Leadership isn’t just a buzzword that saved for the elites and upper echelon of management within businesses. Leadership is a set of behaviour, which when adopted into your life, can make a transformational difference. A passion of mine is showing exactly how this can apply. Recently, I posted on social media, a call for real life leaders to send through challenges that they’re facing so I could tackle the challenge and show how leadership behaviours could help them. Below are two dilemmas I received in response to questions I asked from an aspiring leader from England.
First a bit of context, the person submitting these questions works in the very challenging Construction Industry and is on a path to becoming a better leader. He wants to make a positive impact and below are some of his pressing concerns he wants to change.
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Question #1: What is your biggest frustration/challenge as a leader (life or work)?
Over compliance – Behavioural accountability is often taken away at the face of the workforce by over compliance through treating people like children – like they do not have common sense. Completing a checklist for refuelling a work vehicle for example – something most of us do every day outside work. When your workforce become cynics it is hard to lead and motivate (something Sidney Dekker touched on) Compliance is needed but, too much of it can burn people out, including leaders. Is this where a manager is created instead of a leader?
This is an incredibly important question and one that I don’t think stops with the construction industry. Behavioural accountability, or a lack of it, is a problem for many people and it is often a demonstration of how people lead their lives. You may notice that those who the ones who take responsibility, accountability and lead by example generally do the same in their lives. The people that don’t do this in the workplace often struggle with the same issues outside of work.
A lack of behavioural accountability is a serious problem which not only drains people’s time and energy, but can also lead to unsafe working cultures. Before we proceed it is important to understand that behavioural accountability is not just a workplace problem caused by employers, but it speaks deeper about how people behave in their lives. However, for this question I will focus on the workplace.
Why does this occur?
I face issue on almost all small and major projects and there is one common reason for a lack of behavioural accountability, a lack of demonstration of leadership behaviours. I want you to imagine this scenario, you are a manager on your project and are responsible for delivering an element of works. You have a team of two people, the workforce.
Your team come to you for your morning briefing and you explain to them line by line what they need to do. You then ask them questions for them to engage, but they’re quite, so you prompt the questions which you answer, line by line. They sign some papers and they go to work. Later in the day they come across a problem and don’t do exactly as you said, because well they forgot some bits. You catch them out and tell them how they should do it. They now feel embarrassed and work exactly as per your words until they come across another problem, but this time they stop. They don’t want to be embarrassed in front of their friends again so they wait a few hours until you see them again, and you’re confused as to why they’ve stopped and why they didn’t tell you. “You didn’t tell us to call you” the team tell you. You’re left emotionally frustrated, confused and stressed.
The above scenario is an all too familiar one which happens ten times a time on almost all projects. The above is a demonstration of a lack of behavioural accountability and it occurs because of two reasons:
- Negative outcome scenario
- Parent-Child scenario
In my book, under the Leadership Behaviour: Communication, I discuss how every single conversation has an outcome. In the above example, during the briefing, your responsibility was to ensure that the team knew exactly what they needed to do, are responsible for the works and deliver the project. However, due to you being accountable for the briefing, asking and answering the questions you’ve completely disengaged the team. They feel dis-empowered, micromanaged and not trusted. You have created a negative outcome scenario.
The second reason is the classic parent-child scenario. The team were treated as children by the parent, you. This a negative reinforcement to human behaviours. Human behaviours drive outcomes. The Parent Child Coercive Cycle by Terrel L. Templeman, Ph.D. is a great read to further understand human behaviours which I suggest reading. Human behaviours can either be positively or negatively reinforced and it’s not what you’d usually think. For example, reading the briefing line by line and allowing the team to ask basic level questions is a negatively reinforcing behaviour, even though it may seem like the right thing do.
How can you change it?
Firstly, let’s understand what compliance is, in relation to the construction industry. In layman’s terms, compliance is doing the minimum to meet the legal requirement. The legality side is incredibly important to protect not only companies, but also employees from hefty fines and potential prison sentences. Interestingly enough, following training in Accident Investigation, the Police and the HSE can fine not only the company, but the individuals they deem responsible if a serious incident was to occur. And, they will not simply stop at non-compliance of paperwork, noncompliance can be behavioural too.
Now we understand that, the next step to understand is why industries, like the Construction industry, work to compliance. To understand that you need to understand the definition of Management, which is literally “the process of dealing with or controlling people”. As I discuss in my book, managing a person as a tangible ‘machine’ to create and output will result in that ‘machine’ (person) feeling as though all they need to do is provide a specific output. But remember, like all machines, shit in, shit out.
The need to manage, or have control, has led to an industry of compliance. This need to manage has been derived from a fear of non-compliance and the ramifications that come with that. The question you have asked is exactly the right one and it’s one every major construction company is asking, “How do we get people to be accountable for their behaviours?”
The answer, change the way we behave and that starts with encouraging leadership behaviours like the ones I discuss in my book: communication, accountability, presence, trust and so on. Changing a culture starts at the top and requires commitment. If we change the way we behave as a leadership team, we can change the management team and create more leaders. These behavioural shifts will pass down to those on the front line to build behavioural accountability.
