if when you're dealing with this issue?

Speaker A

There's probably a bunch of signs. One thing you could look around at and and say like what types of behaviors are celebrated? Is there a dominant behavior? You know, is it when somebody comes up with a a good idea, does the

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team go that's awesome, way to go? Or do they sort of shoot down that person?

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This is something called tall poppy syndrome. Yeah. Actually, where uh the idea is like, oh, a tall poppy is growing up and it gets chopped down, right?

Speaker A

Uh to be more like everybody else. If that's happening, that's a good sign that that got a mediocre kind of culture in the works.

Speaker A

Yeah. You could look at um at the just the way people talk about things. Is it good enough? They they'll use phrases, you know like uh oh whoa whoa slow down. Like, let's not reinvent the wheel here. You know, it's almost in the the

Speaker A

language that people use, like, let's not worry about it too much. Somebody else is paying the bills on this one.

Speaker A

Yep. And when you hear that sound, that's a clue that people don't care. Yeah. It's interesting.

Speaker A

In what ways do bosses delude themselves when their high performers are leaving? It's not their fault, it's the other person's fault. Yeah. So, defective bosses, one of their habits is to blame everybody else. You know, they steal the

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credit when things go well and they point the finger when things go wrong. So, I mean, we all do this in some way.

Speaker A

Nobody wants to be the villain, right? We don't want to be the bad guy. So, when we make mistakes, all of us have an instinct to blame somebody else and point the finger at somebody else. Well, they they never fit here anyways,

Speaker A

they'll say. So, they they'll make some comment like that. Well, they were always and they'll point out these other problems that they hadn't verbalized before and that had truthfully probably never really been problems, but they sort of make up a story to say we're

Speaker A

better off without that person instead of saying, "Oh, that's a real loss to the team and it's disappointing to be losing that person and maybe I had something to do with it." That's I think it's just the classic like I don't want

Speaker A

to be the victim here. I don't want to be the bad guy rather. Sorry. I'm the victim, not the bad guy.

Speaker A

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. It's interesting. What's one leadership behavior that feels efficient or responsible to the person in charge but slowly drains initiative and ownership from the team?

Speaker A

Initiative and ownership. Well, there's always a balance between how much the manager should get involved with a project. the other if things aren't going well, a good team will step in and help out and everybody kind of pitches in. Now, in union

Speaker A

environments, this can be tricky because there are sometimes, you know, no, no, the manager cannot tighten that bolt.

Speaker A

You call the guy over, but this is something that I think, let's say there's a well-intentioned manager and the team really does need some extra support and the manager says, "I will come and help you. I will come.

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I'll pick up a shovel and and do it. I'm in the other that's a good thing um to a point, right? Because we want to know that our manager has our back and is is working with us and believes in us.

Speaker A

But if we pitch in too much, then we take away the work and we stop asking the questions like, wait, why is this behind schedule?

Speaker A

Yes. Why is this not going well? And what can we do? What can I do as the manager? I'm not doing the work, but what can I do to get us back on schedule or to make sure we don't fall behind next time? Maybe

Speaker A

the team is underst staffed. Maybe the project was um misqued or the specs were totally different than people thought. I like to use the sports analogy of like a coach. Like the coach of a basketball team doesn't run out onto the court to

Speaker A

take the free throws. Yes. You know, the they have to be the game planner, but they can't do the work.

Speaker A

Yeah. So, I think there's this balance, this efficiency. You know, so many times I've wanted to say, you know what, it's just faster if I just finish up this task. I'll do it. But sometimes it would be better to go back to the person who

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did it and say, "Can you help me fix this mistake? I need it to be like this.

Speaker A

Not just this time, but each time we do this. Here's the standard, and I'll help you get there." So, does that does that resonate, Eric?

