Business Innovators Radio - Episode 19: Fixing the People Problem in the Construction Industry with Deborah Peters

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Part of the Construction Executives Live SeriesFor generations the construction industry has struggled with high turnover rates, lack of loyalty, commoditizing our workforce and a general lack of care and heart for our team. Let’s make 2023 the year we change this for good!In The Zonehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/in-the-zone/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-19-fixing-the-people-problem-in-the-construction-industry-with-deborah-peters

Welcome to In the Zone, brought to you by U.S. Construction Zone, bringing you strategies for success with construction innovators and change makers, including In The Zone peer-nominated national award winners. Here are your host, Jeremy Owens and Valerie Owens. Hi there. Welcome back to Construction Executives Live. I am your host, Jeremy Owens, owner and founder of U.S. Construction Zone and three generations improvements out in Sunny, California. We made it through our big storms of December. in January, and thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. It was a little wild for us, for California, that is. But we're back to sunshine and all is right in the world again. We have a great show for you today. Thank you for being there here. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to make this a priority. I see a lot of familiar names and faces, and I just appreciate your loyalty to what we're trying to do here. Now, I've said it from the beginning, you know, we wanted to be a connection point for executives and construction.

construction, but we're realizing more and more that we need to be more than that. And one of them is the educational component that we like to bring with the construction executives live. We want to be a place to have difficult conversations. We want to be a place that we really push those boundaries a little bit, maybe even make you and I a little bit uncomfortable. That's what we're here to do. So we appreciate, again, for you being here.

A couple updates on our platform. We have three new pages that we are going to be rolling out live here in the next day or two. So we're really excited about those. The first one is we are going to be updating our construction executives live page and housing all of our previous recordings on that page. We realize that we all have busy schedules. We can always make the live show work. We want to make sure that these live on forever.

and we want to highlight our great speakers that we've had here, but we also want to make sure that we have that reference point for you guys at all times. So that is the first one. Second one is events page. So we are rolling out a construction events page. We want to make sure that all of our members and executives see the events that are happening in construction and make sure you go to those events that make sense to you. The last one is a trade organizations page.

Again, we want to be that reference point for the industry, and we want to do that for our trade organizations as well. So we have a map of the U.S. We have a way to search for trade organizations by topic. We have a way for you to click on that trade organization, get information, get involved in your community. Again, we want to provide some value to you, and hopefully these three pages do so. you know again like I said we want to connect you all but we also want to connect you to the right

organization event or idea to get you and your business to the next level and we hope we are bringing you guys some value so thanks again um so we're really excited about this this event uh we have a great show for you today called fixing the people problem in the construction industry you know for generations the industry has struggled with high turnover rates lack of loyalty commoditizing our workforce and a general lack of care and heart for our team. So we really want to make this year the year that we change all of that. And so we have a great speaker here today that has a lot of experience in this topic. And her name is Deborah Peters and she's a global thought leader and professional speaker who has delivered key don't speeches and customized programs

in over 17 countries, which is 17 more than I have done. So congratulations there. She's an expert in leadership, team development, and thoughtful business development. And she's host of the podcast, the Deborah Peters Show and founder of Neuro Engineering Institute, where she guides business leaders into alignment with their highest potential, cultivating mastery of mind, life, and business. So please help me welcome Deborah Peters. Deborah, thank you for being here. Wow, I'm excited.

This is a great show we're doing today. Yeah, thank you. I know you're calling while you're traveling. You're in beautiful mammoth territory. and for those who don't know, that's in Southern California area, a beautiful, beautiful ski mountains and ski resorts. So you see if she's got a little ice skate in the back of her. Just make sure that doesn't fall in your head during the show.

I know, right? There's some hockey sticks up there too, but you just can't, they're just not in the camera view. Awesome. Well, thank you for taking time out of your schedule. And I know you needed a little R&R, which is we all need. So hopefully this is just adds that R&R for you. Absolutely.

You know, it's nothing's more. I guess rewarding and fulfilling to me than being able to share some tools that will help people achieve things easier and grow their companies. You know, that's really the key. When you can grow a business by contributing to the people that are part of your business, their personal lives get better as a part of that. Then that's really exciting. Yeah, awesome.

I mean, tell me a little bit about your career and like you have such a profound desire to find that deeper meaning of our lives. Where do that come from? I think when I was a kid, I grew up on a farm, very sort of rural. We were, I don't know, maybe 30 miles from the nearest town. There was always this running joke where I grew up that if you wanted to talk to somebody, you had to drive for 40 miles. It was pretty remote.

So it gave me an opportunity to really tap into my imagination and to keep that as a major pillar of my character in my life. And I never let that go. I think, you know, a lot of people are conditioned to give up on that as they become responsible adults. And I, you know, so it's something that I teach because our imagination is the key to creating everything and anything. Right.

