Episode•October 13, 2025•43 min

EP240: The Foreman Test: How to Identify and Develop Effective Leaders

Have you ever promoted someone because they were great at their job only to realize later that leadership requires a completely different skill set? It’s a common challenge in the construction industry, where technical excellence doesn’t always translate into effective leadership. In this episode, Brad talks about: Importance of hiring and developing foremen in the construction industry. Promoting the best worker to foreman without considering leadership potential. Understanding the difference between task-oriented and time-oriented individuals. Exploring three types of leaders: Structured, Adaptive, and Craftsman. Introduction of a simplified Myers-Briggs-inspired test to identify leadership styles. Strategies for developing effective leadership skills in foremen. Link to Resources: Take the leadership style test: www.hammerandgrind.com/foreman Grab Brad's tell-all book: The Contractor Profit Blueprint https://thecontractorprofitblueprint.com Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Transcript

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You don't fix chaos in your business by working harder. You fix it by building leaders. Hey, welcome back to the show. I think this one is going to be straight fire and make sure you stick around to the very end to find out how to get some resources to help you to go along with this episode. So in this episode, we're talking about foreman. We're talking about hiring and developing foreman for your business. Okay. Now here is something that most guys get wrong. myself included, I did this too. Most guys get wrong, especially if you're new, if you're hiring your first foreman, you learn this the hard way. And that is that most guys get promoted to foreman because they are the best worker. Okay. They're good at what they do. And so you see them as, you know, someone like, Hey man, if you're good, you're really good at framing. You're really good at tile. You're really good at painting. You're really good at whatever it is, drywall, whatever it is you're doing, you're really good at it. So now I want to make you a leader, put you in a management position. So they hire them because they're the best worker, not because they're a leader. And what makes a good worker doesn't actually make you a good. Foreman. And this is where so many people make critical mistakes when they hire. Now, like I said, stick around at the end because there's actually going to be some downloadables that you can get. And I'm going to share with you some information about some future potential training that you might be able to get access to. So let's talk about this. Why leadership fails in construction. Okay. You promote based on skill, not leadership potential. You put a task oriented guy in a time oriented role. And then suddenly you're babysitting jobs instead of running the business. Raise your hand right now if that's you. Now, most of you have never thought about this. Everyone falls into one of two categories. You're either a task-oriented person or you're a time-oriented person. So what is the difference? Let me break this down for you. I made some notes here. You've seen me looking off screen. It's because I'm reading my notes. I want to make sure I get this right. There's a lot of information here. So I got to read off my script here. What is a task-oriented person? oriented people, they focus on finishing the job perfectly, even if it takes longer, right? The task, they want to complete the task no matter how long it takes. This is my son. If he starts doing something and you have to tell him to quit, you know, because you're leaving or whatever, he like loses. He's like, no, I want to finish doing this. Let me just finish doing this. He's very much a task oriented person, has no value on time whatsoever. The other thing is they value quality, precision and doing it their way. They're really headstrong on doing it their way. They hate being rushed, right? So here's an example. The guy who stays until 8 p. m. finishing or fixing trim, no one will ever see. He's a perfectionist, but he's not watching the clock. Raise your hand if that applies to you. A lot of people, a lot of craftsmen are task-oriented people. We want to complete the task no matter how long it takes. And we see that as doing quality work. That's how we label it as doing quality work. Let's look at time-oriented people. They focus on hitting deadlines and staying efficient. They value planning, order, and checklists. They measure success by schedule and completion, not by perfection. An example is the guy who starts cleaning up at 345 because he wants to roll out on time. Raise your hand if that's you. Now, can you bounce back and forth between either one? Yes, you can. But you have a dominant resting disposition of that. So you're either going to be task oriented or you're going to be time oriented. Typically, your people, the workers doing the work need to be task oriented and your leaders managing those people need to be time oriented. You need a mix of both. If you had a whole team of just time-oriented people, your quality would probably suffer. If you have a whole team of just task-oriented people, your profits are probably going to suffer, right? There's a trade-off between those two types of people. So a good foreman has to lean time-oriented. If they can't manage the clock, they can't manage profit. Remember, I just told you, if you're more task-oriented, you're going to suffer on profit. So your leaders, your foremen, have to lean more time oriented. Here's a very, very, very basic, archaic, simple way to know if your people, you know, a person who's going to be for a former position, whether you're hiring within or you're hiring, you