Leadership vs. Power
My Dad was the one who taught me much of what I know about business. He is the VP and Business Development Director for one of the largest commercial construction companies in the South East United States. He told me a story one time about how he had two projects starting at the same time and put his two best project managers on the jobs, both with extremely different methods of getting jobs done. Both projects were going to take roughly 15 months to complete. Both projects finished right on schedule. What was the difference he asked me..? Project manager 1 had finished the project, built a great team and trusting environment, and took his team with him to the next project. Project manager 2 had gone through 3 superintendents in 15 months, had 20% of his work force quit on him, and 50% of his subcontractors coming to my Dad, the Project Manager's boss, and telling him they didn't want to work with that Project Manager any more. Was finishing a 15 month project on time worth such drastic turnover?
Leadership Doesn't Point Fingers.
Congratulations on your role as team leader! You are now FULLY responsible for your team and how you operate. Nervous yet? You shouldn't be. Let me tell you exactly why Project Manager 1 was able to keep such a great team atmosphere and why Project Manager 2 has such high turnover during his job. To boil it down to the most simple way of explaining it, Empowerment. Just like both of these Project Managers, everyone that works for them is trying to build a career in this industry. They come in every day not to just do a job, but to learn, become better, and work on advancing themselves and their skill set in what they do.
The Negative. Project Manager 2 was successful because he was the first on the job every day and the last to leave. He also demanded the same unnecessary hours from his crew, talked down to his subordinates, and never gave anyone a chance to learn from their tasks by demanding tasks be done in extremely tight time-windows. If he was to not have any turnover and have to take time hiring and training new people, he may have even finished the job early. Project Manager 2 also had a hard time with failure. When someone else or even he himself messed up or failed at a particular task, he was quick to point fingers and play the blame game. He didn't want to hurt the career of his own employees, so he would often blame subcontractors; some even good subcontractors that had a long working relationship with the Project Manager's company. He quickly isolated himself and the moral around the job had dropped too low to be saved. Project Manager 2 used fear of power for 15 months to get a job done on time.
Tip:
A great leader isn't afraid to dive on the sword or take accountability for their own actions. The most true statement I have ever heard about in Leadership is that "Leaders, lead by example." You are now fully responsible for your team. If your team fails, you fail. If you team wins, you win. Keep this mentality and anyone would be happy to jump into battle with you on any given day of the week.
The Positive. Project Manager 1 was successful because he was able to build a culture where his team emulated passion for their work. Not one single day on the job did someone come in and dread the tasks at hand. He rewarded good work with things like half days on the job, but was still able to discipline his team or individuals in a way that his team left that meeting with lessons learned. He delegated tasks well and was able to let people work with their strengths to become better at their own jobs. On a day they had poured concrete over re-bar that was set in the wrong place, he called in the problem to the corporate team himself and took the blame for not properly doing his quality control work; later disciplining his quality control superintendent himself by making his look over the next level of re-bar work so he was more acclimated with the job's blueprints. On the last week of the job, he took his entire team out for lunch and thanked every single of them for their hard work over the last 15 months. When the job was finally over, his team had such a feeling of empowerment, they asked to follow him to his next project and continue to work for him. Careers were advanced in those 15 months, no doubt about that.
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