And through that, a whole life experience of farming and ranching and animal husbandry and growing crops. And, you know, when you're connected to the earth, you realize how energy flows. And you realize how important what you focus on is and to stay out of the weeds of the negativity. Sure. So I just kept on that path and found ways to kind of channel that awareness into business functions and streams of income and business relationship development. So it's been a journey for sure. It seems like you found your passion. I mean, I think I share that constant curiosity thing with you where you just never quite satisfied with someone telling you how it is.

you need to go kind of figure it out on your own do. And I think that's a blessing and a curse for me personally. But yeah, I mean, I think you found your right career path. And like I said in the open, like we in the construction industry, we have a lot of issues. And they're really people issues, you know, the high turnover rate is one of them. But the lack of loyalty, the way we commoditize our workforce. And just the lack of care we've generally had over many generations in the industry, you know, as a speaker and a podcast guest and a host and, you know, all these things you do

as well as a leadership developer for construction executives, how do you think we got here as an industry? It's part of the paradigm of the industry and it's something that hasn't really shifted and evolved with the times, so speak. You know, you can look at different industries that have really evolved with a higher level of awareness or consciousness, if you want to call it that, over time where they've become more up to speed with what's working in the world. And then there are some industries that have always, over time, sort of dug in their heels and hung on to the old way. It's like, well, we've done it this way for 20, 40, 60 years.

And it works. so why would we change it? And the thing I'd like to say is, you know, it might work, but is it effective? Because that's a very different bar to say. You know, it might work. It might get you by, but is it effective? Is it really producing the results that you want? Right.

It's almost like it's not sustainable anymore. Like it used to be because, you know, you had like the old guy. club and is like our way or the highway and like this is the way we've always been doing it but now we have newer generations that are in the workforce that aren't going to put up with that crap so if you want your business to go beyond like I'm in my third generation you want it to keep going another generation I don't know if that's going to work anymore well it doesn't work um you know I have a client I've been working with since 2019 it's a construction company in southern California and it's 40-year-old company.

So we're into second generation. The organization, when I first started working with the son, who is the new CEO, the organization really had what I call, you know, the fly by the seed of your of your pants business model, where it just was, to your point, this is the way we do it, this is the way we've always done it. We have these relationships. you know, we make these deals over morning coffee or a beer at some point, and then it flows, which at the time had its value because we didn't have the ability to have the reach that we have now.

So what's happening with that? Well, it doesn't, it's stagnant, like it has these blocks around it, which keep it from actually becoming what it could become. So since 2019, we've really focused on, first things first, the mindset, I like to use the word consciousness because what we're conscious of is what we become and what we're unconscious of are our blind spots. And those blind spots could be potential or money that we're leaving on the table. And those blind spots could also be how we block ourselves from accepting, a higher level of understanding of what else is possible that we're not willing to look at because we're holding on to the old way. And that's really the, that's really where the issue is.

And it's not just the construction industry. You know, there's other industries that are similar, but it's that unwillingness. It's that unwillingness to ask questions about, well, okay, we understand we do it this way and it produces this result. These are the KPIs for it. If there's even an understanding of KPIs, but that's another conversation, right? So these are the KPIs for it. And so then the question would be, well, what else haven't we thought of yet? You know, what else could we be doing that we don't know about that if we were to ask different questions,

we might be able to actually expand beyond our. current reality, our current way of doing things. That's the piece that's missing. Yeah, and it's just like, just because we know we have the problem doesn't make it easy to solve. And I think it's harder for us to solve because we do have that, unfortunately, we still have that mentality of this is the way it's always been done. And that little bit of a man's club still exist in some of the higher-up executives that have been there for a long time, right? So just because you have the problem doesn't, you know, sure we can talk about it, but it doesn't always make it easy to solve. So, I mean, what are you finding when you meet an executive that definitely fits this mold?

Is it a hard conversation? Well, it means directing and guiding the conversation to in a different direction. So it's not about solving problems. It's about creating a focus on a new outcome or a new result. you'll never you know what it was Einstein I'm probably going to you know butcher the quote but you know you never solved today's problems with the consciousness that created them and so you have to find you have to you have to have to be willing first of all to have a dialogue with your team about what it is that you would like to create and literally like turn the focus from here's the bowl or here's the problem on the whiteboard and like flip the whiteboard around and go where would we like to see or would we like to be and just leave the problem on the backside of the whiteboard because it's it's a higher level of um you know i'm was just having this uh brainstorming session this morning i meditate every