know, doing a job posting, you're interviewing someone, do they wear a watch? Now, some of you like Brown, I've worn a watch in 20 years. I have my phone, I whip out my phone and that's it. I get it. But I'm telling you right now that most people that are high time oriented people, still wear a watch. I wear a watch all the time. I'm a time oriented person. I still like quality, but I am very much a time oriented person. I do not like to be late. You know, if you're on time, you're late. That's just, you know, a lot of that stuff is probably instilled in me from the military. You know, a lot of things have to happen on time, right? Obviously task is important too. So I've been able to balance between the two. You can turn it on and off, but some people, they don't know how to turn it on and off. They've never experienced. you know, why one is better than the other. The military is one of the best places to learn because you have mission critical things, you have time critical things, and you have to know when, where to do what. And so whenever you're dealing with, you know, major like life threatening, major political, you know, world changing things, it's super critical. And so you're forced in that environment to really have to learn how to manage both. Most people never experience that. If you can find a former veteran, a military vet who can be in a, you're going to hire a former, like they're going to be able to do it. I mean, they're pretty much going to be able to do it. You may have to, if they're fresh out of the military, like they got out yesterday. there's going to be a transition period. But if they were like, you know, in the military five years ago, they've already went through that transition period. Now they're probably going to be a very, very solid candidate for that position because they know how to judge, how to manage both of those things. But there's a test you can take. There's like a personality test. It's called the Myers-Briggs test. It's a very popular test. It's been around for a long time. And you've probably heard of it. It's like you get the results are like four letters. Like you end up with like an ESTJ or an IN. FP. It's just giving you these different personality, you know, subsections. But the last letter is what we're looking at, and that's either going to be a J or a P, okay? So if you do take the Myers-Briggs test, if you've taken it in the past, you have access to this information. I would highly recommend any foreman position or any management position that you're hiring for, project manager, foreman, or, you know, general manager kind of thing. You may need to, I would have them take the Myers-Briggs test. But again, stick around to the end for a different version of that. So what's J versus P? This is the part that we're focusing in on specifically for foreman, okay? J versus P.J means judging. They're judging. So Js like structure. They like plans and they like deadlines. They are time oriented. P's are perceiving. They like flexibility and freedom. They are task oriented, okay? Most strong foreman. are high J's. They run off list, plans, and order. Remember I was telling you earlier, you want someone who is time oriented. Most great craftsmen are high P's. They want creative, flexible, and focused work. You see the difference here? I mean, if you're really thinking about this, you can already see the problem if you're hiring a P or hiring a craftsman. Neither are wrong for this position, but if you promote a P without any kind of training, you will be chasing fires all day long and you will set them up for failure. You will see it as they are doing a terrible job. In reality, you set them up for failure. It's not even their fault. It's your fault. And you're going to be chasing fires all day long. Raise your hand right now if you're screaming like this. Yes, this exactly identifies what I'm dealing with right now with one of my foremen because that's. I'm telling you, this resonates. I know it does. I've been through this. So let's keep going here. So what I've created is a miniature version of the Myers-Briggs for specifically foremen, right, to help you identify if they are time or task oriented. So this is, it's a very simple test. It's only 15 questions long. And the last three are a bonus kind of stress behavior, how they handle stress. So it's 15 questions. They can answer it in less than probably 10 minutes. and there's a scoring to it. So I'm going to go through these questions, and then, again, you're going to have access to this. At the end, I'm going to tell you how you can get a copy of this, and you're going to want to go through it. You're going to want to go through it yourself, but then you're going to want to have your foreman's or potential foreman's going through it. Okay, so number one, section one is on energy. Again, this is like a kind of took this out of the Myers-Briggs. The Myers-Briggs is a very long test, and a lot of questions. This is just specifically for foreman. So section one energy, E or I? Question one, on a job site, I get energy from A, talking with the crew and clients, B, focusing quietly on getting work done. Now, as I go through these questions, you're going to start seeing the pattern of yourself. I mean, yourself, but you need to be able to identify this in your potential foreman or your foreman. And just remember, A or B, you're going to write these answers down. And then, again, I'm going to show you how to get access to it. But if you're following me along and you're doing this, I'm going to tell you how to score at the end. So it's either A or B. On a job site, I get energy from A, talking with crew or clients, B, focusing quietly on getting work done. Number two, in meetings, I tend to A, speak up and lead the discussion, or B, listen and speak when needed. Number