Delegation, Conflict and Mental Health on Site – Construction Leadership Training in Edmonton

Two of the hardest things a construction supervisor has to do. Delegate work to someone who might not do it as well as you would, and have a difficult conversation with somebody you have worked beside for years.

In this module of the leadership series, Bruce Baker of The Business Builders by Workplaces covers both, plus a subject construction has historically avoided: mental health on the job site.

Why supervisors find it so hard to delegate

You are no longer paid for what you produce yourself

Bruce: It is hard for most people, not just construction supervisors. Some personality types hold things to themselves and others are more open to letting go. But delegating means I have to let go.

For a new leader this is the shift. Since I was promoted to site super or foreman, all the value I created, good, bad or ugly, came from me and me only, and I was accountable for it. Now I have to produce value through others. Delegating means I rely on you, and you, and you, to produce the same value I was producing before I became a leader.

There are two reasons to delegate. The first is that I cannot do it all myself. The second, and this is the one people miss, is the development opportunity for the person I am delegating to.

This week a site lead about to be promoted to foreman asked me how to get past the block in his head. I have to ask Shane to do it, I have to teach him, and it will take so long. I told him it is about Shane’s development, not only about your success. He said, of course it is about my success. Yes, and your success now runs through Shane and the people who do this with you and for you.

It does take time to teach. It is not about going fast, because you cannot teach people fast. You have to teach people correctly. A lot of people are never told that being promoted into leadership is not about power, authority or more money. It is about creating succession, and you create succession through delegation.

The delegation framework

Reflection, and why “run it by me one more time” is not babying anyone

Bruce: Delegation is about sending your message or your instruction, making sure the receiver is ready to receive it, and knowing whether they got it or not. How do you know? In coaching it is called reflection, and there is a reflection point at each part of the conversation.

It sounds like this. Trevor, does this all make sense? Are you comfortable going ahead? Yes, Bruce, absolutely. Okay, so you and I are aligned, run me through what you understand needs to be done.

A gentleman called Dennis said to me this week, that feels like you are babying me. Why would I repeat it? Do you not think I understand? It is not about that, it is about how you present it. Being honest about why you are asking. Not being aligned is a huge profitability buster. When work is not truly understood, something happens because it was not clear, and you get the change order or the rework and you have to explain it again.

Delegation is also not a one-off confirmation. I encourage construction leaders to use toolbox meetings. Start in the morning with your hazard assessments and get things going. Follow up in the middle of the day, five or ten minutes, are we on track. Then at the end of the day, what did we do, did we complete what we needed to. Delegation is a continuous, progressive effort through the day, not a single handover.

Conflict on site

Ego is a defence mechanism, and a team cannot move without some conflict

Trevor: There is a lot of ego and machismo on construction sites. How do you teach someone to navigate that?

Bruce: Think about where ego comes from. It is like the word profit. Many people hear it and associate it with greed, and that is not what it means. Same with conflict. Most of us in the western world are brought up to avoid conflict, because we do not like to ruffle feathers. In the trades it becomes, I do not want to be a jerk, I want to teach him but I do not want to be overly picky, and I do not want to cause trouble because if I tell them the right thing to do they get defensive and disengaged.

Ego is our defence mechanism. Without going too deep into the psychology, it is about protecting something fragile, and that comes from insecurity, and that in itself creates the conflict we do not like.

What supervisors need to remember is that your team cannot move forward without some level of conflict. We are not talking about swearing at someone or yelling at someone. We are talking about being able to say, what you are doing is something I do not agree with, or it is not per company policy, or you are being a drag on the team, you are not showing up on time, you are rushing and missing things.

Conflict is the disagreement or misalignment between you and your employee. Instead of responding with a comeback to win the argument, ask the question. What makes you feel that way? What makes you see it that way? You would be surprised how much less hard you have to work as a supervisor.

Same with performance. You align at the start, this is the expectation, this is the objective. The employee says, I am committed, no problem, boss. Then it does not happen. Instead of telling them it is not happening, ask them. How is it going? How do you think things are going? When an adult self-evaluates after a commitment, the conflict disappears, because it is no longer between you and them. It is now between the employee and themselves, because they committed to something they own.

What the common conflicts actually look like

Sanding, socialising, and a grinder used the wrong way

Bruce: This week a newly promoted foreman told a brand new employee that when you are sanding a wall before we paint, you do not have to sand and sand and sand. It is a one, two, three thing. The employee said, I want to do the job properly. He said, that is doing the job properly. Back and forth it went. Then the new employee started talking and socialising, and when you are up against a deadline it is less talk, more work, then we talk after. The employee got annoyed, said there is no engagement here and your standards are not where they should be. That created real conflict.