morning. And so always out of a meditation comes some kind of idea that I can implement. And I was thinking, like, what if I took the leadership and management retreats that we do and I break them down even into a more refined topic? And so one would be being more resourceful in your thinking. It's just really, you know, Jeremy, at the end of the day, everything starts inside. you know, and gets out pictured and turns into something physical, whether it's an architectural design, the chair you're sitting in, the clothes you're wearing. Everything is an imaginative, imaginative process

before it's a physical thing. And so that's what has to shift is a desire to think beyond the current reality always. Yeah, and I think about this one of the issues that we've had, even before the great resignation, you know, of COVID times is we've had high turnover rates. And I think the big issue with the high turnover rates that I've seen is that we lack that the discussion of like caring about our staff, right? You lack that that really loyalty piece because everything is just the job. everything is do your job do your job and it's very little about recognition it's very little about talking about their lives their kids baseball game like who are you as a person right yeah yeah no i mean

for construction i always i always joke that you can say how are you but then you have to say it again because the first one is always fine you have to get and maybe for construction guys you have to do it a couple times you have to ask them a leading question you can't just say how are you doing you actually have to ask them something about their head. Well, so it's about being observant of what people are communicating beyond the verbal communication. Right. And I say this to everyone. It doesn't matter if you're in the, you know, building homes or commercial construction or industrial or or making a chip, a widget business, and it to improve you on behavior,

that's the leadership trait that is critical. You're not a leader. And maybe this is where there needs to be some clarity in the construction industry is, are you a leader or are you a manager? You know, leaders lead, they're visionaries, their creators, they're constantly thinking,

beyond the current realm of what's taking place and they're going out with their imagination into these other realms of possibility and they're playing with ideas and then they're taking those ideas and they're mapping them out and then they're presenting them to their team as a possibility and brainstorming the next level of thinking on it which might be well we could do it this way or how would we approach this. That whole resourceful thinking process is a leadership trait. Right. You know, three energies you have to have in any business.

You have to have a creator. You have to have a connector and you have to have a mover. So are you creating? You know, the creator is the one that comes along and says, this is my vision. I'm passionate about it. Let me just, you know, take this thing and communicate it to the people that I've surrounding me and let's start to develop it into something tangible.

Then you've got to have the mover that comes in and says, I can move this. I can move this. I can move this. I can move these ideas along. And then you have to have the connectors that say, I can connect to the people. Let me make a phone call. Let me shoot out a text or an email or head off to this meeting and shake some hands. You've got to have those three energies flowing through your business.

And I think what you're describing is in your industry, there's more managing going on than there is leading. Yeah, I think it's not just that. It's a title, right? Like I'm the owner. I'm the CEO. I'm that. So that automatically gives me the leadership. But it doesn't make you a leader.

That's kind of what it is, though, like in my experience, it's like you have the title. You've been there the longest. you're the owner, you're the guy, and then everyone looks to them for all the leadership. But they might be the choke point. I know. Because they've been there the longest and they have the title and it was their baby and they might be the choke point. You know, 99% of the time they are the choke point.

Right. And then there's the ego of that. It's like, well, I'm not going to meet. No, like this is my baby. Look what I've done. Right. Yeah, but look what you're not doing. It's about asking a higher level question.

Yeah, and I think that's hard. I think it goes to so many other things we're going to get into this, is that if you're not right personally, you're not going to see that. You know, you're going to miss that because it is, your ego is going to get in the way. And there's a ton of ego in construction. And there should be. We have, we build things where we're very prideful people, but there's ego that gets in the way and makes you not even be able to see, right?

but it's right in front of you. Everyone else could see it, but you can't. Sure. And so that really, you know, look, at the end of the day, personal growth is, should be the number one foundation to any organization. Because if you're not evolving and have a high level of self-awareness, you are going to be the block. And then the ego has to come in to compensate for, or your lack of self-awareness. It has to. Something's got to, you know, be the cover-up, right? Because, you know, there's this saying, like,

there's power in an apology, right? And it's because when it comes from your heart and it's authentic, what it does is it opens up the potential of the relationship to be higher, to be a higher level of relationship, to get past the problem that caused, that caused the thing that would require an apology, you know?

That's a lower level relationship. Right. But when you can, from your heart, apologize, you open things up. And I think that this is the transformation that needs to take place within your industry in particular is that these, the people that are in charge,

are faced now with a reality that unless they grow themselves on a personal level and be able to master, you know, self-mastery is leadership. You know, if you're leading a company, you could get, you could do very well with a very high level of self-mastery and a very low level of industry wisdom. Yeah. But you have industry experience and you have low level self-mastery. You have a problem. Yeah, that's going to be a sustainability problem.