three, when solving problems, I prefer to A, bounce ideas off others, or B, think it through myself first. That's the section one on energy. This is section two on information. This is S or N. Number four, I focus more on A, the exact details right in front of me, or B, the big picture or end result. Number five, when reading plans or specs, A, I want clear step-by-step info. B, I'm fine figuring it out as I go. Number six, I'm better at A, catching small mistakes, or B, coming up with new approaches. So section three, this is on decisions. So this is the T or F of the Myers-Briggs. Number seven, I make decisions based on A, logic, facts, and what makes sense. B, how people will feel about it. Number eight, when there's conflict on a job site, A, I stay calm and focus on solutions. B, I focus on keeping everyone happy. Number nine, I respect a leader who A, is firm and fair. B, cares deeply about the crew's feelings. So section four, this is question 10. Section four is on organization. This is going to be a J or a P, right? This is part of the main thing that we're testing for. Question 10, my truck tools and notes are A, always organized. B, organized enough for me to find stuff. Question 11, my day goes best when A, I have a plan and stick to it. B, I go with the flow and adjust things as happened. Question number 12. If a job hits delays, it's, or I, sorry, A, rework the plan and push to get back on track, or B, adapt and figure it out as we go. So those are the main 12 questions. And then there's a bonus section on stress behavior, kind of how you handle stress. So question 13, this is section five, stress behavior. Question 13. When the schedule blows up, I tend to A, take control and push everyone harder. B, start juggling tasks and putting out fires. Or C, put my head down and just work harder myself. Now realize if like if you're solo, if you work by yourself, like you pretty much have to do all of these things. But this is if you're if you have a foreman or if you're trying to hire a foreman or if you have crew, you can start to identify some of these, but you can do it yourself right now. Number 14, when a crew member isn't performing, A, I confront them directly. B, I try to motivate them. C, I avoid confrontation and pick up their slack. That should be a good one for some of you. That should be very telling for some of you, that question right there. And the last question, number 15. When multiple problems hit at once, A, I get louder and more demanding, B, jump around and helping everyone, like just gun and get in there and try to get it done, C, shut down and just work harder. Those are the 15 questions. The first 12 is for kind of the time versus task, and the last three are more of a stress behavior handling. So let's go to scoring and what this means. If you score between nine and 12 A's, then you are a structured leader, okay? If you score between six to eight A's, like answering the question as A, then you are an adaptive leader. And if you're zero to five A's, then you are a craftsman type. So for me, I am an adaptive leader. This is, again, going back to the Marine Corps, being able to shift back and forth between time and task. Right. So that's makes sense to me why I'm more of an adaptive type leader. Some of you are going to be a really structured leader and some of you are going to be craftsman type. Remember, a lot of the coaching that I do is how to get from craftsman, the business owner. And so there has for some of you, there has to be a rewiring of your brain and what what that actually means. Some of you struggle getting off the tools because you're so, so craftsman. You're so ingrained as craftsman that you really just either need to go work for someone else or you need to find a trade that you can do and truly be a craftsman and not as a laborer, but like really build something beautiful. So that's the questions, right? The stress behavior. I mean, that's the that's the form and type questions one of 12. The stress behavior questions 13 to 15. By the way, you don't include the stress behavior questions in the first section. That's just the questions one through 12. So the last three questions is the stress behavior. If you're a letter A, then you, you know, if you picked A mostly, like this is based off of three questions. So if you're mostly A, then your stress type is over control. You get rigid and you try to control everything. My wife is a type A. When things go south, she wants to tighten up the roofs and try to control everything even tighter. B, scatter. If you have mostly Bs, you're a scatterer. Your stress type is a scatterer. You jump around and lose focus. You're just running around with your hair on fire trying to get stuff done. Or C, you withdraw, you shut down, and you hide in the work. I'm probably closer to a C.I usually just kind of withdraw and just shut down and focus on the work. That's where I tend to lead when we're talking about in high stress situations, right? Doesn't mean you can't do the work. It just means how you kind of react to the stress. This is important to know how your foreman is going to react and how they're going to take it out on your team. If they're an A and they over control and they're like, hey, man, we got to get ready. We got to get this done. There's no more excuses. I don't want to hear anything from anybody. We got to get out here and get some work done. Just everybody bust your ass. Let's go. If they're that type of leader, they may piss off some of the crew, which is going to have an inverse effect on what you want, right? So you'd really need to understand leadership styles of your foreman and who you're promoting to that position. So let's kind of go through each type, the structured leader, the adaptive leader, the craftsman leader, and kind of break this down