Six Things Great Bosses Don’t Do
We’d venture to say that very few people got into the construction business because they expressly wanted to manage people. However, the fact is that as you elevate your career and get nearer the top of your company’s org chart, you will be more and more managing people and less and less managing tasks. But how much of your training in college and since has centered around managing people? Don’t most of us know what little we know by having watched our bosses manage people over time? What constitutes a good boss? And what makes for a poor one?
Tune in this week as Wayne discusses six things good bosses DON’T DO. We’d like to hear from you. What have you observed from your past bosses that made them either good or bad? Please share with us in the comments.
We are more than half full for the last Contractor Business Boot Camp class of 2023. The class starts on Nov 9 in Raleigh. If you haven’t yet enrolled your rising NextGen leaders to this program, do it NOW! Please contact Charlotte at ckopp@familybusinessinstitute.com for more information.
Hi. This is Wayne Rivers at FBI, where We Build Better Contractors.
We've got our final Boot Camp of 2023 coming up November 9 and 10 in Raleigh, so contact Charlotte and get your folks
signed up. We'll be announcing the 2024 schedule here pretty soon.
This week I want to talk about six things great bosses don't do, don't do. This is bouncing off a blog from my peer group
member, Arlin Sorenson, you've heard us talk about Arlin before. And now what about this is important to you? If you're
rising to a level of being a boss, you're a manager in construction, you're managing people. Now, it's funny when we're in
groups who say, "How many people in this room got into construction because you wanted to manage people?" And of
course, no one raises their hands. Lots of reasons people want to be in construction, but it's not because they want to
manage people. But let's face it, as you rise in your leadership in your construction firm, more and more it's about leading
and managing people, less and less it's about tasks and managing project.
So, if you're going to rise to senior leadership, you've got to get your mind around the fact that how you lead and manage
people is going to be the defining factor that determines how high you can progress on the career ladder. So, six things
that great bosses don't do, and this is directly from our own.
First thing, they don't find fault. Well, they do as necessary. They hold people accountable, of course, but they care much,
much more about solving problems than they do about assessing blame. Everybody makes mistakes. Gosh, I do. You do.
Come on, we all make mistakes. Forget about pointing the finger of blame and focus on problem solving and putting
systems in place so problems don't recur. If problems don't recur, we won't have people to blame, and problem goes
away.
Second, great bosses don't suffer from analysis paralysis. Boy, I like to make decisions. It feels good to me to make
decisions. There are others that don't. They like to have a lot of data at their fingertips before they make decisions. That's
fine. I mean, there's never anything wrong with research before you make a decision, but some people really go down the
rabbit hole of analysis paralysis, and they just can't seem to take action at the moment necessary. So great bosses make
decisions, and they take action. Sometimes they screw up, but as long as the screw-ups aren't business killers, there's
always a way to figure things out and clean up.
The third thing, great bosses don't do. They don't do everything. They learn to delegate. They learn to trust people. They
hire great, talented people and they delegate to them. They assign them task and responsibilities, and then they hold
them accountable, but they get out of the way. They don't try to do everything themselves. If you're one of those people
that thinks, what's that old thing that people say? "If you want it done right and you've got to do it yourself," that is
incredibly limiting. If that's your mindset, you can only progress so far in industry and in life. Great bosses don't try to do
everything.
The fourth thing, great bosses don't refrain from asking for help and asking for other people's opinions. We're blessed.
We have so much creativity and so many smart people in our shop. The first thing I do when faced with a challenge, I ask
other people in the organization what would they do?
How would they address this issue? How would they tackle this challenge? I mean, to me, crowdsourcing ideas is second
nature. I mean, I have some good ideas, but it's not like I have a monopoly. The other folks in our shop certainly have
wonderful ideas. Why wouldn't I ask them? I guess, some people think, "If you're the boss, you can't do that because it's
showing weakness." I don't see that as showing weakness. I see it as asking for help among a group of collaborating peers.
What's wrong with that?
The fifth thing great bosses don't do is they don't disregard time. They have a sense of urgency. They are action biased,
and they respect non-working time as well. So, if you've got employees, I actually sent an email last night about a person
on vacation, "Stop emailing, enjoy your vacation. Everything will be fine. When you get back next week, we'll tackle all this
stuff, but just calm down. Enjoy your vacation time," because that time is important too.
And the sixth thing, great bosses don't persist with a bad plan. You know that Dennis and I talk about strategic plans and
business plans and long-term plans all the time. On occasion when we've crafted a poor plan or the plan simply isn't getting
us where we want to go as quickly as we want to get there, it might be time to call an audible. It might be time to redirect.
It might be time to revisit the plan and maybe tweak it quite a bit, or maybe even toss it out the window altogether. Maybe
it was just a bad concept, a bad plan. It was never going to work, and it's been time unproductively spent, but great bosses
don't persist with bad plans.
So, I'd like to hear from you. What do great bosses do? What do great bosses not do in your opinion? Please share with
us in the comments. And don't forget about that final Boot Camp of 2023.