Health and safety is another. Employees are asked to finish something by a certain time, they naturally speed up, and they take shortcuts. Two weeks ago that ended with a supervisor yelling at an employee for using a grinder in a way he should not have been. The employee got defensive immediately, do not speak to me that way. The foreman said, I will speak to you the way I need to, especially when you end up with a lost time injury or Alberta Health and Safety issuing us a stop order.

Most of the time it comes down to personal slights. For all our bravado, we are highly sensitive emotionally, and we get offended quickly, and the defence mechanism kicks in fast.

Mental health on the job site

Nobody is asking you to be a therapist. You are being asked to notice

Trevor: Construction has some of the highest rates of suicide and substance abuse of any trade. How do you address that in this programme?

Bruce: In the greater Edmonton area, and in Alberta, we have some of the highest drug-related and mental health problems in the country, and that is alarming. When those issues sit inside a safety sensitive environment like construction, people call it the fluffy stuff. I am not your therapist. We are not asking you to be the therapist. We are asking you to notice the signs that someone is struggling.

For example. Bruce used to be my A player for the last four or five months. I know he has told me he is having struggles at home, but he has dropped from an A plus player to a C player. And you know what, I am just going to issue him a warning. I am a huge advocate of accountability, and a lot of businesses do not have a culture of it. But at the same time you have to see the signs. I had an experience a couple of years ago where exactly this happened, and it ended in a suicide.

All we are asking supervisors to do is look for the signs, and if they are there, work with your first or second level manager, or HR on site, or health and safety. Say, I am a little bit worried.

Construction professionals already accept this in another form. If an employee arrives on shift with bloodshot eyes, slurring speech, or the smell of alcohol, it is ingrained in us. I do not care whether you get offended. If I think you are in danger and endangering the crew, I send you home and I need a medical note before you come back. Not doing that causes a world of hurt.

Your brain is your most active organ. We have to start recognising that it affects our crews in significant ways, and learn to pick out the telltale signs.

Trevor: When I was in construction it really was not talked about. There were options, our association had a mental health component, counselling for family or drugs, but nobody spoke about it. It was taboo. Nobody wants to be seen as weak.

Bruce: The stigma was a lot stronger going back a few years. It is getting a little better. And leaders should think about the employee who was once your A player and has suddenly become your C player. There is a reason for that. Highly engaged, outstanding performers do not just become bad performers. Something causes it. Know the signs and you catch it early, and you do not deal with the pain down the line.

Delegate, do not abdicate

The difference between handing work over and getting it off your plate

Trevor: What about abdication instead of delegation, where someone hands it off completely and then gets irritated when the outcome is not what they expected?

Bruce: Same example from this week. How is your new employee? He is good, very keen, been here a month. What is your responsibility? Well, I have to teach him all this. You seem frustrated by it. Yes, I told him just to go ahead and do it. But he takes his time, he is so slow.

Why do you think he is slow? Have you given him an expectation? Well, I told him as soon as possible. Why did you give it to him in the first place? Because I do not have time to be doing that. Have you delegated according to the model? Not exactly. What did you do? I told him to go do the sanding and not take all day, do it as quickly as he can, because he is new and he has two years of construction experience, so that is common sense.

That is the abdicating piece. I just have to get it off my shoulders, and thank God he is here because I was overwhelmed. It is pushing it over rather than asking why he is doing it slowly. Maybe because he wants to do it correctly. When an employee starts for the first time and wants to make an impression, what do they want to do? The most perfect job they can. So when you ask why he is so slow, you are criticising him for trying to do his very best.

If I went to your new employee and asked how fast that needs to be done, and what the standard of this business is, the likelihood is he would not know. Take the time to delegate. Set the expectation. Watch them once. Give them feedback. Let them do it again, and give them a standard to work to, because the company before this one probably wanted something very different.

Delegate, do not abdicate.

Field application

Why the brain needs proof before it will bother learning

Bruce: It is one thing to understand delegation or conflict in theory. This programme is a huge advocate of remembering that our brains are not there to make us happy. They are there to help us survive. When it comes to learning we are not initially motivated, because the brain wants proof. It wants a correlation. If you take this action and this outcome occurs, then the brain produces its own motivational chemistry.

So we teach the concept, we practise it in the classroom, and then you go out and delegate. You go out and enter into conflict. You ask whether an employee you are worried about might have something mental health related going on.

Some people say they are not sure they will get the opportunity. The programme is not telling you that you must. It is saying that when the opportunity comes, this is how you practise. And on delegation and conflict specifically, there is no way you can convince me a week goes by without both. The programme also cycles, so we return to these and make sure they stick.