a little bit further. So the structured leader, okay, the profile is organized, reliable, direct, gets things done. The structure leaders, the guys that can just like, we'll make it happen. I don't know how or what, but we're going to make it happen. Those are kind of your, you know, your, a lot of times we see them as high performers, but also a lot of times those type of people are, they're that way because of childhood trauma, but I'm not going to get into that on this episode. Structure leaders are organized, reliable, direct, get things done. Their strengths are planning, accountability, consistency. Right. They're they're a good leader for that aspect of it. Their weaknesses can be impatient or short when others lag. And by the way, these are none of these are hardcore. Like you can have characteristics of each one of these or your team can have characteristics. It's just what are you the most dominant ad? So like I can be very impatient when other people lag. But I'm not you know, I'm more of an adaptive leader. But there's qualities that I can that I kind of stick out a little bit higher. So like if you're coaching someone who is a structured leader, you've hired a foreman, you've identified he's a structured leader. What are what are ways to coaching or what what should you focus on with coaching them? You need to teach delegation and emotional intelligence. So you don't need to teach them how to do the job. You need to teach them how to delegate tasks. Because a lot of these guys like want to just take over and do it themselves. But you have to tell them how to delegate, right? Teach them how to delegate. And you have to teach them emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is being able to identify, hey, I'm being hard on this guy. And I can tell that he's shutting down. I need to change my tactic on how I talk to him before I lose him. That's emotional intelligence. That's being able to actually have awareness around. emotions of things going on, right? That's what that is. I can tell that I'm making you upset. I can tell that you're stressed out. I can tell this really bothers you. I can tell whenever so-and-so said that it really made you mad. That's emotional intelligence. It's being able to detect emotions, okay? So you gotta coach them on how to do that. Those are things you gotta coach them on because they don't care. Your structural leaders are gonna be like, hey, we gotta get this done. We have to get done by 5 p. m. Doesn't matter. I don't care. Make it happen. I don't care what you do. I don't want to hear excuses. Make it happen. That's your structured leader type, right? Their disposition. And that maybe it can't happen by five. It's just not physically possible to be done by five. But you're going to try and will it to be done. These are the people that are going to have conflict because they're going to your guys are going to be so stressed out because they're trying to get done by five and there's no way it's possible to get done by five. But your leader is just like, no, we got to make it happen. You have to be able to coach them on like, dude, you have to be able to recognize that some things are just out of reach. Right. And you have to regroup. So the stress type for structural leaders are usually over controlled because we have to coach them on communication before clamping down. So this is where, you know. They need to go in and like communicate what's going on before they just come in and just be like, hey, let's get this done right now. They need to come in and communicate. Hey, guys, this is what's going on. This is the situation. I know it's not ideal. I know it's not perfect and nobody wants to do this, but we need to try and get this done. And I'm going to I'm going to step in and help you guys. But just know that we got to stay focused and we got to try and work hard and get this done. All right. Now let's go get it. Like that's kind of the communicate before dropping the hammer. And then best rows for people that are structured leaders are foremen, project managers, operations leads. You want people that are time oriented, i. e. wear a watch to be in a leadership role. You don't need task oriented people. So number two, adaptive leaders. Their profile is they're balanced, they're flexible and they're people smart. Their strengths are communication, problem solving, adaptability. Their weaknesses can lose consistency or follow through. So especially on longer term projects, longer term things, you can lose some consistency or follow through there because you kind of get bored with it. Coaching focus is to build systems and routines to support their flexibility. Again, I'm more adaptive leader. That's my natural disposition. Stress type, usually scatter, teach, focus, and prioritization. Okay. Best rows are lead carpenter, assistant foreman, small job PM. So they're not going to be suited really for like major, major, major, you know, project multimillion dollar projects. You typically don't want an adaptive leader. You need to have a structured leader. You know, the more moving parts you have, the more structured leader you need. Let's put it that way. Hey, just a quick

21:02

timeout from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day, or doing free estimates for people who are never going to hire you in the first place, I invite you to my private contractor community, The Profit Club, where contractors just like you are adding two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again. So if you're ready to increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools, then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about the profit club and see how it can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket, give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show.

