What Do You Think?

Trust helps beat the bid

Ben, HVAC/Sheet Metal Foreman for a full-service mechanical and plumbing contractor in Wilsonville, OR, told Session 9 of Turbo Leadership Systems' Leadership Development Lab (LDL):

"Earlier this week, I was doing the assigned reading in the LDL; I really enjoyed Chapter 10 of Making Moments Matter - eliminate distractions and unneeded wastes of minutes. The reading keyed in on trusting your team, 'that's why they are in their positions.'

"I had Andy and Patrick out on my job to cover up exposed duct work so we wouldn't have to cut down and redo the run. I went over my plan with them. Then I headed over to the second floor across the job site from where they were. When they called and asked me questions, since Andy has 20 years' experience and Pat's a journeyman, I kept everything in their court. I was careful not to let them put the 'monkey on my back'.

"After they did one of the fixes - a test run, they called and really wanted my visual approval. Thinking of managing my minutes and showing trust in their experience, I asked Andy, 'How do you think it looks?' his response was, 'I think it looks titties!', which in construction meant he thought it looked great. So as Making Moments Matter says and has been encouraged over the past 8 weeks of instruction, I trusted my team's thinking, I said, 'I trust your judgement, keep on going with it I worked for the next houruntil break time. On the way to grabbing them for a break, I looked up at their mornings work, it looked great. When they finished it all, it looked fantastic. I made sure they knew what a great job they had done and how much I appreciated their attention to detail.

"The lesson I learned from this experience is the importance of placing greater trust in my experienced people. Trusting them pays off as the job gets done to my total satisfaction, and I don't waste my time running back and forth across the job site looking over their shoulder and micro managing them.

"The action I call you to take is trust the experience of the crew youdelegate to. They have been there for many years and earned your trust. Trusting your key team members will free up your time to accomplish other important tasks.

"The benefit you will gain by showing you trust your experienced people is they will grow, and be more self-reliant. You will be able to focus on other high value tasks that only you can do."