Servant Leadership, It's Not Just For Good Times

With some areas of the country experiencing another round of modified life via business, school and personal restrictions budgets and financial capacity are tightening up. The more things tighten up or restrict, the farther out a financial rebound might be. Tensions are up at home and at work. Executives, project and field management and even young engineers and foremen are concerned about financial outlooks and project backlogs. It is somewhat natural that in tougher times people start to look out for number one (themselves) at the expense of their long term personal success and performance of subordinates and coworkers. Objectively, this is obviously shortsighted and should be avoided. Even knowing this, inappropriate action is often the norm. In tight times, when serving others and helping the team is most critical, we often tighten our efforts and focus to be centered only on us. For people lower down the chain this is self destructive but has less impact on the project and overall company. As we move toward the executive level, this self-centered focus at the expense of serving, helping and leading others can be detrimental for careers, as well as, damaging to company performance and reputation.

It's been discussed in previous posts on The Trailer but in my opinion, one of the best solutions to maximize profitability in bad times, and good times, is Servant Leadership. In times like these, is increasing stress on already stressed people a good idea? Probably not. Does it make sense to work with, grow, mentor and develop people? Probably so. In tough times, the margin for error is even less so leading via Servant Leadership might make even more sense than in boom times. Tough times reveal the true leaders and performers leaders in each construction company. It's relatively easy to look good and have strong character in easier boom times. It's not as easy when tough decisions must be made and when extra effort is required just to stay competitive, let alone highly profitable.

In tough times, does someone step up and provide additional mentoring and training to subordinates or more junior team members? Do less experienced construction pros put in a little extra time and ask a few more of the right questions to maximize their performance in helping build safe, quality and profitable work? Do construction pros up and down the chain of command step up, work together and serve each other to build a better world? If not, maybe they aren't they aren't cut out to lead in executive roles or be team members on high performing project teams. Servant Leaders don't just serve and lead when it's easy. They likely serve and sacrifice more when times are tough and when it hurts the most.