Speaker A

Are you? Yeah. No, definitely. I think one of the other reason the other reason the other reason the other reason the other reason they allow themselves to be interrupted by the people who report to them and get sucked into doing the job

Speaker A

of the people that report to them and obviously there's there's emergencies at times where I need to help someone out but then I need to discern when I'm doing that too much and hindering the growth of the person

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or allowing them to be irresponsible and that also takes away from me being able to do my job and so it's very important that a person understands those distinctions and doesn't allow the scale to get tipped too far one way or the

Speaker A

other. Yes. Another technique for doing this if it's hard to do in the moment. You know, some people like, I don't want to say no. They asked for my help.

Speaker A

Yeah. Is again to call out that role label to say, gosh, as a pal and as your former coworker, I'd love to just finish this up for you, but I'm not sure that would be the most responsible thing as your

Speaker A

boss or as the supervisor here. what role do you think the supervisor should be playing in this? And you can make them part of the conversation about what your role should be and how you can help.

Speaker A

Yeah. And I think that goes back to this idea that I I know that a lot of people struggle with is the reason they got into their leadership role.

Speaker A

The other reason is because they have said yes and they've said that again and again and again. Can you do this? Yes. Can you take care of that? Yes. And then when they get into a leadership role where they have to be disciplined and

Speaker A

focused on how they're spending their time, they then have to shift to getting good at saying no. That's so true. That that's a brilliant way to look at it.

Speaker A

One of the ways I think of things is in that short-term and long-term task side of things.

Speaker A

Y getting things done, you know, project management is a lot about saying, "Yes, okay, let's move this forward. Let's do it." But the long-term side is being more strategic and the essence of strategy is sort of saying what are we

Speaker A

not going to do? We could focus on a million different things but are we working on the right projects right now?

Speaker A

The other reason and given we've all got limited time. That's how I kind of think of of that strategy piece is what am I saying no to? Yeah.

Speaker A

Because it's fun to say yes to every gosh we did a strategic retreat not too long ago. We came up with about 18 different projects that we should do and went and said, "Okay, so which ones of these should we not do?" And we went

Speaker A

through and we said, "Well, we should do them all." It's like, "Right, but that's not a strategy." Yeah. [laughter] You know, like they Yes, given the time event enough time, we'll do them all, but what do we do first? What do we do

Speaker A

now? And let's get everybody focused on that. And I found, I don't know about you, when I've made really good progress on things, it's often because I've been incredibly focused on a certain thing.

Speaker A

Yeah. And Yeah. And I think that's another thing that leaders have to get good at in their role is understanding what is it that only I can do that if done with excellence will have the greatest positive impact upon the organization.

Speaker A

And then they have to be relentless in saying no to the other things that would suck time away from doing exactly that.

Speaker A

Yeah. You know, there's a a nice phrase I heard and it this is maybe about early leaders versus like more seasoned leaders or people even higher up in an organization depending on how big the organization is. You sort of mentioned

Speaker A

it, but a a question that came up is like, well, what am I not very good at?

Speaker A

That's I should delegate that. Leaders often say, okay, that's what I need to delegate first. Delegate the things I I'm not good at. That's true. But as you grow as a leader, eventually you're going to need to delegate things that

Speaker A

you are good at. Yes. And that's what's really challenging that for a lot of uh kind of people moving into senior management or leadership roles, they want to say yes to things because they're good at it and they might be the best business

Speaker A

developer and the best I don't know con blueprint reader in the group. Sure. But that's not if they're trying to do both of those things, that's not the best overall result for the team.

Speaker A

Yeah. And it's interesting because in construction, one of the biggest challenges people have when they get into leadership roles, particularly if they've been involved in the other building projects where they they track their success either from the physical work in place or from the

Speaker A

project being completed on a bigger picture is they feel guilty in their new role because they don't feel like they're working anymore. Ah, and either that's because their hands are clean or their boots are clean at the end of the day or they haven't had

Speaker A

to deal with a customer issue that maybe a project manager has had to deal with.

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They've been working at a higher level and that sense of guilt then brings them into unintentional micromanagement and getting involved in things that they shouldn't be involved in anymore.