I mean, you just described something that I've said a lot of times and I'm sure it makes people squirm is vulnerability. Like if you can't be vulnerable and say sorry, if you can't be vulnerable and check your ego at the door, it's going to be very hard for you to run a really successful business. That doesn't have turnover. That doesn't have these issues that we're talking about. because, you know, just like what happened with the Great Resonination, people are looking at their jobs differently now.

Life's different. And it should. Perspective is great. I like people to have perspective and go, hey, I don't want to work there anymore. I want to be happy. Well, people are looking at their entire lives differently. Yeah.

You know, is this who I really want to be? Right. You know, and that's a big question. Yeah, no doubt. Talk about self-awareness. It's like, what's happening? now in and I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off but I just wanted to like drop this in there what's happening now is is people are really asking themselves is this how I want to express

myself for this lifetime because you know it goes by pretty quick you know one day you're 20 and the next day you're 60 and and it goes by pretty quick and and asking yourself like is this really how I want to express myself right um and that kind of comes down to a hiring process too, you know, are you hiring? Who are you hiring? I know I know a lot of a lot of people in this industry that when they hire new team members, they hire people they can control. They don't hire people that are smart and have initiative because they feel threatened, you know, when you're saying about ego, right? Sure. Sure. I mean, that makes total sense. I mean, I can think of it from my perspective in the creation of U.S. construction zone was a way for me to have a legacy piece because I was questioning, you know, hey, I'm prideful in what we build and what we're remodel and there's a lot of great things that happened, but it wasn't enough for me.

Like I needed something else to leave behind or maybe make my kids proud or something that when I'm done, I'm like, I feel better now as opposed to just building a much stuff, retiring. and that's it. Like I just needed that one extra step, I think. Right. I can relate to that totally. Yeah. Absolutely. I did the same thing.

I'm doing the same thing. It's like when people talk about retirement, I'm like, what's that? You know, I'll be creating until the day I kicked the bucket. I totally am the same way. There's no way I'm going to be able to golf every day. There's no way. Yeah. I have so much to create.

Like my imagination is so robust. There's just the possibilities are endless. And why would you ever want to stop, you know? Yeah, I think that's where people struggle in retirement, right? It's like they're used to doing it a certain way and then they stop that and they realize, crap, I'm not happy. Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely the same way with you. I'm listening to myself and going, I don't think so.

I don't think so. But it brings up the next point I wanted to make in that you said something that I'm going to steal. forever in one of our pre-calls. You said the quality of our lives is directly impacted by the quality of our relationships, especially the relationship with ourselves. Tell me what that means to you. Everything. I mean, our relationship with our self is the baseline for all of our relationships.

And, I mean, if you really want to go deep with this. Yes, I do. Okay. Let's go. So who we're being is outpictured as a projection into all of our experiences and all of our relationships. And the problem with that is we have to take 100% responsibility of our own mental emotional state, which the new word for that is, you know, your mental emotional state, your spiritual awareness. you use the word vulnerability. That all comes together as being our vibration.

And our vibration is basically our state of consciousness, which is our self-awareness. I mean, these are all words that are like an expression of the same thing, right? And I like to say that because a lot of people are like, well, what's the difference between this and that? It's like, it's all the same thing. It's all comes together as who we're being as a human being. And that gets outpictured into our reality.

a lot of people really don't want to accept that because we are conditioned it's a program there's a program running in society that says if you're not getting ahead in life it's somebody else's fault yeah it's somebody did it to you somebody's holding you back uh it's an it's an industry thing it's a it's an economy thing it's it's you know your spouse thing it's something yeah and it's the perfect storm for victimhood, which is a black hole. You go down that path and everything will have to mirror back to you that belief because you believe it so much, it's all your perception can see. Gotcha. Right? Whatever we perceive, we are. So the relationship you have with yourself, if you can,

cease the judgment, just suspend the rightness and wrongness of it and see it only as feedback. You know, my favorite saying, there's no failure, only feedback. If you can see it as feedback to guide you to fine-tune your vibration in the moment. So get out of the negative self-talk, get out of the entertainment of the, entertainment of the negative emotions or the limiting beliefs where you think that it's happening to you and stay in a place of appreciation and just focus on feeling good and feeling happy. It's the feeling that draws the experience in. It's the thought, the imagination that sends it out into the ethers, whatever you want to call it,

consciousness to be to be developed into a tangible thing and then it's the feeling of the thing fulfilled yeah that draws it into physical form where you get the inspiration to make the call send the email send out the drawing for someone's contribution to it of you know what they could do with it. Sure. It's just universal laws, spiritual laws, 101. So when you clean up that relationship you have with yourself and you suspend the negative self-talk and how making yourself wrong for not being at a certain level of success

at a certain age in life and like all of those social constructs. Right. Yeah. I mean, that takes, like I've been doing this all my life. And I've been teaching this all my life. That's no small adventure. Right. That requires discipline.

