Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 130

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

Today's episode is based on a single question about leadership, specifically from a leader who feels like they have been put into a position from which they are "destined to fail."  Once per month I plan to do an episode dedicated to a single question, which will allow for a more thorough answer and will hopefully be more impactful.  Leadership- What is it What is it not Don't try to be the smartest person in the room Don't try to be something that you aren't  Mentors, both internal and external to your organization Don't get obliterated by the details

Well, hello everybody. Traditionally on Friday, as anybody who listens to the podcast can tell you, I do Q&A. Full Auto Friday is what I call it. And I get a variety of questions and I will answer them to the best of my ability. And I'm thinking about changing it up here just a little bit from time to time. Not when it comes to answering questions because I do enjoy it and I have a stack of probably like 50 sitting in the queue that I could answer. but from the perspective of occasionally, I think it would be better to dive in on one question

for one episode. Maybe it's going to be a little bit shorter, but perhaps that could be better because it could help people digest the information, but a little bit of a deeper dive. Today is going to be one of those days, and we're going to talk a little bit about leadership, specifically somebody put into a leadership position that they feel like they may not be infinitely qualified for yet. I'm going to add that term yet. So that's what it's going to be.

It's not really going to be a full auto rapid fire Q&A today. We're going to do one question and one question only. Here we go. Full order Friday, 1.30. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now. Okay, here we go for the single question format

for this Friday. And I hope that people find this to be helpful. And if you like this deeper dive, which I don't want to do all the time, but I think, like I said in the intro, occasionally a topic will come up where there is value in doing so, please let me know in the comments somewhere so I can take a look at it. And if you think that the deep dive is not a good idea, then tell me that too, and I'll take a look at it. But here we go. This one, like I said,

again in the intro is based around leadership. Hello, I am 24 years old, going on 25 in December. So just around the corner because this is getting recorded early November. And I've been listening to the podcast since around the beginning of 2020. I'm writing to you because I recently got hired on to a construction company as a foreman, and I have quickly realized I'm in way over my head. I have a background, an apartment unit remodels. And when I was originally hired on, I was in charge of water damage repairs in residential homes, which is very similar to what I have experience in drywalling, flooriling, drywalling, flooring, cabinets, paint, etc. However, after about a month in, after about a month in, I should say, my company decided to pull out

of the contract they had with the main water damage company and split me and my team up and send us all to different projects, which leads me to where I am right now. Today I took over as a foreman at a no shit, full-on, ground-up commercial construction site with multiple different contractors and some contractors all working in one location. I have never been on a job site like it, much less responsible for keeping a certain piece of the project on track. I've never dealt with blueprints or new project plans, but I feel like sooner or later I'm going to have to deal with them, and I feel like I won't know what to do. Sorry for the very long-winded question.

I just felt like I needed to vent a little bit. The point is, I feel that I'm in way over my head, and I'm scared shitless that I am destined to fail. What tips can you give someone in my situation? Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, and thank you for what you're doing with the podcast. P.S, the coffee shop is looking awesome, and I hope to be there for the grand opening. First, you're welcome. The coffee shop is coming along great. I was actually just over there.

I did a hunting recap that will come out in a couple weeks with Nelson. Allison, afterwards we walked over and we looked through the coffee shop. They just put in the concrete countertops. Damn, they look good. It's so crazy to see something go from a conceptual idea to PDF documents. I don't even know, actually know if that's what we were looking at, but something digital to something physical in the real world. It's been amazing. However, that has nothing to do with your question. I guess my point of bringing that up is I'd love to see you and everybody else at the grand opening, which is still on the calendar for February 18th. So let's get into this. You're in a leadership position. You've been hired on as a foreman, which is certainly a leadership position on a construction site. The first thing I'm going to say is your employer may have set you up for failure a little bit. You were hired on as a foreman. So I'm assuming that you have previous experiments in that role in the areas that you had mentioned. Apartment unit remodels.

So you're probably not the one in there doing the work, even though I bet you started with that. you were managing, you were in a managerial or a leadership position in that foreman role. And I'm not necessarily intimately familiar with how companies like yours work, but I would like to think that they would place people into positions with which they have the experience to do so. It seems as if you were placed into an environment where you are learning as you go. Like you said, you've never been on a site like it. And there are some things that you are worried about being approached with, specifically, you know, the blueprints and the project plans that'll be new to you. And you're new to keeping the size of a project, the scale and scope of a project on track.

