Get the Monkey Off Your Back!

by Jonathan McGaha | 31 August 2016 12:00 am

Making all the important decisions yourself and doing tasks you can delegate hold your company back from growing and making profits you are capable of achieving. When you do things you can delegate it also causes you to get overloaded. And when your plate gets too full, you stop your company from growing, doing better projects, finding profitable customers and maximizing your bottom line.

Stop Being in Charge of Everything!

Want more time off? Want to build a better business? Want better customers? Want a strong management team? Want accountable people? Want to make more money? It’ll never happen with you 100 percent in charge of everything and chief worker in your company. When you are doing take-offs and estimates, ordering supplies, going to the hardware store, making sure your crews are working, checking field details, operating equipment or actually doing some of the construction work yourself, your business is stuck at the level of what you can do, control or micromanage.

Employees don’t like to be micromanaged, tightly supervised, over-checked, and not be given the authority to make decisions. When they can’t make decisions and have no say in how a project or task is to be completed, they don’t take responsibility for what they aren’t in charge of. When you tell people what to do without their input or ideas, they decide if and when they’ll do it. Plus people who aren’t allowed to provide input don’t feel part of a team. Therefore they do as little work as possible for an over-bearing boss who does all the talking and no listening. This downward cycle continues, which frustrates the control-freak boss who doesn’t understand why he or she can’t find any accountable or responsible help.

Are You the Coach or Player?

Look at construction companies who continue to prosper and grow every year. The owner or president acts as the head coach and spends his time planning, negotiating, selling, presenting, coaching, training, hiring, reviewing results, tracking results and leading the management team-not doing or controlling work. When you coach a winning team, your job is to lead, strategize, set goals, develop a standardized playbook, track players’ performance, motivate, inspire, encourage, train, call the right plays, put in the best players, make people perform, hold meetings, innovate and win the game. Winning coaches call the plays but never get on the field and play the game.

Leadership is about getting people to want to follow and do their best. Winning coaches are great motivators who build positive attitudes and teamwork focused on achieving a common goal. To make this happen, leaders must provide clear instructions, targets, goals, follow-up, input, review, feedback and systems to monitor expected results on a regular basis. Before a team is left alone to play a game, time is invested in training and reinforcement of fundamentals required so the team can perform efficiently and accurately.

When construction business owners act as leaders, they delegate responsibility to project managers, superintendents and foremen who act as team captains empowered and responsible to achieve results, know exactly what’s expected, when it’s required to be completed and the standard system to get the work done.

Let Go of Monkeys!

People are lined up outside your door waiting for you to make decisions for them because you make all their decisions for them. Therefore they continue to ask for help. Decisions are often called ‘monkeys’ people want to get off their back. Monkeys like to jump from employees upward toward the boss who has bigger decision-making power. Monkeys can be taken from subordinates or rejected. But the tendency is for bosses to like and accept lots of monkeys, which elevates their control and power. Monkeys show up at the boss’s door when the employee says, “Boss, we have a problem.” The boss says he’ll help and therefore accepts the monkey as his issue to solve. The employee leaves happy he didn’t have to make a decision that might have upset the boss.

Start letting go of tasks you shouldn’t do and decisions you shouldn’t make with having the right people you can delegate to. You likely have capable people who’ve been held back by your controlling style. Now give them a chance to excel. When people bring you problems to solve, turn things around and ask them what strategies they suggest. Listen first and then offer suggestions and advice.

Next, ask the employee to identify the next move. Ask them how they’ll handle the decision, what steps they’ll take, how they’ll get things done and the task completed. Determine any risk factors or financial decisions to make along the way. Decide on limits of authority or when they might need to get approval for decisions, if any. Then tell them their solution sounds good and reinforce that they’re responsible to take the next step and accomplish the task by the agreed upon date. Before you adjourn your meeting, set check-in and follow-up appointments to keep the monkey moving the expected results you have agreed on.

Stop Being the Monkey Keeper!

When you solve other people’s problems, they will continue to bring you more problems to solve. Your new job is to transfer ownership of issues to the right person who should handle the challenge. The problem and solution is you. Stop demanding more monkeys be placed on your back. Delegation starts with trust. Start with letting go of small tasks and decisions and you will soon see that it is easier than you thought it would be. Your company can’t grow unless you’re willing to delegate and assign accountability and responsibility to others.

Go through your in-basket and to-do list of what you handle on a regular basis. Make it your goal to delegate at least 50 percent of everything you do and decisions you make to an accountable person. As you hand off each responsibility, make sure you take time to teach them what it takes to get it done right, explain the standardized process or system, discuss the financial levels of authority for decisions, and set follow-up and check-in times to review the progress and results for each assignment.

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George Hedley is a professional construction BIZCOACH and popular industry speaker who helps contractors increase profits, grow and get their companies to work. To learn more, visit www.hardhatpresentations.com[1].

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