The Profit Builder Unscripted

When to Trust Your Gut as a Leader

• Vicki Suiter

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Have you ever had that gut feeling something isn’t right on a job or with someone on your team? In this episode of The Profit Builder Unscripted, I share a real story about a contractor who ignored those instincts—and what happened when the truth finally came out.

Learn how trusting your gut can save your business from costly mistakes, how to spot warning signs early, and why having those tough conversations sooner can protect your team and your profits.

If you’ve felt that nagging doubt but weren’t sure what to do next, this episode is for you.

What you’ll get:

  • Red flags to watch for on your projects
  • How to trust and act on your intuition as a leader
  • Tips for handling difficult conversations with your team

Don’t wait until it’s too late - listen, learn, and take control of your business today!

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Vicki Suiter (00:00)
If you've ever had a gut sense that something is amiss on a project or with an employee, you're going to want to listen to this session because we talk about the reality of how that happens and what you can do about it. Hi, I'm Vicki Suiter. Welcome back to the Profit Builder Unscripted.

Do you ever get the nagging feeling that something isn't quite right with somebody on your team? Like that sense of maybe they're not being completely honest, or maybe they seem to have too many excuses about why they don't get things done. Or maybe it's just this gut feeling of, yeah, I you might be getting ripped off.

I had a conversation with a client earlier this week who had been having that experience for several months with somebody on his team until finally he actually had gotten enough information to support what he got sense was and he fired the guy. And it turned out that, so my client James had this guy who was a foreman on a project and he just kind of had this sense like every time he called the guy he was not at the job site. Or he kind of had this sense where it seemed like materials weren't kind of adding up that materials were the material bills were really high and he was running the store all the time to buy materials, but they didn't seem to be getting to the job site. Or that production seemed to be really slow. Like things just were not moving along quick enough based on all the stuff that the guy in the field was, and we'll call him Steve. So Steve, the guy who was a foreman on the project, Steve wasn't getting the job done, but he was buying materials all the time.

And the job just was really slow. And so, he had this  gut sense that there was something else going on besides the fact that production was slow and he didn't listen to it and he kind of let it go until finally he started talking to the guys at the job site and he started showing up at the job site unannounced to check where Steve was. Steve oftentimes wasn't at the job site.

And then he started to notice like what was getting ordered on the material bill from the lumber place and also noticing that that lumber was never making it to the job site. And so he finally confronted Steve and he said, Hey, Steve, I noticed that you're, you're like, you're oftentimes not at the job site. Job isn't on production schedule. You're buying all these materials, but they're not at the job. What's the deal?

And then Steve had this whole long story of excuses and reasons and so on and so forth. And my client went, okay, well, I'll take that. But he knew that something was off and then he waited a little bit longer and a little bit longer. And then they had this conversation again. And then finally he was like, I gotta fire the guy.

And he did, and when he fired the guy, he found out that there were really bizarre things, including alcohol bottles in the company truck that this guy had been driving, and started finding receipts for Costco, where he was shopping with his wife for their weekly stuff, and finding out that those job materials were actually going on his side jobs on the weekends.

You know, if you've been in construction long enough, there's a good chance that you have either heard about a story like this or maybe even had an experience like this. And the thing that struck me and you know, why am I recording this? Why am I having this conversation with you today is so many times we have a gut sense that something isn't right, but then we don't follow it through. We don't trust ourselves.

We don't go that extra step we know somebody isn't really performing on the job and we wait and we wait and we wait until they've lost us money. They've cost us financially, just dollars and cents, whether that's, you know, Steve who was buying materials for his side jobs or production that was really lagging because he wasn't showing up on the job site although there was a whole crew of people who were waiting for direction from Steve that wasn't getting it and so Paying for this labor that wasn't being productive or efficient. But there's this other cost that is what is the what is the cost to you as an organization when as leaders? We don't take the initiative to let somebody go especially in a leadership role who is affecting the morale and they and the productivity on a job or how other employees perceive, hey, you see there's an issue, but you're not dealing with it. 

And one of the, you know, I remember a long time ago and it might've been Patrick Linciani or somebody like that who had this expression of hire slow, fire fast. Hire slow, fire fast. And the most successful contractors I know are the ones who are willing to spend a lot of time making sure that they really vet people so that they're a right fit for the job and they don't rush into hiring them. But when they know that they're not the right person for the job, they're letting them go. And so, you know, what's the, what is my, my suggestion to you is unless it is you're listening to this today, I would say that there's two things. One is if you get the sense that something is off, trust your gut.

You know what? We all have a, we all have this, this knowing in us, this gut feel. And there's a scientific, evidence behind this about that, whole, that whole expression of, you know, that gut feel that we have a brain in our gut. There's actually neurons that exist down there that really do give us signals and information, but we tend to ignore it very, way too often.

So when you ignore it, then oftentimes we find out later on that that gut feel was really true. So my encouragement to you today is when your gut tells you something, Give some thought to it. See if, do what, James took a little while to do with Steve, which is dig a little deeper to really find out what's going on. And
to also when you know somebody is not working that you  take the action that you need to take early on because it's affecting you. It's so many more levels than just you have somebody who's being a little dishonest about their time card or being a little dishonest about materials or being a little dishonest about what they're getting done or not getting done on the job. 

The more you are willing to have those difficult conversations early on, the more likely you actually could be that you could have turned somebody around and maybe made them, you know, had that situation turn around. And possibly if you had addressed it, he would have addressed it earlier, if James had addressed it earlier with Steve. It makes me just wonder, could he have intervened in that conversation with Steve?

Earlier on that he could have turned that situation around Maybe maybe not. I don't know. But what I know is that when we wait too long Sometimes it's just too late When we wait too long, we lose this opportunity we affect our business we affect our process profitability we affect our team morale and That it just makes that conversation ultimately more difficult in the end and so.