So there's some environmental things about the job you're now being tasked to do that are very brand new to you. And I have questions for the person that placed you in that role. Is that because that they have a manpower shortage? Is that because when they hire somebody as a foreman, they think that that skill should be applicable to any construction environment? I don't have the answers to that. But that's why I said your employer, I don't want to say they'd set you up for failure, but they definitely could potentially have set you up for hardship

and puts you right at the front leading edge of your skis, getting ready to tip over. Or there's another way that we can think about this, and this is the way that I think you should frame it in your head. maybe they recognize that you don't have that experience for the commercial site that you're on right now but they think and they realize that you're capable enough to do it so they look at you and they go you know what this is the world the guy came from we've got this big project coming up we're going to put him in this role we're going to allow him to grow into it because we think it's possible and because we think he's capable of it that's how i would prefer you think about it and that's how

i'm going to frame my answers my answers actually doesn't matter what your employer thinks of it. I just think it's a healthier place for you to be if you think of it in that manner. So let's talk about leadership here. Leadership, the position that you are in, certainly as a foreman, has nothing to do with being the smartest person in the room. And I don't mean that from the perspective of being a foreman. I mean that from the perspective of being a leader in general. I'm going to say it again because it's incredibly important. Leadership, has nothing to do with being the smartest person in the room. And I'm going to tie this in to my military background because it's what I'm the most familiar with him. And I saw leadership

turnovers time and time and time again. And I saw them done well and I saw them done very poorly and everything in between. So the average life at a at a seal team, you are working on an operational deployment cycle. At a conventional team, it's going to be generally, and I'm sure it deviates and maybe it's changed since I've been in, but in the world that I came from, at a conventional team, it's going to be a 24-month block. In that, about 18 months of that are going to be spent training, individual training where people are pursuing individual skills, maybe they're going to breacher school, sniper school, free fall, actually not even free fall anymore, calm school, you know, fill in the blank, whatever they may want to pursue. Then they come together

for some unit level training. And they go through all the basic blocks that are required for competence to be able to deploy. They do some exercises at the end. They deploy maybe to a combat environment, maybe not, depending on what's going on in the world. You come back after that six-month deployment, and there is a drastic turnover in leadership. So if you look at a SEAL team as a triangle in the top, and this is from a rank perspective or a leadership perspective. At the very top, you're going to have a commanding officer. You're going to have an executive officer.

You're going to have a command master chief. You're going to have an operations officer. Almost everybody in the roles that I just listed will be gone at the end of that 24 months. They will lift and shift and they will go to whatever career wicket may be next. The XO at one team is likely not going to just turn around and become the CEO at that same team. They will go XO maybe do another billet in between and then. become the CEO somewhere else. The command master chief is going to leave and go fill another E9 role somewhere else, maybe at the group level. The operations officer likely is going to get

an exo billet, but it's probably not going to be at that same team. And my point of bringing all of that up is underneath that pyramid, you know, we're talking about the very tip of the leadership of that pyramid. Underneath that, there is a vast amount of knowledge and experience and personnel that are not going to rotate. So what you have to have to be. So what you have to are people coming in to fill those billets, and the senior person at a seal team is going to be the commanding officer. That's what they're called the CEO, the commanding officer. From a rank perspective, from a leadership perspective, they are at the absolute top of that triangle. And it's also very likely, even though they are the senior man, that they are the

least tactically proficient individual at that command. They are in charge of and tasked with preparing a seal team to integrate new personnel, train to a standard, deploy to a wartime environment, and execute anything that the Battlespace Commander or the country is expected of them. The people that they are rolling in on top of are probably very tactically proficient. They have what we call boots on the ground experience. They're still very tied to the battlefield, whereas by the time you become a CEO, you are likely very detached from that, and they're still in. in charge and that can become an absolute leadership challenge because you are tasked with leading

people who have more experience and are more current than you are. And one of the biggest mistakes that I have seen made is when that individual comes in, they try to be something that they are not. Instead of identifying where their weaknesses are and doing what I would recommend, jumping ahead a little bit, which would be staffing your weaknesses, they act as if they are the smartest person in the room. And then when I look back on failures in leadership, that is one of the issues that I have seen time and time and time again, an unwillingness or an inability of somebody to get out of their way,

and they associate the fact that they have the big seat at the table with that they need to have all of the answers and that they are somehow smarter than everybody else in the room. And I'm just here to tell you right now. If you always think that you are the smartest person in every room that you are in, it's just a matter of time until you get kicked directly into the dick. It's going to happen. I'm sure there is somebody on earth who is the smartest person on earth.

