From the Ground Up

Starting Over From Experience

Beginnings are hard.

You do not have momentum, you do not have any systems in place.

What if you did not have to begin from the… beginning each time though? What if you could rely on your experience from all of the times before this one to position you trailer out of the way, you material close enough to be accessible but not so close it is in the way, your tools where they will be secure and yet still available?

The physical skills you learn as an individual contributor go a decently long way to in setting you up to be a supervisor. (with out maybe most of the human or leadership skills, but that is another article1)

The hard skills of management are also not things we could learn swinging a hammer. We need to learn to estimate time, to think three moves ahead, to hold the big picture in mind while not letting any of the mission critical details get away from us too.

Just like you have learned where you need your tools, and where you need your material, you now have to learn to order supplies in time that the work can keep moving, and not so soon that it gets in the way of work that needs to be done first.

It is all overlapping conditions. (which are dependent on other contingencies)

And if you think you can handle all of this effectively without a system, you have not yet worked on a project with sufficient complexity, a large enough team, on a big enough site, a tight enough deadline or with the kind of agility you need when the only constant is that things keep changing.

By the time you get to the big league, you will need a system, and the only way to be your best is to already be good at operating inside of a system with others who may or may not be in the office the same hours or even the same days as you are.

If you are very lucky, you will find a mentor who can train you in the ways of managing the system while still leading the people.

Because the system won’t be lead and the people will not tolerate being managed, at least not for long.

Know that going in!

The hard truth is that most industries are not good at recruiting for Leadership and Team Building Skills, and are demonstrably worse at mentoring for Leadership Skills, and barely passable at training for management skills. And Construction seems to be near the back of the pack. Perhaps this is because the inherent resilience needed to start from the ground up2 each time has trained us that we can overcome anything just by moving forward. The only thing I want to add to that is

Move forward with the Wisdom of Experience on your side!

Coaching was not available to me when I was a young and fiery Electrical Contractor.

What I wish had been available to me then is the wisdom of experience, the soft skills to enroll my team, the intuition to find my flow…

Why I became a coach is so that this new generation of builders and Team Builders do not have to solve every problem with blood, sweat and horsepower!

On a personal note, I will say that a part of me loved doing things the HARD way! There is something about getting up early after not a great nights sleep, fueling up on impatience and coffee and getting it done against a stack of obstacles and antagonism! Closing your eyes at the end of a long day with just enough concrete dust in your eyes3 to remind you of how tough you are... it does have an kind of a satisfaction to it. It is a recipe for a short career though!

In short, I was an adrenaline junkie. Every impossible deadline I met and defeated felt good because I could hack into my adrenaline and power through.

What being an adrenaline junkie cost me, was the health of my kidneys. So I am speaking from experience when I say that going full throttle works if you are in it for a good time, but it falls apart (and so do you) if you want to be in this for a long time.

So do not be a hack!

Find someone who can alloy your energy, vision, and determination with perspective, and let systems give you back the headspace you will need to level up!

Terry Barkman works as a coach and consultant with

Leaders to Develop

Teams who work together

so that your organization can sustainably

grow without burning you out!

He is Thought Leader, Speaker,

Author, and connoisseur of run on sentences. His upcoming book

Terry-Fied goes deeper into how to get relational leadership working

for your team!

Terry Speaks ~ Photo Credit Anita Alberto