Why Your Best People Leave, and How Purpose Keeps Them – Leadership Training for Trades in Edmonton

Construction work is temporary by nature. Your crew finishes one building and moves to the next. So how do you build lasting purpose when the work itself is transient?

In this module Bruce Baker of The Business Builders by Workplaces takes on the subject most trades leaders assume is a corporate retreat exercise, and connects it directly to retention, discretionary effort and margin.

Purpose-driven leadership, for a foreman running a concrete crew

Why “get her done” runs out of road

Trevor: I can hear listeners saying this sounds like a corporate retreat. Sell me on why it matters for a foreman running a concrete crew.

Bruce: You are right, people hear purpose-driven leadership and it sounds abstract and fluffy. In construction the mantra is the good old Alberta saying, get her done.

The problem with get her done is that traditionally it means, I see this needs doing, so just do it. There is a complete disconnect between my job as a construction worker and how I identify. I speak with a lot of construction leaders and they talk about their labourers as, and I quote, their grunts. The word might not be shared with everybody else, but people get treated that way, and they start to perceive themselves that way. Eventually they lose the connection between what they do and the impact it has.

People will tell me we have to get the job done, we are on a timeline. The trouble is that construction work is transient. We keep people for a period, then lay them off. Sometimes they come back, often they do not. And we keep struggling with turnover and the old line, you cannot get good help these days. There is a reason for that. I can find an extra three or four dollars an hour next door, and I am just as good there as I am here.

Discretionary effort

The reason your best worker is your best worker

Bruce: There is a term called discretionary effort. It is not mine, it is an old term for the additional effort employees put in.

Think about the employee who is outstanding. Arrives on time, might even leave late, always makes sure the job is done correctly. If I could clone them it would be an amazing place. There is a reason that person is like that, and the reason is discretionary effort. It exists because they are connected to what they are doing and understand the purpose behind it.

If construction leaders understand this and make it personal, it is remarkable what they achieve in efficiency, productivity and crew quality.

The golden circle, on a job site

Flipping the toolbox meeting from what to why

Bruce: The golden circle comes from Simon Sinek, one of my favourite people to learn from, and I would encourage viewers to go and look it up properly.

The idea is that people naturally work from the outside in. My CEO tells me as a site superintendent that we have to get that retirement village completed. I ask about the timeline and the budget. Then at the toolbox meeting I tell the crew we have to get that concrete poured by this time. That is outside in.

The golden circle flips it. It starts with why. So instead of, we have to get that concrete poured by this time, it becomes, we have to get that concrete poured by this time because people are expecting to move in next week, and we have to make sure it is safe, and we are not dealing with juniors here, we are dealing with seniors, and what we are doing makes a real difference to this community. There is now a reason we are hustling.

Two things determine success in construction, and in most industries. Quality and timeline. You can pour the concrete and meet the timeline, but if you do not finish it correctly you have a quality problem, and that is a profitability problem and a safety problem, because you are dealing with people.

When a crew excels on both, either they have a crew leader giving them the why, or the crew has worked the why out for themselves. Imagine what gets achieved on site when the leader is purposeful and the crew carries it too.

Purpose statements

Not a mission statement, and deliberately short-term

Bruce: People automatically think of mission and vision statements. We have been given a lot of mission, vision and values material since the early nineties, and it has not really moved the bottom line. Not because those things are unimportant. They are critical. But it takes time to build values and the mission they support, so they do not deliver immediate bottom line impact.

A purpose statement is different. Every human being moves forward because they believe they are making traction. If they are not contributing, they feel they are doing nothing productive. Give them a north star and they drive towards it.

The statement matters because it is driven by emotion, and human beings react emotionally first. A purpose statement is easy to identify with. Our purpose right now is to achieve this, through this project, for this reason. By the time we reach the end, we have hit it.

What is the difference from a mission statement? A mission is longer term. A purpose statement can be as short as, what is our purpose today? What do we have to hit today, because if we do not hit it today we do not get to do that tomorrow. It is short-term bursts of energy, which people prefer to waiting three weeks or two years.

