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  Your Blueprint for Leading the Next Generation of  

                                       Tradespeople

 

Most leaders today have a common challenge.  I hear it all the time when I coach and provide leadership training for companies in trades.  Construction.  Mechanics.  Auto Body repair.  Mining/oil/gas.  There is a common stream running through our leadership. 

 

How do we lead the next generation of tradespeople?  We see the differences in how they’ve been raised in their families, in their schools, and on their teams, and we’re left scratching our heads at what we need to do to effectively lead a generation that we often don’t understand. 

 

When we’re not sure about details for a job, usually we check the blueprints, check the plans, or check the instructions.  That’s what this is, your blueprint for leading the next generation of tradespeople.  Why?  Because there is a large generation of young people who have tremendous potential and they need experienced leaders to help them reach their potential.  We are those experienced leaders, and the people coming up in our trades are in desperate need of our input and investment into their careers.  (Great leaders use great tools so in my books “MORE THAN A HAMMER: Leadership Tools for the Trades” I give you over 20 tools that will help you lead effectively, regardless of which generation you lead!)  Here’s how we can do it: the 5 Key Elements of Leading the Next Generation:

 

 

#1:  RESPECT – a way to understand what we mean by respect is simply basic human dignity. We show people that they are more than just a cog in our machine, a number, or are valuable only because of what they can do to help us reach our goals. 

           

            Secondly, a good number of people entering the workforce haven’t been treated like adults.  Parents who gripe to teachers about too much homework and then complain that their children’s grades are too low.  Parents who arrange job interviews for their teenage and     adult children, and go to the interviews with them.  Parents who have done all they can to keep their children from failing.  The result is grown (physically) people who don’t know how to effectively deal with failure or disappointment.  (Especially after a lifetime of hearing how special they are).

 

            Third, a part of treating someone with respect is by letting them fail.  Letting them deal with the consequences of their choices, effort and lack of effort.  In other words, expecting adults to act like adults.  BUT it will take some effort and time invested by us to help them learn how to deal with real life.  This is respect. It can make all the difference in some of the members of the incoming generation. 

 

****Note of Clarity here: there are a lot of very mature, fantastic people I work with in every generation, we don’t want to take the generational pigeonholing too far, but it will give us some understanding though****

 

 

#2: COMMUNICATION – Here’s a quick tool from our training modules – “ALUS”

            Ask – ask good questions – never assume you know what is motivating someone, what is behind their decisions, or what they really

mean to say.  Ask before Assume.

            Listen – really listen to what people are saying – not just their words; their tone, body language and the words used all give us insight into what they are really saying.  Take the  time and make the effort to listen and observe the people you supervise.

            Understand – try to understand where they are coming from.  Why did they understand   things a certain way?  Why do they take a certain approach?  Who are they?  It’s not  enough to have a box full of tools and techniques if we don’t have some understanding of           the people we lead.

            Speak – You’ll notice that in this model the leader speaks last.  After we ask, listen and understand, then we speak.  This is where we speak with intelligence because we have the right information.  There is far less of a chance of us going off half-cocked if we speak last and carefully.  It’s always easier to be careful on the front end than to try to backtrack once we’ve said things that we wish we hadn’t.

 

#3: Expectations – Set clear expectations – be as specific as you can be about what you expect to  have done, by whom, when, and how.  Then make sure that they understand it the same way you intend it.  Then, after you have set clear expectations, measure their    performance against the expectations.  This can be used for measuring expectations  regarding performance, attitude, quality, safety, along with almost any other expectation  you can lay out. 

 

            When people know what the expectations are, how they’re going to be evaluated, and then have their performance measured against the clear expectations, the possibility of them reaching their potential is increased significantly!  Don’t lose out on this   opportunity. 

 

#4: Accountability – We hear about accountability all the time – it’s the new buzzword.  So what’s the problem?  We usually don’t know what accountability even means.  Accountability is holding someone to what they have already agreed to.  When we lay out clear expectations, and people have agree to them, then we can effectively hold people accountable.

 

            Accountability is only effective in helping people if we’re consistent in applying it. It  needs to be a regular part of how we lead, not a surprise.   Accountability is not only       about correction, it also includes our use of affirmation – letting people know what they are doing right.  In My books “MORE THAN A HAMMER: Leadership Tools for the Trades” Part 1 & 2,  I dive into these tools and many more in much greater detail. 

 

#5: Lead by Example – our actions have to match not only our words, but our organization’s values – the explicit ones and the implicit ones – the ones we put down on paper and the ones that “everybody “ knows about.  Here’s what I mean – if I tell you that honesty  matters, and that I expect you to be honest – then I had better make sure that I am honest all the time – I need to lead by example.

 

            Before we can ask others to model certain behaviors, we need to model it first and always.  Too many younger people have not seen honesty, integrity and other values modeled consistently by many of the adults in their lives.  We need to be leaders who exhibit this to the people we lead, so they understand that before we ask them to do something and hold them accountable, we’ve already done it ourselves.

 

            In MORE THAN A HAMMER I give you the tools to create corporate values, how to model them and how to pass them on to the people you lead. Please click on the link to my website where you have the choice to invest in your copies of my books. 

 

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