Because we have a whole program that's coming at us all the time. Oh, poor you, you're this minority, you're that minority, you're this socially disadvantaged. You know, it's constantly bombarding us. And it keeps us from tapping into the God force within us that with God, all things are possible. And I hope everybody's cool with me using that word because it's how I create everything. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it.

So do you subscribe to the thing that, you know, they say in a relationship so often that how can you love someone else if you don't love yourself? Because it is difficult, right? Because like you said, like you're, you're, you have. blinders on and you're not going to be seeing the reality of things it's going to be the perception of things yeah it's always not going to look right it's always going to be slanted so do you subscribe to that then 100% you know for about 10 years I landed on this um um coaching platform of couples coaching it just came I was working with a lot of CEOs in in developing their teams and their businesses.

And then, you know, it's just kind of like, well, you know, could you meet with me and my wife? Like, this is what's going on. And, you know, some of these tools that we're using at work would be really good for our relationship. And it just kind of grew out of that, very organic. And that was always the number one thing I would say to people is, you know, how have you healed whatever you need to heal? and how are you in alignment with your greatness? Because then you're not going to be, you know, what do couples do when they're thinking about getting divorced is they point the finger at each other? It's like you, you, you, you, you.

And it's like, well, but if you point one finger at the other person and then there's three pointing back at you. So really what it comes down to is me, me, me, me, me, me. So what part of me needs to be loved? and the parts of me that I have thought erroneously were unlovable that if I just loved those parts, everything would be good. It just said, like you said, the discipline part and the difficulty of that, of overcoming whatever that is that created that self-doubt, all that negative self-talk, which is rampant. by the way. I mean, I would say it's an old

high, especially for kids. I agree kids that just you mean, the social media thing, it just, the chances of you having a good head on your shoulders at a young age is so much lower. I don't know. Maybe it's the not nature connection. There's a lot going on there,

but it takes a lot of discipline to fix yourself. Well, okay, can I just say there's nothing wrong with you. You don't need to be fixed. Thank you for saying that.

Yeah. Let's start there. You know, because that's the first step is there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing to fix. It's just loving yourself as you are. It's more of an acceptance. Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

And yeah. So, you know, when you accept yourself, imagine in the construction industry, we've got, a lot of alpha male energy going on, which by the way, I'm a total champion of that. Do not stop being that alpha male energy. All I'm saying is channel it a little more effectively. And you can channel it by actually practicing some self-love because then you're not going to be looking for the weakness in others. You're going to be seeking out the strength in And then you're going to hire people that are empowered. Yeah.

And when you have a staff of empowered people, as a leader, you never want to be the smartest person. Yeah. There's nothing to improve, right? Right. Right. And you didn't assemble a good enough team. If you're the smartest person in the room, then you're missing something for sure, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it segues perfectly into, you want to talk yesterday about the, impact of childhood trauma and what you're learning about what that means to workforce development and just being a good worker, what are you guys, what are you guys finding out with all that? Well, it's the root to vault evil. It's the root of the problem. You know, when you have a corporation where there's a lot of folks, then even if there's not a lot of folks, let me just say this, every work dynamic has its dysfunction. Yeah.

Just like your family, you know. And so what happens is this. In any work environment, you become, you're a family unit. And always in every family, the person that is most dysfunctional always controls a family dynamic. They are, you know, just through who they're being, they can upset everybody's apple cart pretty easy. And then people get triggered and then they're just reacting to each other's triggers. So all of this is like a subconscious programming that takes place between zero and seven. Okay.

And so zero and seven are the imprint years. Whatever we expose our children to is what, their model of the world becomes. And then past that, so seven to 14 are the modeling years. So whatever that imprint was 0.7, they're going to model that 7 to 14.

And what I used to say when I was doing couples coaching and they were having problems with their kids, I'd say, who do you want your child to model? You and your relationship you have with your wife or your husband? Or do you want them to model the gangbanger or the character on the video or the character in the movie. Because you have a choice in what you teach them by who you're being. And then and then and then 14 to 21 are the socialization years.

So now you get out into the workforce and everything you've imprinted on and are modeled through. It could be heinous, hideous, or it could be loving and kind. Yeah. shows up in the workforce because when you hire people, you hire their psychology. It's unavoidable. I know, right? Yeah. It's crazy.