You know, my other piece of advice to you is, well, first of all, just trust your gut. If you sense something is going on, there's probably something going on, and take action. The second thing is be willing to have those hard conversations, and that's the take action part. Often and early, you know, we think sometimes that having those conversations is going to create a confrontation.

Well, we end up having those confrontations when we let it go, let it go, let it go. Right. as in the case with James, that was a confrontational conversation he ultimately had with Steve. And, know, there's a way to approach the conversation. You know, he and I talked through it a little bit and I said, you know, if you had to do it differently, how would you do it differently now? How would you approach it? And he said, when I first sensed something was off, I'd have sat down with, with Steve and said, Hey, Something just doesn't feel right here. Here's what I'm noticing. Can we talk about this? Like what's going on? Like are you, and just listen and hear. And if you, and he said, you know, I probably would have dug deeper. I would have asked more questions. If I didn't believe him, I would have shown the evidence earlier on. And you know, if the guy is lying,

There's another expression when people show you who they are believe them if you have somebody who lies to you all the time mmm, that's probably a problem and that probably is showing up in other parts of your business and In the way that they engage with other people whether that's the client this other subcontractors employees Vendors like right How are they showing up with you is probably how they're showing up maybe with other people too. 

So you know, I just, I think we need to trust ourselves. I think we need to trust our guts more. And I think that we need to be willing to have conversations that are those tough conversations earlier on. And when we can come at it without being defensive, but just come at it with this sense of here's what I'm seeing, here's what I'm going on. What's up? You know, give people an opportunity to come clean.

Sometimes people make stupid mistakes, right? But then sometimes people just don't belong on our teams and we need to let them go. And I think that the other thing that happens when we're willing to have those conversations early and often, those difficult conversations or those ones where we're not agreeing with something or somebody or we're having to bring up something that's uncomfortable, that when we're willing to have those conversations, it also builds trust. You know, even when it comes to people that we don't think are stealing from us, ripping us off, you know, being lazy, not doing their job, all of the stuff that was going on with Steve and James. And maybe it's not just that, but maybe that there are other people on your team that you need, that you know, you, you care about and you trust.

That you need to have some hard conversations with. You get that there's something a little bit off. As I say this, I'm thinking about another situation with another client where it's a very long-time trusted employee that has been saying some things that are disparaging about the industry and the company. And we had a conversation about that a few weeks ago. And he's like, yeah, I need to have that conversation. And I care about this guy and I don't want it to be a confrontation. And I'm like, there's lots of different ways that you can have a conversation that is maybe difficult without having it be angry or defensive, right? We think that we have to get defensive, but we don't necessarily. We can come at the conversation like a question, right? Like an inquiry. Here's what I'm sensing is going on. Here's what I heard you say. Did I misunderstand that?

I'm really trying to understand, I'm trying to understand where you're at, but I also want to make sure if we have something that needs to be cleaned up, I don't want to wait to have that conversation. And it's just a way to be able to come at the conversation where we're not accusing somebody, right? We're just being an inquiry. And when we can be an inquiry from a place of, I'm willing to be wrong about this, or taking responsibility for...

Here's my experience of it. I'm not saying this is necessarily true. I just got to show you share with you where I'm at about this. And I just want to have a conversation. So it's a way to be able to, you know, in that, in that situation where it was an employee that he trusted and cared about, you know, he said, I just, I had to sit down and just say, I care about you. You're important to me, but here's what I'm, you know, here's what I'm hearing. And this concerns me.

That maybe this isn't really where you want to be. And if it is, it's all good, but I really want to talk about it. I really want to figure out what's going on with you, that I'm hearing this from you, because I think it's going to be a problem if that's really true. so it's just, it's that thing of...

If we can take responsibility for our own experience and come at it like a question as opposed to an accusation, it takes that whole element of a confrontation, that whole element of being angry, that whole element of having an explosive or an angry conversation with somebody, but rather one where, like I said, we're in inquiry.

But what I notice and what I notice is sometimes our avoidance of having those conversations, we build it up when we build it up until the point where we're really angry and frustrated and disappointed. And then it becomes a confrontation, but we don't have to have it be that way. And again, if you know that you have to have those conversations, trust your gut, right? If your guts telling you, you know what, I need to deal with this, don't ignore it.

It doesn't get better when we ignore it. It doesn't magically go away. And what you're going to find is your relationships with your team and with everybody in our lives, right? Not just your employees, but with everybody, our relationships become deeper and then there's more trust and there's more, they just work better when we're willing to say what's for us.

And again, from a place of responsibility, not blaming or shaming somebody else about how they're being, because our experience is our experience. We get to take responsibility for that. Okay. So, I, I, I'm, I, this is my, this is my question for you before we finish here, which is, is there some situation, is there somebody in your life that you need to go have?

Maybe a uncomfortable conversation with and is now the time to go have it. Is there something in your gut that tells you something's not right with an employee, with a job, with a project, with a client, and you've been avoiding having the conversation and you know you need to go have it. Then I encourage you to just think about that for a minute and then I encourage you to go have the conversation. You'll be glad that you did.

I'd love to hear what your thinking is and what you heard. Alright, so thanks for being part of this community. I appreciate you. I appreciate what you're doing out there in the world and making a difference in people's lives and and I appreciate that you are somebody who's a learner you know if you're listening to this that is an indication that you're somebody who wants to grow and who wants to be better at what you do. so I just want to say congratulations. Nice job. And I'm very grateful that you're here and that you're listening and that you're part of this community. I look forward to seeing you next time on the Profit Builder Unscripted.


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Vicki Suiter

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