But it's not me. And I'm sorry, it's not you. And that's a really poor way to look at leadership because it has nothing to do with being the smartest person in the room. The best commanding officers that I worked with, made no attempt to be tactical experts on the ground. It wasn't their job anymore. So what they did is the first thing that I recognize is they would identify their weaknesses. And then they would staff them.

Now, to the person who sent this email in, you have already identified a few things that you are worried about. Specifically, what you mentioned in your email would be blueprints and project plans. and for the first time you are responsible for keeping certain pieces of this project on track. Okay, so we've identified some deficiencies. Now, let's talk about ways that you could positively impact that or change how you feel about this. But before I do that, back to the model that I found with the very successful commanding officers. So they would staff a team of people and then they would meet with them. them very regularly. Most often it was twice a week. I'm not here to, I'm not an expert on construction

sites. So I don't know how often people would need to meet in that setting. Maybe it's every day in the morning for a little huddle. I don't know. Maybe it's once a month. Somewhere in between probably sounds like the answer to me. But in the world that I came from, we would do a Monday meeting generally in a Wednesday meeting. Sometimes it was Tuesday and Thursday. And we would get a pulse of what's going on and people would go around the room and talk about what was currently going on, what they were working on, what had happened in the past. So like a week in review in the past, a week looking ahead in the future. And the commanding officer would ask questions. He would solicit for guidance. He would solicit for information for opinions. And he would take

all of that and in that group setting, absorb that information and then make the best decisions possible for everybody that was underneath him. It's incredibly powerful, impactful, and effective leadership. So it's unlikely that you're probably going to be able to. You're probably going to be able to put together a team of people because the example I gave was obviously the world that I came from. So how can we overlay that into the world that you were working in? I think the best piece of advice and probably the most powerful leadership guidance that I was ever given, the leadership tool that was used on me and that I highly recommend that you find a way to use this for yourself is mentorship. I cannot, I don't have that. I don't have that.

the vocabulary to describe the difference it made in my career by having people who were invested in my success that I could go to when needed when I had questions and that had created for me an environment that had some buffers that I could move a little bit left and right, you know, make some mistakes here and there, but largely keep the train moving on the tracks in the right direction, just that ability of having somebody who was above me. And whether that's in knowledge or experience or just time on the job. And they're on a ladder and they put their hand down and they grab your hand and they pull you up. That's the value of a mentor.

And then of course, what I'll add, even though it's not necessarily germane to what we're talking about, in my experience, the best thing you can do to pay somebody back and to honor what they did for you is to turn right around and to do it somebody else. That's how it becomes enduring and how you can continue to pass that on. I think that's a hugely important step. But now, I think you have a couple ways that you could seek mentorship. The first one I'm going to call internal, and that is going to be inside of your own organization, the organization that you actually work for, that hired you as a foreman.

I would be very honest. I would go, and hopefully it's your direct superior that you could go talk to. I don't know how your organization is structured, obviously, but I'm sure there's a hierarchy of some kind. I'm sure you work for somebody or maybe you work for a team. I would go and I would be honest about your concerns, assuming that you have a relationship with somebody that you feel comfortable doing so. I wouldn't want you to go and like, you know, hobble yourself and basically go and say to somebody, hey, I don't feel qualified to do this job because that's not what I'm saying at all.

I would go find somebody that you trust and be honest with them very similar in the way that you were to me in this email. and lay out for them the deficiencies that you feel that you have, that you've already identified, and ask them for their guidance. Solicit for feedback and advice. Now, there's a really important step that comes with this. If you find somebody and you're able to do this, and they become somebody that you can communicate with as needed or as necessary, and they give you feedback or advice, you have to action it.

