By Dr. Charles Coker, LifeThrive
If you would like to improve your company’s profitably, you can apply three simple concepts today that will have an impact on your bottom line.
They do not require a bachelor’s or master’s degree nor 30-plus years’ experience in all the trades. You have to address people challenges that exist during the course of meeting your homeowner’s needs when you work with people:
• There is no seemingly foolproof method for managing and leading all employees, subs and/or tradesmen.
• Employees, subs and tradesmen do not have the same ambition or objectives as you do.
• In many cases those who work for you may not be willing to go the extra mile or think outside the box to ensure your expectations are met.
The answer lies in their engagement with you, their work and the project for which they are hired.
Once you understand some key principles about these individuals, you can navigate your way through the project steps smoothly and efficiently, despite the challenges you face.
First, realize you must assume a role that requires people skills as well as the task skills required to meet your homeowner’s objective.
Managing tasks is not inspiring people and motivating people to do their job well is not as simple as steps one, two and three of installing a window.
Managing when you should be leading and inspiring when you should be directing can create confusion, frustration and increase costs before you know it. You must understand people enough to know when to do each.
Second, the reason people have roles as employees, subs and/or tradesmen is they rely on competence, rather than confidence.
They reached a point in life where they made a decision to do something well, rather than try to do many things. They realized that repetition creates habits and skills that can become fast and efficient. They reduce their stress by doing the same thing over and over.
They often want to be perceived as specialists or craftsmen. This tells you a lot about their personality and how to manage or lead them.
Third, people who work in limited scopes often do not understand the overall picture of what you are trying to accomplish.
They often are more concrete thinkers, while you probably are more of a conceptual or big-picture thinker.
You are building a “home” not installing dry wall. Often they must be directed and provided with your vision.
To meet each of these three challenges move beyond the typical interview or hiring process to a program that will help you anticipate success rather than react to challenges or failures:
After you have completed the normal process you use to hire or investigate an employee, sub or tradesman, ask these three questions:
• “How do you manage your work?” If the answer is a long, detailed discourse, you will know that they may be a bit slower than some, but the quality of their work will be more precise. If they talk about how fast and efficient they are, you had better watch the details and ensure things are done properly.
• “Tell me how you and your team approach each job by giving me an example of a project you recently completed.” This will help you better understand their approach to management/leadership and how actively they will be involved with the people and/or the details. It will also tell you how actively involved you will need to be.
• “What’s the most important aspect of completing the job?” This will give you a better understanding of how they will focus their attention to the work itself and where you will need to monitor or be more deeply involved.
These simple questions engage employees beyond the job itself and help identify their level of commitment and how they want to be perceived as individuals.
The question is not how to motivate people because every person you hire is motivated in some way.
Your job is to reason through their existing motivations and determine how you can use their motivations to help your company succeed.
If you discover that, you will be able to direct their personal motivations to help you succeed.
To find out more about how your employees are motivated and how they will try to succeed, there is a free assessment at http://lifethrive.com/free-assessments/
Contact me at [email protected]. Visit us at lifethrive.com or call (904) 474-3600.