What Lies Beneath Matters!

                                   It’s Not Always About What you See

 I live in Saskatoon, SK. It’s often referred to as the “city of bridges”. A city of just over 200,000 people with soon to be eight bridges. If you want to see different bridges, from different eras in our history, this is a great place to come. One of the things that I always notice on bridges is the piers that support the main structure that most people focus on. The piers hold the bridge surface above the water. But what holds the piers? Underneath the piers, under the bottom of the river, are the piles. Piles are never seen again after they are sunk into the river bottom, but they are absolutely essential if the piers are to be solid, if the bridge is to remain safe and solid.   Even though most of the people who go across these bridges will never even recognize that the piles exist, their lives depend on them. The piles are invisible, but essential!

Something similar exists in each person in a position of leadership, in any company. In the trades, we are not always strong in developing the things we don’t see. What I mean by this is that if it’s not a technical skill that impacts our ability to do the actual work of our business – such as the skill in using a new tool in the shop – we don’t spend time worrying about it. This is our problem. Some of the best and smartest people I know are working in the trades, they invest in their ability to perform their trade, but forget about the “piles” in their career.

The piles in a leader’s career are the things that most of us never see, at least not directly. Learning how to control our time, organizing our time and our schedules, continually improving our abilities, clarifying what matters most to us and our company so we can use this as the basis for the people we supervise, making sure we are developing habits that give us energy rather than stealing it from us, are all things that make up the piles in the life of a leader. If we are weak in controlling our time, we are always playing “catch-up” and will have a tough time leading other people to become efficient at what we need them to do. If I’m always out of breath, I can’t ask others to go harder. If I don’t make decisions consistent with a set of values, then I can’t hold anybody I supervise to a value that might seem important at a particular time. If I don’t know why what we do actually matters, what our vision is, then we’re just floating with the current of the economy, or taking the easy way. 

It’s the “piles” in the practical life of a leader that gives them the ability to effectively bring out the best in the people they lead. What condition are the “piles” the make up the foundation of your leadership in today? Where do you need to grow? What areas do you need to shore up? If you invest in yourself, all that can happen is that you get better at what you’re doing! You will become a better leader. 

Todd is a leadership coach for the trades and author of “More Than a Hammer: Leadership Tools for the Trades”.