The Profit Builder Unscripted

Why your team isn’t leading (and how to fix it)

• Vicki Suiter • Episode 59

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Ever feel like you’re saying the same things over and over to your team, but nothing changes?

A client was ready to fire a long-time employee for this very reason. It looked like poor performance. Once we slowed down, the real cause came into focus—and everything shifted.

In this episode, I share the breakthrough that turned frustration into opportunity, the key reasons people fail in their roles, and how small shifts in leadership can unlock the true potential of your team.

If you’ve ever wondered why your team isn’t following through—and what you can do to fix it, you’ll want to listen in.

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If you find yourself as a leader struggling with getting people to produce consistent results or to follow through in a way that you had expected or to do the things that you've been telling them to do, but they're just not getting done or you're not getting the traction with your team that you had hoped, you want to make sure to listen to this training because in it, I'm going to share with you
a couple of really key distinctions about what does it mean to develop leaders in your business.

Hi, I'm Vicki Suiter and welcome back to the Profit Builder Unscripted.

Yesterday in my meeting with my client Andy, we had this interesting conversation around a lead person on his team who has worked for him for 10 years and he was describing his level of frustration with this guy because he was not doing a great job at running this huge project. Now, Andy is a successful general contractor who does a pretty good amount of volume every year. wo took on a very large project in the last couple of years that has a very long duration of actually over two years. And the guy that he put on it is somebody who's worked for him for a really long time, who's been a good employee, who has been pretty steady in his performance. But when he got on this job, he clearly was over his head.

Andy has been describing to me the conversation that he's been having with this project manager about the things that he needs to do differently or better or faster or, you know, that like to pick up the balls that are dropping. And he's just like, he's super frustrated. And he said, I'm going to fire this guy after this project is done. And I was like, wow, he's worked for you for 10 years. Do you think something else might be going on? He's like, nope.

I'm just like, I'm done with it. He's not performing. I've had all these conversations with him and he's just not getting the job done. I had to hire somebody else who's having a like micromanage what's not getting done with him. And I said, have you considered investing in training with him? Like, have you looked at what it is that this guy is lacking in skills and competence that might actually be at the root of the problem?

And we got to talking about the fact that there are four key reasons why somebody fails in a job. One of them is lack of competence. Another one is lack of capacity. Like, I got way too much going on and I don't have the capacity to take on anymore or to do the job properly. Oftentimes, number one and number two are attached. In other words, when somebody lacks a certain competence,

⁓ they oftentimes will lack capacity to get the job done. When they lack the skill, they'll struggle to get the job done the way it needs to be or in a timely manner. The third reason is if somebody just doesn't care. There's a lack of desire. A lack of desire is absolutely uncoachable. clearly for Andy's project manager, that's not the case because Andy has had him there for 10 years and the guy you know, wants to do, has done a good job in the past. And the fourth reason is lack of clarity on the leader's part, lack of clear definition of what's the criteria for success in that job. Now, one of the things that I see, and you know, in this conversation that Andy and I were having, it's not unfamiliar. I mean, I hear this a lot of times with people is you think, well, I'm having this conversation over and over again with somebody.

Why are they not retaining what it is that I've told them that they need to do? Now, sometimes it has to do with that fourth reason, which is I haven't clearly defined the criteria for success. Oftentimes that's actually part of the equation, right? And we think because we had a conversation about it that that person's gonna remember it and they're just gonna do that job and they're gonna be successful. But with Andy's project manager, I suspect that that's part of the issue as we started to talk more about it. But the other part of the issue is I said to him, listen, you got a guy who's worked for you for 10 years, who's never done this job before at this magnitude. He was doing a project much larger than any other project he's done. And you have a guy who was a project manager. And maybe if you're listening to this, you can relate to this. You have somebody who's done a job for a lot of years.

And their management, quote unquote, skills are really micromanagement skills. They're used to, hey, I'm in the weeds of things. And if things start to go awry, just pull up my, you know, put on my belt, pull up my sleeves and I dig in, or I go micromanage the results to make sure that everything turns out. Right. And that works on small projects, but here's this guy who's on this enormous project and micromanagement isn't working.

And managing from 30,000 feet is not a skill he's ever been taught. I said to Andy, said, you know, we could have all the conversations in the world that we want with people and telling them how they should do something. But this project manager has these deep grooves that they've developed all these years about what they think is good management skills. And clearly it's not. And your perspective is you see it a different way. Like you see, hey, you need to pay attention to this and this and this. And I told them to, but this is a guy who has this whole different set of practices about what it means to manage a project. And it's been okay with you for 10 years. And now it's all of a sudden not. we talked about the fact that we can have conversations with people, but that's not training. 