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If you're doing something very simple, like say you just do painting, that's all you do is painting and you have a foreman. You don't have to be a super structured leader to be a painting foreman, right? You can be an adaptive leader, potentially even a craftsman type. That's going to be a little more challenging, but you don't have to have this super crazy, you know, structure. You don't need to have SOPs and all that. I mean, yes, you do. But I'm saying like they don't need to have, you know. deadlines and timelines and SOPs and all this, you know, super checklist. Like it's, it's a very simple job you're doing. If you're building an airport, like whoever that project manager is, they, they better be freaking locked on structure. Like they better be organized because you're going to have, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people working underneath them and subcontractors, so many moving parts. You have to be organized to keep all that straight. You put a craftsman type in a project like that, and it's going to be an absolute nightmare. People will be losing jobs and quitting right and left because it's going to be so unorganized. So that's adaptive leader. And then craftsman type, the third one, their profile is they're loyal, they're hands-on, they're detail-focused, they're prideful. That's why most contractors are craftsmen. They put all of their pride in what they do with their hands. They put all of their value in their hands, the craft they do. That's why they're quote, quote, craftsmen and why they quote, struggle so much to become a business owner because they put all of their focus on that. Their strengths are quality work, reliability, dedication. Makes sense. Their weaknesses. They avoid paperwork. Who is raising their hands shouting, that's me. I can't tell you how many guys I work with and talk to that hate doing paperwork. That's because you're still a craftsman. It makes sense. It's not bad. It's just that's where you're at. They hate paperwork and scheduling and confrontation. A lot of my perfectionists out there, raise your hand if you're a perfectionist. I have lots of clients that are perfectionists and we work on this. They hate confrontation, right? They hate the confrontation aspect of it. They want to avoid confrontation through perfection. Again, this is usually a childhood trauma response. If I am perfect, my alcoholic father is not going to come home and beat the crap out of me because I'm perfect, right? And I don't want to say anything to him because I don't want him to get mad. That's where a lot of that comes from. Now, I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist. You know, I'm not saying that I'm qualified to even give you advice on that. I'm just telling you from experience, not, I mean, my dad was an alcoholic, was not an alcoholic. I'm just saying experience of working with guys and them telling me their history. I see this as a indicator of where that comes from. That's why they avoid confrontation and they avoid paperwork, which obviously leads to disorganization. Those are usually the guys whose dashboard is littered with crap. They're not organized. They're not structured. They just, oh, here's a piece of paper for this job I did, the Smith job. I'm going to throw it on my dashboard. I know it's there. That way I don't lose it. It's just there's paper cups and coffee cups and trash and everything else up there with it. I know it's up there somewhere, but I'm not, you know, I don't know exactly where it's at. I'm teasing a little bit, guys. You shouldn't be having dashboards with crap everywhere. So coaching focus on craftsmen. Communication, planning, and leadership confidence. Trying to convert a craftsman into a leader is very difficult. It takes a lot of work and effort. And so there's a lot of communication that has to go on. Because craftsmen are really good at just figuring things out in their head. They don't communicate how to do stuff. Those are the ones that are just like, it's easier for me to do it myself. It'll take me 10 minutes to explain it to you. I'll just do it myself. That's a communication problem. That's why you got to teach them communication. Stress types, they usually withdraw. You got to teach them to speak up and step towards problems. Craftsmen are going to be like, I'm not dealing with this. I'm going to go over here and work on this part of the job. You just do that. Don't bother me. How many of you have experienced that yourself or do it yourself? Raise your hand. That's because of why, who you are, you're a craftsman. And then best rows for craftsmen, obviously a skilled craftsman, potentially a crew lead under supervision. So you can have a craftsman as like an assistant, potentially a lead guy who can take over. If you or the foreman is leaving to go do stuff, you can have, quote, an assistant or a lead guy, but they're not going to run the project. They're not going to be able to run the project. So you as the owner, if you have a lead guy who can do the work, don't expect them to be like teaching the other guys how to do stuff and holding them accountable. They'll make sure their work gets done. They'll tell the other guys what needs to be done, but they're not going to be really holding them accountable very much. And, you know, they can run the job site while you're away. You can count on them to do the work, but don't count on them to run the job because they're not really best suited for that. So that's the three types of. of leadership, structured leader, adaptive leader, and then the craftsman. All right. Now here's three different scenarios I'm going to go through to help you kind of set the tone. And you can ask your