There is nothing worse from a leadership person. perspective of having to deal with ask holes. And that is in this definition, what we're talking about in this situation, who's somebody who will look for feedback, they look for guidance, they look for advice, and then they don't do anything with it. You take the time to put that hand down to pull that person up the ladder. You give them all of the input that you can, and they choose to ignore you. From the person that you were going to be soliciting this feedback and guidance from, there is nothing more frustrating and there is nothing that will turn off that spigative information faster than you being an ask hole. So if you're going to take the time

to ask, make sure you take the time to action as well. Let's say at your organization, it's fucking cutthroat and you don't feel like doing that. Okay. So my first piece of advice to you was find an internal mentor, which was inside of your organization. Secondly, you can find an External one. And you could also, of course, you know, you could do a combination of both. There's no reason to say you couldn't do, it's I hate binary choices. It's either A or B. How about C, which is a combination of A and B in this case. External, what do I mean? I mean, on this job site, you're going to be surrounded by people who are very familiar with blueprints and they're very familiar with project plans. And you may actually find that you are working with people who have held your role before on similar type of construction sites. And what I'm not saying is that you should go to them constantly and consistently to the point where they start to question your ability to do your job. But you will have the opportunity to work with these individuals and develop relationships with them so that you can ask them questions. And there's also nothing wrong with being honest with these people as well. I wouldn't necessarily say when it comes to the blueprints or the project plans, don't go and,

and voice your concerns to the guy who's laying brick or block, maybe go and voice your concerns or when presented with an opportunity to meet with the people that you were going to be the foreman over the top of, you know, the leaders of those teams, right, voice the concerns in a tactful manner or be honest with who you are and where you feel that your strengths are and ask them for help. There's a difference between asking for clarification for somebody to develop, you know, ask him to go for a cup of coffee, you know, or bring them a cup of coffee and have a conversation and some very, I don't want to say impromptu, but very unstructured mentoring can occur in just those conversations back and forth. And that's all going to be based around your ability to

establish a relationship with these people, which again is also an important aspect when it comes to leadership. So you're going to be surrounded by people who have that experience. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Make sure the timing is correct. right you don't want to uh i wouldn't necessarily broadcast that you feel the way that you do you will know when it's right and who the individuals that you can talk to about this are and i think you should absolutely do so and the reason i say that is in my experience and in the way that i approach this is that i have nothing but time for somebody who is willing to learn and i have found that to be the case with almost everybody i've interacted with if you have a genuine interest

in learning and you ask a question and then take that next important important step, which is actioning the advice that you are given. What you're going to find is people are really, really open to helping others. Again, make sure you pick the right time and place. There's a kind of a third option here as well too. And I don't know necessarily what is available when it comes to this, but self-learning. And pursuing, you know, you've already identified what the few things that make you uncomfortable. Given the tools that are available today, the knowledge base that exists on the internet, the courses that you could potentially take, whether it's in a brick and mortar school or something you could take online, you could also

dive in in your off time and try to educate yourself to the best of your ability. I would say, personally, the path that I would take, if A is internal, B is external, C is self-knowledge, I would skip all three of those and go to D, which is a blend of all three. I would pursue this stuff in my off time. I would talk to people on the job site, and I would also talk to people internal to my organization. That's the path that I would take. Specifically, you know, you ask what tips can I give someone who is in your situation? And let me tell you right now, I understand exactly how you feel.

The last role that I held in 2010, I was for the first time, the senior person on the physical battlefield. And that had never really been the case because I had come up through the enlisted ranks and there was always people that were above me in leadership positions. And when I got to that place, it kept me up at night because I was absolutely and utterly terrified of making a bad decision or doing something stupid that would terminate in the injury or death of somebody else. I actually didn't, it's not that I didn't care about myself or wasn't worried about something happening to me. I was just far more worried about the impact of my decisions. on others. Now, there are some parallels between that situation and the one that you are in.

Hopefully, there's no risk to life on the job site that you are on. If there is, I would suggest maybe looking for another job somewhere else on a different type of job site. But the parallel that does that tie the two together is that feeling of that burden of leadership and that worry that maybe you're in over your head. I know exactly what you feel like when you say that. And what I'll say is, I don't think you're destined to fail. It's okay to be scared shitless. Leadership is a burden, and I'm not saying it should keep you up at night, but it's something that you should think about. Maybe not to the scared shitless point, but it is, it's a burden because it's so impactful.