I love that about people and that I often look at people as children because of exactly what you described. You may be seeing their reaction. You may not like it. You may hate it. But I always go, there's a reason that they just did that. And like trying to tell that to my kids like it's not if that's an ongoing behavior for that person, then you've got to be looking backwards and going what what brought them to that point and thinking that that's an effective way of being a good person or a friend or or worker. But it's so true. Aren't we all just bunch of little babies running around?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With bigger toys, you know. Yeah. Bigger toys and maybe a title that makes you feel like you, you, you've, arrive but man it's it's it's it's scary though like to think that that you know and maybe a question for you is why why is it in like a family dynamic that the one with the most trauma

kind of wins out is it just like they're used to that like chaos in their own house or what is that beings that we actually more positive they're d they're called d1 and d2 and So we just, on a numbers game in terms of our neurology, which is our nervous system, right, which is where we get triggered, we have more negative neurons by design. And so it takes a little extra discipline and focus. That's my favorite word, focus. It takes a little extra discipline and focus to tap into the positive neurons and to build those up. So in a family, those negative neurons that are firing when that dysfunctional person is in a dark place, a low vibration, it just is so powerful. It's just so impactful. Now, to get past that, the family members, coworkers, can work on themselves so that they don't take any of that on and they're not triggered by it. and then it's just become something that you don't feed into,

and what you don't feed into doesn't expand. Yeah, it's so interesting that you said that. It's just, man, I was thinking about, like, you know, talking about, you know, a staff meeting or the way we in construction deal with our people. And, you know, I often think that, you know, what I've turned into with this business is a people business and trying to diagnose and try to figure out why are we here and what do we need to do differently, but it really comes down to the heart.

And I think that you and I share this similar philosophy in that, you know, it's a hard thing for people in construction to really kind of wrap their minds around is that it's a heart issue. But what do you feel that is? Like, how do you go about diagnosing that? If you know you're sitting across the table with somebody that doesn't have, you know, a good heart in terms of like, getting to know their staff. How do you diagnose it and what do you do? Or maybe they're just not in touch with it.

Yeah. Right. Well, the first thing I would do is I would ask them why they're in the industry they are in. Like, what are you doing here? Why do you get out of bed every day to do this? Because we have drivers. Human beings have drivers. We know we're talking about retirement, right?

And so the human consciousness is designed to consistently seek more and more. can't turn that off. And when you go against it and you try to stop creating, that's when the resistance comes in and you actually don't feel well. Maybe physically you don't feel well, maybe just, you know, dissatisfied with your life, whatever. And so we want to raise awareness around what's driving behavior. So we're either moving toward what we want to experience as a tangible outcome that we can measure. Okay. Or we're moving away from an emotional pain of something we no longer want to deal with.

So one's a pain driver, one's a pleasure driver. So what I want to do is I want to get the business owner to reconnect with that pleasure driver. The why behind the company. Okay. Why are we here? Why this industry? You could do anything with your life.

you know, why aren't you like writing books or playing sports or why, why are you building these homes or cell phone towers or, you know, industrial complexes? Why? And because there's in the why is the love of something. It's either it's either creating something out of nothing and building it or it's seeing it come to fruition. Like there's a why. Sure. So when we get back to the why, when we get the owners, let's say the leadership team, back to the why, then what we do is we anchor that new awareness of the love of the industry or the love of the company or the love of the business to the people. Because without the people, they have nothing.

Right. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Like, how can we expect our staff to run efficiently? if, A, they don't feel this loyalty with their boss or their team. But if they're not good, in general, their mental health is poor at home. Like, we're not even really seeing the picture, right? We're seeing them in the office in the staff room. And that's it.

Like, we don't know what's going on behind closed doors with their house, with their family. Yeah. There might be a lot of trauma. There might be a lot of stress. But, you know, as business owners, we're all about efficiency and progress. and profit and all this stuff. But we're missing this giant ingredient in that people were a people business

and we're not taking care of the people. They're a robot. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, I just think that it's just an old school of thought, an old paradigm that, you know, I remember when I first left college, I had like three jobs

and then I got my own business because I just didn't want, want to have to deal with the way things were being run in different companies. And one was, one industry I was in was the banking industry and it was just so stoic. It was, it was not fun at all. You couldn't be creative. You couldn't come up with new ideas because they were totally frowned upon. And, you know, that book, like, Who Moved My Cheese?

Sure. And so the thing is, is this is, you know, it's just an old school thought. that really, I think you're doing the right thing, Jeremy, you're questioning and you're asking, you're not calling out the leaders in the industry, you're calling them up. Yeah. You're calling them up to a higher level of function, a higher level of leadership skill set, a higher level of communication. And you're calling them up to a higher level of function.

higher level of people awareness, which comes with self-awareness, right? If you're not, if someone that owns a company and they're employing people, and they're not aware of how their own moods, say emotional moods or mental stress or worry or whatever it is is going on in them is emanating from them and affecting the people around them and they're wearing that on their sleeve-like. it's a thing, you know, if they're not aware of that, then they're obviously not going to be aware of other people's issues. Right.