guys this scenario one, a schedule slip. You're two days behind due to late materials. Materials were late. You're two days behind. Do you A, replan hour by hour to recover? B, talk with the client and the crew and find a middle ground? Or C, stay late and just grind it out? If you answer A, You're structured. If you answered B, you're adaptive. If you answered C, you're a craftsman. Pretty self-explanatory. I would probably do B. I'd probably talk with the client and the crew and figure out a way to make it happen, right? I'm not going to go out there and be like, no, you're going to do this for this hour. No, that's just not my style. I'm not going to do that. Scenario two, crew conflict. Again, these are questions you can ask your people to get an idea of what they are. But we're answering it here as owners because it's helpful. Scenario two, crew conflict. Crew members arguing over a framing method, you know, a way of doing something. A, you step in and make the call. B, you hear both sides and choose the best method. C, let them hash it out while you keep working. Which one do you pick? A, B, or C? Again, I would have picked B.I would have heard both sides and then I would have picked one that I thought was the best. That's just my style, right? Scenario three, change, order, chaos. I like this one. The client adds extras mid-project. I know you guys are already, I mean, this is going to be good. Do you A, stop work until written approval? Do you B, start roughing in and document it, right? Or do you C, do the work now, figure it out later? I know you craftsmen out there are seers all day long. This is why you get in financial trouble at the end of projects because you have $10,000 worth of change orders and the client's like, I didn't approve that. If I would have known it was going to be 10 grand, I wouldn't have approved it. Those are you. If that's ever happened to you, it's because you are a craftsman. If you're listening, I'm pointing at the camera. You guys listening don't get the benefit of watching. That's you. That's why you have problems. It's because you're avoiding the confrontation today of getting an approval and you're just going to deal with it later. If you're doing that, stop. Like right now, stop doing it. Now, this is different because I am going to be an A here. I'm going to stop work until there's an approval. You know, the B, obviously, it's a grading scale here. If we're talking about like a $50 change order, I'm not going to be super stressed out and worried about getting it documented. If we're talking about a $5,000 change order, hell yeah, we're going to stop work and get this documented. There's no way I'm going to push that off to the end and hope the client pays for it. Right. So there's always kind of a sliding scale of, you know, what decision you make, but mostly it's going to be a, for me, and we're stopping work and we get a written approval. Now with technology today, I can do that in like five minutes. I can pull up my, you know. project management software. I can do the change order immediately. I can send it to the client, even if they're not there, they can digitally sign it. And within five minutes, the change order is approved. Now, typically you should collect three months. You should be collecting the money on the change order. And I may not be able to get that immediately from the client. They may have to transfer funds or, you know, depending on if they don't have the money, if it's cash, they got to come home, whatever. I may not get the payment immediately, but I can get the approval so that legally it's approved if we ever have to go to court. That's easier today with digital. When I was working for a developer back in the day, that didn't exist. And so we actually had triplicates. We had forms that were triplicate forms, you know, like the yellow, pink, and white copies. And so we would hand right out the change order. One copy would go to the subcontractor. The other copy was ours. And the third copy went to the customer. So, you know, the customer would sign off on it and then all three of us would get a copy and then we could admin that to the, you know, project and the final invoice. Today, super easy to do. Just do it digitally within a few minutes. So that's the three types of those are three different scenarios to kind of test which one you or your foreman are. So here's a little summary sheet just to kind of help you. If you're a structured leader, your strengths are organized, divisive, dependable. Watch outs for impatient and rigid. Structured leaders are typically impatient and they're also rigid. Stress behavior, they're over control. And then coaching focuses that trust delegation and patience. If you're an adaptive leader, strengths, balanced, flexible, team oriented. Watch outs for inconsistent or scattered. Now, this happens to me sometimes where one day I say one thing, the next day I'm like feeling something different. One day I'm telling you, you know, it's not that important if the drywall is perfect. And the next day it's like, no, the drywall is going to be perfect. So sometimes adaptive leaders can really stress out your team because they're wishy-washy. Right. They're not they don't really have a hard line. That's why some people like structured leaders. When you have a hard line, they know where the line is. They may not like it, but they know where the line is with adaptive leaders. That line can somewhat change. Right. It's also the owners that come in one day is like, all right, we're changing everything. We're not going to do painting anymore. You know, we're going to start focusing on carpentry. And the guy's like, oh, OK, well, I mean,90 percent of our work's painting. What do you mean? We're