Speaker A

Yes. Gosh. Oh, what a great little psychological nugget there. That that is if you can identify that feeling like oh gosh what did I even do today if you find yourself asking that that's a cue to say ah maybe I did exactly the right

Speaker A

thing because I was available if somebody needed me the project is on task I tend to ask my staff team every oh every 6 months or so at least sometimes more often and sometimes I ask my wife what do you think my best value

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ad to this group is right now sure like what can I do that's like really needed. What do you still need me for?

Speaker A

And they've said some really insightful things. Many of which are complimentary and some of which are insightful but not so complimentary in that they'll say something like we don't need you to do this. Like we got it. We're okay.

Speaker A

Can you give me an example of that? Yeah, sure. So, and the business development side I asked some time ago, hey, should [clears throat] I be on these sales calls? And they said if it's a new person, yes, but

Speaker A

they know the person and we're we've worked with them many times. The other I mean they really like you Joel, but I don't think we need you on the call because when you get involved with the call, you start suggesting these ideas

Speaker A

and then it's not clear who has the ball. And often by default because you're the senior person, they start talking to you instead of to us. And my administrators were basically saying, "We want to own the information that's

Speaker A

coming out of this call." But then they go straight to you and they start telling you all the details and then you you're too busy. And so you don't tell us what they've said. The other reason basically by me getting involved in the

Speaker A

sales process, it sort of disrupts the system and the flow that the team had been developing for how they wanted to get the information and and the clarity and trust that they wanted to build with that customer. So I is that I don't know

Speaker A

if that's a good example for you, but maybe business development people or senior managers in big projects, they want to get back in there and oh, I know that person, he's a buddy from a long time ago. I'll get in on that meeting,

Speaker A

too. And they end up usurping the whole meeting. At least that's That's interesting. Yeah. No, I I can totally understand that. Going back to the sense of guilt, another idea came up is as a leader is thinking about what have I

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accomplished today? And and again, their hands aren't dirty and their boots aren't muddy. The other perhaps one way of looking at it is how many of those micro conversations have I had the insightful five or 10 minute conversations with the people who report

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to me which will then result in them being able to be more effective at the projects they're building. And if I can frame my success in terms of how have I impacted the people who report to me instead of how have I built a job today

Speaker A

that can help with that sense of guilt. The other is great and maybe that comes back to those four quadrants of like did I invest in the team dynamics today? Did I have a little conversation about how is this project going and are there any

Speaker A

roadblocks for you? And one of the reason other habits that comes up of defective bosses is hassle making. When managers kind of introduce obstacles or annoyances into people's flow, that's bothersome.

Speaker A

Yes. And manager can see themselves as a a hassle remover, a dehassler. And you know from the agile and uh sort of you know uh these um like lean manufacturing worlds one of the principles is go and see go and see what's happening and you

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go walk around the site walk around the job site and look what's happening and and observe and look for the inefficiencies and have conversations and ask questions and when you do that I mean often managers I think have the

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benefit of longer careers not always but often They've got a broader perspective. They've seen more projects. And so they're well equipped to notice nuances and have conversations about those things and add value in ways that people who are doing it for the first time or

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who are just kind of going through the motions of getting the thing done. Maybe they wouldn't stop to think about the context of something. So I do think there's value in being present, having conversations with people, really observing and trying to fill that role

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of strategizer and larger picture sensor, I guess, for the organization and for the project.

Speaker A

Yeah, it's interesting. Um, if a leader listening to this suspects that they might be part of the problem but isn't sure, what's the most honest question they should ask themselves this week? So, you could go and take the highly defective

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boss assessment at a website, but we'll mention that later. But there's one big question.

Speaker A

It's something like, "Do my people trust me to help them do their best work?" Rather than saying like, "Did I get the work done or are we on task with the projects?" Because lots of defective managers are sort of like hard-headed bullies who are

Speaker A

getting jobs done. Yes. but they're getting short-term results or their people are turning over like crazy. And if you ask the question, do my people trust me?