That's not development that we need to be willing as leaders to understand where when somebody is failing on a job, is it that they lack clarity about what's the role and what's the deliverables of the role? Do they lack the competence to do the role? Do they lack the skills? Do they lack the capacity? In other words, they just have way too much to do. And in the case of this project manager, there was too much to do given that he lacked the skills to manage that project from 30,000 feet as opposed to micromanaging, which was his usual style of management. And then fourth, lack of desire. Well, that wasn't the case for this project manager. And I think that when we have people, when they are failing at a job or they're not getting a job done, it's our responsibility as leaders to stop and ask the question, which one of those four things is it? 

And that we be willing to invest in people's training and development. You know, I just had this happen recently on my own team and I got to notice my internal dialogue about, man, this is costing me a lot of money to have this person train and go get training and development at using these different tools that we're implementing. And she was trying to find a shortcut. And I was like, you know what? The shortcuts not giving you the right answer. And what you need to do is be willing to dig in, learn, and get the skills that you need to be able to be effective at doing this, whatever this task was. In our case, it had to do with using a particular piece of software. I think a lot of times, like we worry about losing productivity, right? And when I said this to Andy, I'm like, you need to be willing to really, I think, consider investing time and energy in training this guy.

And he pushed back on me quite a bit, I will say, because he was like, well, I keep having this conversation with him. I'm like, having conversations is not the same as training. Now, if you sat down and you went, let me just teach you, like saying to somebody, you need to get the schedule done once a week is not training. That's barking orders at somebody. But if you sat down and you went, all right, let me like, let's talk about how do you think about managing a project and how do you think about managing it from 30,000 feet?

First of all, second of all, what are you doing to teach that project manager about how to lead at 30,000 feet versus being in the minutiae? And this was the critical nuance of this conversation with him because it's not just about the project manager knowing how to do a schedule or do a two week look ahead or do a cost to complete or to schedule subs or be there for inspections or meet with clients. That project manager knows how to do all of those things. I'm like, you have those conversations with him about he needs to focus on those things and he's like, yeah, I am, I know. But what that project manager doesn't have skill at is he doesn't have skill at how to manage people without micromanaging them. He doesn't know how to manage people based on results. That's a different skill set.

And so it was a very interesting conversations as a light started to go on for him. And I said, where can you and how can you invest in that project manager in a way that you're really helping him develop his skills as a leader? Because those are not skills he has refined. He's a good project manager. He's a good tasker. He's good. He's a good doer, but he's not a good manager. He just doesn't have that muscle memory. And you know, even with my team is as I, you know, we've been going through this transition for the last 18 months. It's been a, it's we've, and I've had to keep reminding myself it's a long game to shift people from a role when we ask them to step into leadership roles, leadership and managing people effectively is not something that we wake up with every day. It's not a skill that we, we intrinsically possess as human beings. It really is not. And sometimes we are lucky enough to have been exposed to it in early age, maybe through sports, maybe through some other job or responsibility. 

But a lot of times we learn from other people and other people who didn't necessarily have really good management skills and who were not very effective in being leaders who managed by results as opposed to micromanaged or whatever the case may be. And I just, you know, really, I think that the chapter about this that really struck me this week that I am inviting you to look at is, do you have people on your team that you need to invest in and invest in training with? And I don't mean like just barking at them, what's the thing that they need to do better, faster, you know, more of, but are you actually teaching them to have the muscle memory, to be doing training, to teach them to have the thinking so that they have that clarity, so that they have the confidence to take more powerful actions in being effective leaders? And I will tell you, as I started to say, I've been in this process for 18 months with my team and a big change that we made 18 months ago, and having to continually remember it's a long game.

We've taken ground and then we reach a certain plateau and now it's like, okay, how do we take the next ground? And it's not a one and done thing. And we have to realize that when we're working with people who have these deep grooves as this project manager did of how he's always done it, that our best way to be able to grow great teams and grow our businesses and to be able to get out of our own micromanagement role is by teaching those management skills to the people who work for us and that next generation of leaders, that's what they really need from us. So I'd love your thoughts about it. love your, know, if you have something to add to this, I would love to hear what your thoughts are. Please drop a note below. If you found this content to be helpful, would you hit the plus, you know, the like button down below.

And make sure to subscribe. This channel and these videos are all about helping you grow a more successful contracting business and have a thriving business and a thriving life and ⁓ are filled with different topics along the lines of leadership as well as profitability in your contracting business. All right, thanks for being here. Thanks for being 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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