Disclaimer: Changing a culture is not as easy as it sounds. It took decades of “management” to create the culture which we now know is a problem. In a similar fashion, it will take time, energy and commitment to change a culture. For example, on a major project I recently worked on, we faced a similar problem. Between a leadership team of four people, we decided to change the culture. We put together regular talks, workshops, changed behaviours, built trust, changed the way we communicated and managed to achieve our goal. It took two years.
What can you do?
There are nine steps that have worked for me and my team on one of the largest projects in Europe. Note: This is on the basis that there are no major external issues/ delays, such as lack of material/ design etc. What you are doing here is implementing a change initiative with the outcome of changing a culture. Utilise the behaviours I discuss in my book to follow these nine steps
- Support
- Urgency/ awareness
- Accountability
- Strategy
- Motivate
- Empower
- Adapt
- Reward
- Culture shift
Question #2. What area would you most like to learn more about in leadership?
Leading to find SMART ways of the balance between productivity and compliance whilst maintaining employee well-being. Currently in the construction/civil engineering industry we are leading the way with the number of people taking their own life – could this be because we are burning them out? Long hours, over compliance, work pressures and home life? Leaders need to find ways to combat this.
Similar to the question above, I completely agree that mental well-being is one of the most challenging topics we have to date. Whilst recording season 2 of The JT Leadership Podcast, I came across three statistics which shocked me:
- According to the World Health Org (WHO), October 2018 the latest statistics shows that 450 million people suffering from a mental health illness leading to ill health which means 1 in 4 people are affected.
- Men accounted for three-quarters of UK deaths by suicide in 2018
- The increase in reported self-harm was biggest among women and girls aged 16 to 24, with 19.7% of those questioned in 2014 saying they’d self-harmed.
I mean how crazy is that? Imagine if one of those women was your wife or daughter. Imagine if one of those 1 in 4 was your best friend. That is why this is such an important question. Over the years we, in the Construction industry, have done so well to reduce fatal accidents, but in the process ignored the stress we put on the mind, which can sometimes hit home with greater effect. Unfortunately, to date the industry is a reactive improvement industry. The silver lining, however, is that we now recognise mental health as a serious problem and have started to make strides towards changing the environments which cause these issues.
Note: Mental Health issues which lead to serious incidents can also be punishable by law if a company is deemed culpable.
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How can you start to make a change?
Around a year ago I was part of a forum discussing on how the Construction industry could change the future by becoming leading 100% green projects. And this didn’t mean by carbon offsetting, but by being truly green; electric vehicles, completely digital and utilising renewable energy sources. After a lot of discussion I put forward the notion that the industry, historically, only makes significant changes once the government decide to change legislation, otherwise it is of personal expense to the company to make industry leading changes. Take for example, the HASAW Act 1974. Until this was brought into force the industry did not make wholesale changes to improve the safety of its workers. Additionally, take for example the increasing rising cost of government projects. The Government recently introduced the P13 document to all new projects to standardise, increase efficiency and reduce cost across construction projects
Essentially, my point is that leadership change is driven from the top. However, the change is sparked from the people.
Similar to the above question, changing a culture is a change initiative. Following the same steps, in order to make a change a leader is required in order to inspire and seek support from the top. This is done through demonstrating leadership behaviours. As discussed in my book, take inspiration from the likes of Barrack Obama and John F Kennedy who through communication, sovereignty and decision making inspired change.
Side note: You touched upon work hours and home life issues. Some of the biggest causes of safety issues is fatigue due to long hours, repetitive tasks and being distant (perhaps due to home life). Would a well-rested, engaged and happier employee not become more productive, more efficient and safer?
What can you do?
Look, it’s not all doom and gloom. The good news, as I mentioned above, is that people are waking up to the issue which is fatigue, mental health and mental wellbeing. However, not enough is being done because there aren’t enough voices demanding change. I again go back to behavioural accountability. As a future leader of major projects, are you going to accept this when you’re able to make a difference? I urge you to raise your voice in meetings, do research and show how different initiatives can make a difference on your projects.
On the other hand, it’s not always down to the leaders of major companies. I also believe that the people need to be accountable for their own lives and own behaviours. But, I believe that there are always simple steps that we can do to help make a positive impact in the world. Take for example some of the biggest problems our workforce face:
- Money
- Long hours
- Being away from family
How can you become creative and try to help those that you care about? Here’s some examples which can get your creative juices flowing:
- Regarding money, can the project fund a Financial Advisor to attend site and provide advice to those struggling?
- Regarding long hours, do we need to do 12 hour days? Why not trial 12, 10 and 8 hour shifts to determine productivity?
- Regarding family, many companies see work as a location, not a task. What can be done to change this mentality? Can you trial working from home one day a week? Can you plan in one long weekend at home every month into the programme? Can you challenge subcontractor to do more?
As an aspiring leader the future is yours to shape. Be confident because you have the power to become accountable for your actions, take your personal development to the next level, and then implement change initiatives which can change a culture. Believe in yourself and empower those around you.
Thank you for reading, JT.
Learn the behaviours of a leader from my simple and easy to read book.