How could you? Right. Right. And it just means that everyone's just so inefficient. Like how many hours of the day are we actually working? I mean, it's just, we're so preoccupied with these things in our life, right? And including the owners, just because we're owners and managers doesn't mean they're aware of you to this stuff.

We have lives. Right? Yeah. In some ways, we have different stressors that are, you know, we worry about payroll or, you know, cash flow and things that, you know, when you're not in that position of power, you don't have to worry about it. You just expect your check to be there. So there are different stressors. But I guess my point is, and I guess thank you for saying that, because it's more about calling to their attention that if you want them to be efficient, you do have to do these extra steps. And it's a good thing to do anyways.

You're doing the right thing by treating people the right way. So you're winning on both ends. You're winning by being a good person and you're winning because it'll help your bottom line. And then everybody's happier and you feel better and your body functioner and you make more money. I mean, it's just like it's all tied together. Yeah. Then you have loyalty. Then you have loyalty.

Yeah. Next time someone tries to cherry pick them for more money, they'll go, you know, I'm pretty happy with this team. I don't know. Exactly. Because there's an emotion. connection. And so I was working on this one project and it was a construction company and they're in telecom.

So I was working with this one company for a while and there was challenges of communication between the superintendents and people in the field and people in the office and, you know, it was just kind of a mess. So what we did is we started chunking out these, first of all, It was half day training modules. And then we did a full day. We kind of ended on a full day. And I started to dig in with them on how to read body language

and how to understand, you know, the nonverbal cues. Because 55% of communication is nonverbal. It's what your body says. It's what the tone of your voice says. It's what your eye contact says. not anything other than that. Then you get into the next level of communication is 38% of it is tonality, how it comes across.

And that could be how you hold your body when you deliver the words to the tone of your voice, to the volume of your voice, the pitch. You know, there's a lot of sort of little subtleties of that. And 7% is content. So we worked on that. And what that brought about, and I had them go through exercises where they practiced matching and mirroring each other and reading each other nonverbally with some of the exercises they didn't even talk. It was just all nonverbal. Because when you can master, you're picking it up anyway in your subconscious.

But whether you're consciously aware of what's coming across or not is a whole other conversation. So what I did is I have them do these exercises where they start to really pay attention to the energy that the other person is putting out. So instead of making them wrong for something, they have an understanding. You know, seek first to understand, then seek to be understood. Right, right. And what ended up happening, I mean, you know, this is a group of tough guys, okay, that have worked together for 20, 30 years. And what ended up happening is on the last full day, there was some tears. And it was like, I love you, man, you know.

And it was incredible. It was incredible. And it changed the dynamic of that organization. And it, because it changed the way the CEO saw his guys. Yeah. Is there any advice you give? Like, I know that you're help guiding this. Is there any advice you give to like, you know, maybe it's an icebreaker or maybe it's a changing the way you start a meeting?

What can we do in our staff meeting or sales meeting a little bit differently to maybe change the tone a little bit? Well, you know, first of all, I would say that you need to have an effective meeting rhythm. And a lot of companies don't have effective meeting rhythms. It's one of the things I install when I do a consulting project with a company. I really look at their meeting rhythm. Because all problems can be solved by having an effective meeting rhythm. And the way you break it down and what's covered on a weekly basis or a quarterly basis, I mean, that changes.

And the cornerstone of that, here's like some free advice, the cornerstone of that is a daily huddle. Five minutes, ten minutes, keep it really brief and tight. One company, I got them going on that and they resisted. I mean, it was like, oh my gosh. They were just struggling. Like, we don't have time to meet. We've got to get out in the field. So we finally mastered the huddle.

And what ended up being said was, wow, I had no idea that's what you were dealing with. You know, they have no idea. They're so siloed. They have no idea what's going on in the organization. And one CEO had this sort of self-created. role, which was terribly inefficient, but he loved it. You know, it's what he loved to do, but it was incredibly inefficient for the company. He liked to go around and like pick things up for people, drop things off, you know, visit

different jobs I see what they needed. He was not a CEO at all. Like who are we kidding? Who are we kidding, right? So, but the thing is, is that once we implemented the huddles, he didn't have to do that anymore. It just saves so much time. So the thing is, you've got to have these huddles and develop the teamwork. And then the second thing is, rather than go in there as the, I'm the leader of this meeting, I'm doing all the talking, I'm controlling the dynamic, and it's my way.

You go in and you ask questions. Like with my team, when I have my huddles, I'm there to listen to what they've got. Yeah, yeah. Because they're my team and I've hired experts. Why would I go in there and tell? Right. I want to know, what are you guys up to? What solution have you come up with today?