just changing it. We're just going to change it. And then a week later, you're like, I changed my mind again. We're going back to painting. You know, like those are the, you stress people out when you're changing and making changes to your business every other day. Adaptive leaders can typically do that. They're scattered. Their stress behavior is a scatter. They kind of go all over the place. And their coaching focus for them is going to be systems, consistency, focus. Help them with systems. Help them be consistent. Focus on the big things that are important. And then the craftsman type, they're loyal, skilled, detailed, focused. Watch out for, they avoid planning or confrontation, right? So when you call your foreman, hey, John, I just want to get an idea for scheduling. Like how long you think you guys are going to be done there today or are you going to have to come back in the morning? I don't know, man. I just, I don't know how long it's going to take. It's just whenever it gets done. How many of you have experienced that? Raise your hand. That's because you have a craftsman in charge of stuff. They don't want to give you a deadline. They don't want to put themselves in a corner. They don't want to be responsible for telling you it's going to be done today and it's not, right? That's why. That's the reason why. Some of you are having aha moments right now listening to this, and that's the reason why I wanted to do this podcast for so long. Craftsman type, they withdraw, and then the coaching focus is assertiveness, time management. You got to teach them how to be assertive and how to time manage. Okay, so a couple things here. By the way, this test, if you give it to your guys, make sure it's not to judge them, right? We're not actually judging. I mean, full disclosure, we kind of are, but we need to know that we're not judging them in a bad way. This is about awareness. Like we're trying to bring awareness. If you already have a foreman right now. Have them take this test. It's going to give you awareness of what type of leader they are and what areas you need to help them with. That's why it's a benefit. If you're going to promote somebody from within, have them take this test and it's going to give you an idea whether or not they're going to be a good leader or not. I was talking to one of my clients this morning. He owns a pool company and he had his foreman that he's had for many years. He gets in trouble. He ends up in jail for a while here and there or whatever. He knows how to do everything. He's a skilled craftsman. but he gets in trouble. And so finally, my client's like, you can't be a foreman anymore. You can just be a laborer, right? And so you can show me that you have control. The reality of it is, is that guy probably never has the ability to be a foreman because he's really just a craftsman. He's got another guy who's trying to step up and he needs to have his guy take this test so he can understand what type of form and material he is. Because the worst thing you can do is take a craftsman who's really good at what they do. and try to make them a leader when they don't want to be a leader because you need a leader. Because what will happen is they will fail in a management position, right? So you'll end up losing money and causing problems. Not only are they failing as a management position, but you've taken them out as a labor position that was profitable because they did good work and you could sell on that. So you're losing a laborer, a good laborer. You're hiring a bad manager. And the whole system falls apart. If you take that manager after a short period of time and say, you know what, you're not qualified for this. If they recognize that they don't like it and they want to go back to the laborer position, that's usually okay. The problem is you've more than likely gave them a raise to be a manager. So they're going to take a pay cut to go back. Usually what happens is you either have to fire them or they quit. So you've lost your best laborer, your best craftsman. Because you try to promote a bad one, try to promote one to a leadership position that should not have been promoted. Sometimes your worst laborer is actually bad at the laborer because they naturally are a leader and they would do a much better position as a leader. So you can hire a bad laborer if he wants to be a leader. He might actually be 10 times better leader, you know,10 times better as a leader than he was as a laborer because he's more of a leader. Leaders want to lead. People that are structured leaders, they want to lead. They don't want to be a craftsman. They don't want to be doing the work. Those are the type of people that you want. I understand they need to have some understanding of things, yes, but they don't have to be a master plumber or a master electrician in order to be a foreman or a project manager. They need to be time-oriented, structured, and organized. This is where a lot of guys, this is important because too many of you are promoting the wrong people. And that's why you have so many problems. The second part of that is you're promoting the right people or you're promoting a potentially right person. And then you're not training them. You're not giving them resources to help them be better. Your job as an owner is to train your management people as leaders. That's what you're supposed to do. You don't say, oh, you're good at drywall. I'm going to make you the foreman. Now go out there and get it all done. You're setting them up for failure. You should be having weekly meetings with them on leadership, like teaching them, actually teaching them stuff, or send them to some kind of leadership training, or have them read books, or do a course, whatever. You should