The only reason that you're going to be destined to failed, or destined to fail, I should say, is if you don't change or do anything to change the situation that you are in. If you just bury your hand in the sand and hope for the best, yes, I would say you're destined to fail. The fact that you reached out and sent this email makes me feel like that you want to make a change, that you want to do everything you can to be successful. So I would say pretty emphatically, you're not destined to fail. It can feel like that, but there are things that you can do. So specific tip. Don't try to be somebody that you are not. it's okay to say in a moment, specifically, again, one of the parallels of my old job,

even in an environment that's very dangerous, it is okay from time to time to say you don't know what to do. You better figure it out really fucking fast. But in the world that you're working in, hopefully nobody's life is on the wine. I know there are financial consequences, but it's okay to say that you don't know. I will add to that before going any further that you need to know where to go to get the answers, right? So if somebody comes to you and they have a question and you don't know the answer to it, don't be somebody that you're not. Don't lie. Don't make something up. Don't repeat something that you heard somebody else say that you're not quite sure of. It's okay to say, I don't know, but you need to know where to go for the answer to that, and then you

need to get back to the person. What would be a great way to understand where to go for that? The mentors that I talk to you about, the external, the internal, and that self-knowledge as well. So identify right now where you'd go for those answers. Ask the questions. My favorite question is why. You know, you are definitely operating an environment now that you don't have a ton of familiarity with when, you know, construction isn't new to you, but this type is. Develop a relationship with the people on that job site and don't be afraid to ask them why. I've often found that when you ask people why and they're talking about something that they're very good at, that they're an expert at, they enjoy telling you about it.

it. That's an opportunity to learn. Again, that's another way to be mentored by somebody who doesn't even realize that they're mentoring you just by simply asking the question why. And don't be afraid to ask for simple explanations. If somebody comes to you or two people come to you and they have an issue and you don't understand either portion of the conversation or the potential or desired end state, don't hide that. Ask for a simple explanation. Ask for each of them to explain what it is they're trying to accomplish and how they meld together and what you're aiming for. And maybe you don't have the answer right in that moment, right? But you've already identified where you're going to go for that. But it allows you to be open, honest, transparent, still

maintain that leadership position, get back to your people. It gives you the opportunity to learn by having them explain. All of that is based on your ability and willingness to just be open, to ask those questions and not stand there and act as if you know everything. Because I'm telling you right now and God, everybody listening to this or watching this. The number one issue that I have seen from leaders that fail is their inability to see beyond themselves. They just think they're the smartest person in the room. And I'm telling you right now, set an egg timer because they're going to go into a room

where somebody is smaller and they're going to look like an asshole. So what else? Communicate early and often. If you are having issues or you think you are approaching issues, deal with them up front. You need to have a proactive versus a reactive mindset as a leader. And one huge piece of advice that I'll give you is do not hide bad news. Bad news generally does not get better over time. So if you have identified a problem and you feel like you are over your head with that

problem, if you don't do anything about it, you try to hide the problem, then yes, you're probably destined to fail. Even if you think it might make you potentially look bad as the foreman, my recommendation is to be, you guessed it. Up front and honest and escalate it up the chain of command if you need to. Go to those internal or external mentors and do everything you can to get out in front of it. Just do not hide bad news. I know a lot of people think, and I've thought this myself, I'll just give it some time. It's probably going to get better. That actually hasn't been the case most of the time. Most of the time it generally gets worse. So, and I'll leave you with this thought

when it comes to leadership. As a leader, your role as a foreman. It's your job to see the big picture. And you need to manage that. Not every minuscule detail that is occurring on the project. And hopefully for you, that can help you take a little bit of burden off. As the foreman, like I said, you know, you can go talk to the guy laying in blocks, but you, from the day-to-day interaction in managing this project, you're probably better off talking to his boss or the leader of that particular,

maybe the electricians or whatever it may be, the plumbers, the block and brick, the steel. you don't have to talk to everybody, but make sure you're talking to the right people. You don't need to manage every minuscule detail because they're going to have people tasked with doing that. So focus your energy and effort largely on their leadership so you can come together and get a bigger perspective or better perspective of what's going on job site-wise. I say that because you need to balance the amount of time that you have with your head down, looking into these variety of tranches that occur on a construction site, and having your head up, which is going to speak to keeping pieces of, of the project on track because if you spend all your time looking down and in, you're going to lose the bigger picture of the up and out. When is this job supposed to be done? What are the standards that it's supposed to be done too? You have to balance that as a leader.

And this kind of ties in a little bit to not hiding bad news. The piece of advice that I will leave you with is lean into the things that scare you. If you go to bed one night in this role as a foreman, you're looking up this ceiling, you're like, God damn it. There's just one particular aspect that you know it's bugging you and you don't want to deal with it start your day the next day with that your your performance on the job site and everybody's life on the job site and the overall end state and how the job is going to end up will likely be better if you attack it from that perspective so lean into the things that scare you and I wish you the best of luck send me an email at the end of this and let me go how the the job site goes because I'm fascinated

to hear how it went and that's all I have for this Friday's episode see you Monday