When you cannot give a raise

Money is a short-term satisfier. Purpose is what is left

Bruce: Managers and owners give me a strange look when I say money is not a primary satisfier. It is a short-term satisfier. In slower economic cycles like the one we are in, a lot of people need an increase and you cannot give it to them. What is left? Purpose.

I see well-run construction companies who cannot pay more right now being exceptionally creative with purpose. If we get through this, here is what it does for our company. Notice the words. Our company. Our team. That is purpose-driven leadership.

I can hear a site super saying, they are lucky they have a job. That is a very short-term perspective, and it does not last. We have a serious shortage of skilled labour in Canada. It is not good enough to have somebody filling a slot. You want people who want to learn a trade and become skilled in it, so they carry the next generation. Anyone whose attitude is, you are lucky to have a job, has it backwards. You are lucky to have somebody willing to learn.

Transient crews can still be loyal

Why Bruce comes back next season, and why he does not

Bruce: A transient workforce is fine if the expectation and the understanding are there. There is purpose in long-term permanent work, and there is purpose in short-term work too. If we hire for the season and have to lay off afterwards, there is still purpose, as long as people understand the reality of seasonality.

A lot of construction companies hope Bruce will come back next season. Bruce does not always come back, because Bruce might find a job elsewhere with year-round work. What we find is that Bruce returns when there is a purpose-driven culture in the business. So transient does not negate retention and engagement. It can still produce loyalty and people coming back.

I have done thousands of interviews. Nine times out of ten, if not ten out of ten, the answer to why did you like working there is the people. Why did you go back? My boss, or the people. Ask somebody to tell you honestly why you should and should not work somewhere and the reason you should is always the people. Often it is, my supervisor inspired me, my supervisor gave me a reason to keep working there, as opposed to just coming in, waiting for my cheque and going home.

Field application

Start with your own why, then ask your crew theirs

Bruce: Participants develop a purpose statement. The first thing we say is that this is not about semantics, and it is not a job description or a vision or a mission. It starts with you. Why do you do what you do?

A lot of people answer, because I need a paycheque, this is my job. So we dig. What keeps you doing this? What makes you feel motivated? Then we ask whether they think that same thing drives the people who work with them and for them. Most say they do not know. And if you did know their purpose, and you could work with it rather than against it, would that not make a significant difference?

Then we send them out to use it. But before you impose it, and I mean that positively, ask your guys. Why do you get up every morning and start a shift at six or seven? It gets people thinking about why they are there. A lot of them will say, I need a job, I need a paycheque. That is the leader’s opening to say, this is not just a job and a paycheque, this is something deeper.

I drive down the Henday and see the crews working on the LRT line in Edmonton, out there early in the morning, and I wonder whether they know what they are actually contributing. What they contribute is impressive. I do not think they always realize how important it is to this city. That in itself is purpose. If their supervisors and their companies told them how valuable they are, the return on that is significant.

And I want to remind people that this programme is directly connected to and measured on profitability. When we see margin ticking up, it is not because the crew decided not to make mistakes today. It is because they understand the purpose, they are aligned with it, and they are executing towards it.

Purpose without accountability is nothing

Bruce: Just because we have a purpose statement and everybody sings Kumbaya does not mean everybody is engaged. A manager asked me the other day what happens if his guys do not have the purpose inside them.

There is nothing more powerful than group accountability. If the supervisor and the peers cannot get that person to engage and drive forward, the next question is whether he or she really belongs in the crew. A lot of leaders struggle with this, because I do not want to lose hands, I need them to get the work done. Every time you tolerate a lack of accountability and let somebody get away with it, you disengage everybody else. It is the rotten apple in the basket. Eventually they all go.

The way you drive accountability is purpose. You can move a business forward without one hundred percent agreement. But if you do not have one hundred percent commitment, forget about it. If somebody is not purpose-driven and not committed to being part of the drive, please do not keep them on. Let them find somewhere they do fit.