Welcome to the finale of Season 01! Throughout the last eleven episodes, you’ve been challenged on how you can improve for your coworkers, family, and yourself. Today, Alex is going to walk you through where we are in the industry today, and how you can equip yourself to be ready for what’s coming down the road.
Welcome to the finale of Season 01! Throughout the last eleven episodes, you’ve been challenged on how you can improve for your coworkers, family, and yourself. We have covered topics such as managing stress at work, why you can indeed foster a “have it all” lifestyle, and why leading with empathy and compassion is critical in today’s workplace.
To wrap things up, on the Season 01 Finale of No Bullshit with Alex Willis, Alex is going to walk you through where we are in the industry today, and how you can equip yourself to be ready for what’s coming down the road. As budgets get tighter and tighter, it’s critical to understand where you can empower yourself and your team in order to continue to achieve great results on every one of your projects.
In our first segment, The Takeoff, you’ll reflect on your success in the construction industry. As our society shifts to a work-from-home model, large tech companies are squeezing the market of work. Besides your established high priced merit, Alex suggests that creating a desirable workplace for senior leaders will attract and empower high-performing workforce to elevate your business.
Tune into our next segment, The Level, where Alex dives into how to set your leadership up for success. “Plans are always changing. They’re very useful, even though you’re always changing them."
Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts as well as the YouTube channel to watch full video episodes and be notified as soon as the next episode is live.
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[00:00:00] Alex Willis: Hey, what's up guys? Alex Willis here, CEO of Leadership Search, and I want to personally welcome you to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the go to source for leadership development in the construction industry. My friends, today I come to you with a bittersweet note. This is our season one finale. Season one finale.
On a sweet note, it's been a hell of a season, so thank you for tuning in to our first season. On a bitter note, man, you gotta wait until Season 2 to catch us back again, but I tell you what, while you're waiting on Season 2, you damn sure can go back and review all of the other episodes of this Season 1 and learn a lot of tips and tricks.
Now, here's the deal, as we close out Season 1, how do we want to do it? I'm thinking, you know, what do we do? You know, I'm like, do we bring in fireworks? Man, do we bring in Coors Light, Bud Light? I mean, whatever your drink of choice is, you know, but truth be told. I want to set us up for season two, as well as prepare us for what's coming down the pipeline for our industry.
So on today's show, my friends, we're going to talk about the state of leadership development in the construction industry. So tune in as we talk about the state of leadership development in the construction industry, as well as what you can do to prepare yourself individually, as well as your company to make sure you are ready.
For where we are right now, my friends, and what's coming down to the pipeline to us, which is some challenging times if you are in commercial construction. So how do you prepare for that? You damn sure better do a hell of a job being a great leader. So tune in today's show so we can give you tip, trick on how to do it as we close the season finale.
I'll see you in the takeoff. Hey, hey, my friends, welcome to the season finale episode 12, The Takeoff. Where we're really laying it down to talk about the state of leadership development in the construction industry. So, where are we? Where are we? What's going on? Let's just paint a picture. Let's just close your eyes for a second.
If you're driving, keep your damn eyes open. But, if you are somewhere else, close your eyes for a second. I want you to just think about this. Right now, we are at an all time challenging point for skilled labor. No matter where I go, in the U. S. or in Canada. Projects, I hear construction companies over and over and over saying Alex, we are struggling to have skilled laborers, our leaders are struggling because we don't have enough people to do the work.
Right? So, number one, not enough people to do the work. Number two, we are seeing projects that are more challenging than ever before. Tighter deadlines, higher pressure, uh, as well as not having people as skilled to step up in leadership roles, right? So, we hear lack of people, lack of leadership skills, projects more challenging, right?
Now, hear me out my friends. To date, to date, we've been able to do a hell of a job, especially on the commercial side of construction, because we've been able to price our way to success. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, if you are a leader in a company, you understand this principle. You can, because the demand for work is so high, and because people need things done.
People like Facebook, Google, Amazon, you know, the data centers and all this stuff, they needed work, and they were willing to pay any price possible. Right? So, so therefore, you could outprice your mistakes. Ah, yeah, think about that. You could outprice your mistakes. Beautiful place to be. Now, the challenge with that is, oftentimes, it lures us to sleep and it gives us a false sense of success.
Right? So, because we're making money, because we're doing a good job, because we've priced the job so high, it covers all the problems that we have. Now, as the economy tightens, as commercial construction starts to slow a little bit, now. All of a sudden now, you can't price your way to success. I want you to think about this.
We have a lot of commercial real estate, we have office development, a lot of people closing down office space, not building office space anymore because you got a lot of people working from home. So now, you have a lot of smaller Mom and pop companies coming into the commercial industry now, right?
Because they're closing that section down, they're coming here. And so now it gets a little more competitive. And now when the market squeezes and people are thinking price consciousness now, all of a sudden now it's like, Oh, what can I afford? Right? And so therefore you kind of hit the ceiling as a pricing model, right?
To win by pricing. Now, how do you win in a tight economy? Here's what you have to do. You have to have phenomenal leaders. How do you win in a tight economy? You have to have damn good practices and principles and processes in place. Here's what we've struggled, my friends, right? Because we've allowed our leaders, the few that we do have, to win by pricing and they haven't necessarily focused on process.