You know, what are we creating next? And where are we going with that? Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense. So for someone who wants to get involved in an executive, you're the founder of Mero Engineering Institute. So you get into a lot of these consulting leadership development. What does it look like to be a client of yours? Yeah, just, you know, just hook up with me on LinkedIn and what we'll do is we can have an initial conversation. Obviously, there's no charge for that. And then find out where your company is at and where you think you want it to go. And then, you know, because if it's a

company-wide consult, then it's going to be a custom pricing. Right. But if you want to just stick your toe in the water and start to develop some things, I do leadership and management retreats on two coasts, West Coast and East Coast. Nice. Newport Beach and Savannah, Georgia. So, you know, we'll probably add some more cities next year. We're developing some things around that.

But for now, I'm every other month. So I'm in Newport, March 23rd. And then I've got a retreat. in Savannah and we cover everything from negotiations, communications, raising your consciousness, your self-awareness, self-mastery, mentally and emotionally and spiritually. And then how to bring that into your business.

So it's not this thing that you learn over here, but you still don't know how to implement. It's everything is a download. You know, it's you experience it and you download it into your business systems and processes and people are obviously. Do you promote that on LinkedIn then? Yes.

Yeah, we do. So all the people follow you. And then the other thing you do is your show, the Debra Peter's show podcast. It's fascinating because it's a lot about what we did today. It's just like you take an idea and then you really drill down on this idea. But they're always so thoughtful. Like, you know, obviously it just fits you perfectly.

Is that something that brings you a lot of joy? Thank you. Yeah. You know, ever since I was a kid, like growing up on the farm, I used to set up this cardboard box in our living room, and I put a blanket over it, and that was my podium. I've always wanted to do something like this, you know. And then I'd have my dolls and my cat, my dog, and they were my audience.

And so it's a calling on my life to be able to get this information out to people. So we stream live every Tuesday, and there's five pillars that I cover. So health, wealth, relationships, self-expression, and business. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great. I got to have you on.

That's what needs to happen. I need to have you on as a guest. I'm an open book. Whatever you need for me. I'm gay. I love that. I could talk. I would love that.

And also, you're a previous author of a book and then you said you were working on another one, right? Is that coming out soon or what's the status? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm on a deadline. for submitting the material in March and I think we'll probably yeah we'll probably publish and go to market in September and and yeah it'll be a it'll be a

hardcover plus plus a Kindle okay yeah so what's the other one content of that it's really about expanding your conscious awareness you know and how you take that conscious awareness and you turn it into your own growth because there's really no limit you know we're infinite beings right we are all of us are you know where our unconscious or our subconscious mind is capable of you know it's greater than all the grains of sand on the planet it's 10 to the 10 to the 10th power and it's just realizing that and tapping into it yeah anything's possible from there no doubt well I appreciate you being here today, Deborah. It's been

very enlightening. I feel like I've kind of gone through a meditation myself. So thank you so much for being here. Let's make sure to follow each other's content. And I'm here to help. I just want to make sure that, you know, executives in construction start to feel and touch and get their senses a little bit more right.

And I think it'll really, they'll reward them personally, but also their businesses. So that's really my goal. And I think you nailed it. Thank you. How you doing it? You're doing great. work. Keep going. Thank you. I appreciate it. Well, we'll stay in touch. Yes, absolutely. I'm going to go hit the slopes and catch a half day skiing. Lucky, lucky. All right, thank you. All right, take care. Bye. Thank you for being here for another episode of Construction Executives Live. I am still your host,

Jeremy Owens. I had a great chat with Deborah. And like I said, I feel a little at peace and a little bit struggling too at the same time. So I got a lot going on. But Please take a look at the chat. We do have another show coming up. We have the link there. The topic is going to be great. I just clicked on Michael Lane. Sorry about that, Michael.

The topic is time to move the industry forward by empowering the next generations of leaders. We have Corey Fisk, who's an educator, and she's a manager or project manager. She's been in the field, but she's also been in the classroom. And she's going to help us learn those strategies. and skills to transition our team members from the job site to the office, and we're going to understand how to do that next month. March 1st, 10 a.m. Pacific, please click the link, get subscribe right now, so it's already on your calendar.

You don't have to worry about it. But thank you guys for being here. Another fun time. I appreciate all of you guys listening and tuning in. We'll see you next month. Bye. You've been listening to In the Zone with Jeremy and Valerie Owens. Be sure to subscribe to In the Zone and stay in the know with the best minds in the construction industry.

To nominate an innovator or change maker in the construction industry, connect with your management peers, and stay up to date with construction industry news. Be sure to visit usconstructionzone.com.