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Go and see to help them do their best work. Go and see how do they show that? Maybe that's in their mind like how would they show how would I know if they trust me?

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Obviously, you could look at things like turnover and do people have honest conversations. Are you the last one to find out when something goes wrong or are you the first one to find out when something goes wrong? Every time an

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employee comes to me with a little issue, I had somebody text me the other day. We we were supposed to have a meeting and uh this guy, we put it online, the weather was bad, and this guy said, "I think 3 hours might be a

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little bit long for this uh virtual meeting. Have you considered shortening it?" Yeah. And part of me said, "We already shortened it. We dropped it down from weather. We do you have any idea what we have to get through?" Uh,

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but I didn't say that to that person because the other part of me said, "Isn't it great that this employee of mine go tell me I think this meeting sounds like it's going to be too long." Yeah.

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That shows that he trusts me. He doesn't feel scared for his job. You know, he believes that he can share something that's a little bit uncomfortable. And if your employees can do that with you, that means you're in the know and you're

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a team member, not some like person on the outside who's just there to fill a role. But gosh, let's not interact with this schmuck too much.

Speaker A

Yeah, that's interesting. So Joel, tell us a little bit more. You've mentioned a couple of times your book. Um, tell us a little bit more about that and even this assessment that you mentioned because that's quite interesting.

Speaker A

Yeah, so I wrote a book uh this past year called the six and a half habits of highly defective bosses, serious lessons for accidental managers. And I wrote this book because I was talking with, you know, young professionals, my

Speaker A

generation, lots of people kind of moving up through the the ranks now and finding themselves in leadership roles and realizing that even if there was training, they didn't quite know and they didn't feel very confident in their new role as a manager.

Speaker A

A lot of people come into management roles accidentally. You know, they they I don't know, I was just doing my job and then my manager moved on and somebody said, "Hey, you seem to know what you're doing. why don't you lead

Speaker A

the team? Why don't you do this project? And I realized that that was my journey as well. Although I came into it accidentally because I was a soloreneur who grew a team. Go.

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I didn't know what I was doing as a boss. And I didn't need to be amazing as a boss. I just wanted to not be terrible. You know, I wanted to avoid the mistakes that would be really costly

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that would that would kind of drive people away. And I have made some of those mistakes, but I stumbled into a lot of good practices as well. So that's what kind of inspired the book. I wanted to put these things together.

Speaker A

Where can people get that book? Oh yeah, anywhere you buy books. Amazon is there. The six and a half habits of highly defective bosses. If you want, you can look at my website and do the free highly defective boss assessment.

Speaker A

Um, which is joelhelchry.com/bosses. And um, you can look that up. It's in the book as well, but it's a short little assessment and it'll tell you about which of the habits you might be most prone to. By the way,

Speaker A

the half habit is uh consistently inconsistent, which didn't feel worthy of full habit status.

Speaker A

There you go. Excellent. So, we'll have a link in the show notes so that people can go check out the book and check out the assessment. And uh Joel, I really appreciate you joining us on Construction Genius here today.

Speaker A

It's been great great to chat with you, Eric. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Construction Genius. Feel free to check out the links in the show notes to get in touch with Joel. Share the episode with other

Speaker A

people. Give the show a rating and a review wherever you get your podcasts and we will catch you on the next episode.

Speaker A

Thank you for listening to this episode of Construction Genius. Hope you found that 1% of inspiration to help you in the next few days. If you like the show, please give us a five-star review on iTunes. Share it with other construction

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leaders who you think would benefit. And always remember that the show is brought to you by Kick-Ass meetings. I've been working with construction leaders since 2004, teaching them how to run extremely effective problem-solving meetings [music] that gets their people collaborating,

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taps into their creativity. And to get yourself a free copy of the kickass Meeting report, go to www.ericanderton.com/kickassme.

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Grab yourself that free report. Read it, use it in your business. You'll find it extremely [music] useful. And thanks again for listening.

Speaker A

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