Now, so what do you have to do? Well, number one is you have to really begin to help your leaders begin to understand the value of process. Understanding how to track, how to get more productivity out, and there are a lot of systems in it. Season 2, we're going to really dive into that and bring in phenomenal guests to actually help you work through this.
People who are masters of time management, masters of lean construction, masters of building things twice as fast. We're going to bring those people in, in Season 2. But, just to give you an overcap. You gotta start thinking about process, right? You have to start thinking about developing your people, right?
Getting them ready and prepared for what's to come. Number two, you have to think about making your leaders what I like to call very studious, right? In the past, we've worked in construction and we said, Hey, you know what? I don't pay you to think. Forget that shit. Your leaders that work now in construction, you damn sure want them thinking, right?
Because they have to be strategic, they have to be creative, they have to really begin to think on their feet. How are they going to pull this shit off as things tighten? You don't want a blockhead working this, managing the whole crew. No, no, no. So you have to really begin to say, okay, wait a minute. I need to create some space and time for my leaders to develop and sharpen their leadership tools, because now not only are they going to be.
Underskilled, right? With some of the laborers that they have under manpower or skilled labor power, they don't have enough people. They don't have people who have the skillset and we're requiring more of them to get this project done. How the hell do you do that? Well, you damn sure better be a ninja in leadership to do it, my friends, right?
So they have to really begin to think about setting time aside. We're talking anywhere between 15 to 30 minutes a week to develop themselves, to develop themselves. And in the next segment, we're really going to talk about what are some of those things that they need to develop themselves in, right? So they can be very, very successful.
Now, I want you to think about this. At the same time, you got to focus on those leaders because we're struggling there. We don't have enough people to lead projects right now. It's because that next group underneath our leaders, we haven't done a good job of raising them up. Like, understand this. Right now, as I travel the country, I talk to a lot of our men and women in construction and no one actually wants to take a foreman job right now.
You know, I looked at some stats recently and we interviewed about 2, 000 frontline workers in construction. And most of them said it's not worth the headache. To get the 2 raise an hour. Like, why would I go through that headache Alex? Why would I go through the frustration, the pressure, all the stress, the late days working.
I don't even want it man. I prefer to stay in this role that I'm in, keep doing what I'm doing because I'm looking at the foreman, I'm looking at the superintendent, seeing what they're going through and I don't want that shit in my life. So, we have to do a better job of setting up systems in place of how we're educating people to prepare them for that stress, for that pressure.
And to date, we haven't really done a great job in our industry because we have really just said, Hey, shut up. I didn't pay you to think. I just want you to go out and do it. Right? You do what I tell you to do. Where now we're really having pull back, slow down, develop leadership principles, actually teach people how to do it so they can be truly successful.
You know, in this survey we did a workshop with actually some of our superintendents and foremen and we asked How did you get into your leadership position? We did something very crazy and cool and creative on this one. We wanted them to draw us pictures. Draw us pictures of how you got into a leadership role.
My friends, the pictures were mind blowing. I shared it with my wife and she was like, Are you shitting me? I had one foreman say, you know, he drew a picture of a pirate ship with him walking on the plank with senior leadership with swords behind him pushing him off the plank as he looked over the plank.
With sharks, right? And those sharks represented their lives, projects, behind schedule, all this different stuff and senior leadership just kind of throwing them off over in there, right? Another picture that was really, really crazy that came to mind was a foreman showing a picture of an airplane flying across.
Uh, with him standing at the door of the airplane, senior leadership behind him with the boot kicking him out as they held his parachute. Right, damn, think about that, right? That's kind of how he came into leadership and what it feels like for him being a foreman. We had another young lady who drew a picture of her in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by wolves, with a pork chop necklace on, right?
And she said, this is what it feels like to have this leadership role in construction. Out on this island by yourself, stranded with all of these different pressures against you. What, what are those pressures that are against our leaders? Well, let's think about schedules, right? Delays, lack of leadership, lack of support, long hours.
I mean, think about it. Most of our people are working anywhere between 80 to sometimes 90 hours a week. They come into a project already six weeks behind. Right, they have demanding pressures to get things done. They have delays on top of that with lack of skilled laborers working with them. Man, that's a shit show waiting to happen.
So the question is, as budgets tighten, as economy gets challenging, how the hell do you win with that kind of stuff right there? So how do you do it? You got to tune in and come back to our next segment so that we can talk about. Some of the skills that you need to think about so that you can really do a hell of a job of winning in this.
And there are some, some soft skills that we're going to talk about that you need all of your leaders thinking about. Because understand this, your leaders, they set the tempo and the tone, right? Look, if they look worried and fearful, if they lose their shit on job site, Everyone else follows, if they're cool, calm, and collected, if you've prepared them in such a way that they can handle the pressure, handle the stress, handle what's coming down.
Everyone says, hey, if she looks like that, man, we must be okay. So tune in to the level where we're going to really begin to level out. What are those skill sets? Where do you really need to focus so you can do a hell of a job? Helping yourself win in tight economies, still be very profitable, have engaging teams.
And really, really take your company to the next level. It's the leadership team that focuses in and tightens things up and puts systems and processes in place in this next phase that will definitely come out as winners on the other side of this. So tune in to our next segment of the level so we can show you how to do it.
Hey, I want to personally thank you for tuning in to No Bullshit with Alex Willis, the number one go to source for leadership development in the construction industry. And hey, don't forget to hit play on the next segment.