be investing in them because it's only going to make them better, which is going to make your business better. So I hope this was helpful. I hope this was eye-opening for you. Okay, that this is, I know some of you are having big epiphanies right now and you're like, yeah, man, this is great. I never thought about it this way or never even realized it. Now it makes complete sense while Timmy sucked as a leader because we're promoting the wrong people. This happens everywhere. Like corporate America doesn't matter. This happens all the time. So closing thoughts here. If you're the owner listening. Use this to coach, like I was just saying, you need to coach them, right? If you're a foreman listening to this, use it to understand your blind spots. You can take a test if you're a foreman and you can see what your leadership style is and where your blind spots are, and then go approach your boss and ask for any kind of extra, you know, leadership training or whatever to help you with those blind spots. And last thing is you don't fix chaos in your business by working harder. You fix it by building leaders. I'll say that again. You don't fix chaos by working harder. You fix it by building leaders. That could be a quote, all right? You need to build leaders in your business. You need to build people that take responsibility, who take ownership of things in your business. You don't build a business by yelling and barking and delegating everything to everyone. That's not how you do it. Yes, you got to delegate stuff, but I mean, you're not micromanaging, like telling them what to do every day is what I'm saying. So here's what I got. If you made it to the end here, I'm going to put this test up. It's going to be like a survey form that you can go and take the test and get the results. I'm going to put this up under website, and the link will be, and I'll have the show notes too, but the link's going to be, you go to www. hammerandgrind. com forward slash Foreman, F-O-R-E-M-A-N. So hammerandgrind. com forward slash Foreman. Go there. You can take the test and I'll have some resources. I do want to collect, just get your name and email just to make sure that like the stuff's working, right? Because if you take the test and for whatever reason, you don't get the results, you're going to be emailing me. I'm not going to know who the hell you are. Like just put your name and your email, you know, maybe your business name. I don't know. Or maybe a trade. We'll see. I haven't created this yet. I'm going to make it before this episode drops. But I'll have the test on there that you can take. I may have some additional resources, like some of these summary sheets so that you can use it to coach your guys or understand it better. And the third thing I'm going to put on there is I'm considering offering some type of training program for foremen, you know, slash project managers. It would be more of a leadership training developmental program. If that's something that you're interested in, I'll have a little form in there to fill out additional form. It just basically says, yes, I would be interested. Now, if I do that, there's going to be a cost associated with it, but it's not going to be super expensive because I want this to be something that like you could just hire, you know, hire a foreman and then like throw them through the training, you know, so probably a couple hundred bucks or whatever, nothing crazy. But I'm just trying to gauge interest right now because if nobody wants it, then I'm not going to waste my time developing it. And then what I'll probably do is if we go to the point of. doing a kind of a beta test, I'll reach out to you guys and I'll pick about 10 of you who have foreman who need training. And then we'll put those 10 foreman through the training at a reduced or, you know, potentially free to help flush out the program. And then we'll go from there. And if you're on the waiting list, if I didn't get picked, then once, if we develop it and we go full blown with it, you know, we'll reach out to you and let you know that it's now available. So there'll be just like a little opt-in. You know, if you're interested in learning more or getting training, just put your name and email. That way I can reach out to you. So all that's going to be under the hammerandgrind. com foreman tag URL. You can go there and get all that information. So this time, last podcast, I was like, email me. I'll give you the core four method worksheet. This time, we're just going to put it on the website so you don't have to email me or message me. And I don't get a bunch of emails or texts or whatever. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this one. Do me a favor, leave a comment, let me know. If this was fire and this really helped, the least you can do is go leave a review on your platform, whatever you listen to. I just want to keep growing the podcast, making it more popular, get more ears to it, you know, get some more, maybe get some more corporate advertising people interested, get some higher value people on the show. We got to kind of build the value so we can bring in, you know, really cool people. So yeah, that's where we're at. You can do. me a solid by just leaving a review, an honest review, as long as it's five stars. No, I'm kidding. Leave it, leave an honest review. You know, what's your favorite thing about the podcast? It just helps, you know, encourages me. It gives me energy to want to keep making more. And yeah, I'm done with that. So guys, thanks for hanging out with me. Hope you enjoyed it. And remember till next time, profit is not a dirty word.

EP240: The Foreman Test: How to Identify and Develop Effective Leaders

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