Are you a BOSS or a Leader?
Image generated with AI by author.
For the unfamiliar reader, BOSS is an acronym for Big Ole Sack of Sh**. Bosses are easily defined; they tell people what to do. That’s pretty much it. Leaders are relatively easy to define as well. They are people who sacrifice for their people.
Examine yourself. Are you sacrificing in any area for the people you direct? If not, you are a boss. Sacrifice can be broken into three categories: time, talent, and treasure.
Time- You sacrifice your time so your people don’t have to.
Talent- You step in and use your talent to complete a task or push the team forward. If you think your only talent is telling people what to do, then to be frank, you might not ever be a leader.
Treasure- You forgo the raise because your people or business need it more. This one applies almost solely to owner leaders.
Like most leaders in the construction industry, I started as an apprentice. I didn’t have a college degree. I didn’t have technical knowledge. I had my hand-me-down tools, my hands, and my leaders.
The good leaders I worked for brought me along with them and fast. They got in the trenches with me, taught me, and always treated me respectfully. I watched them take the complex and technically complicated tasks on themselves. I drank from their knowledge until, eventually, I could do it myself. A great leader can put your personal development into overdrive.
The bosses I worked for had the opposite effect on me. They told me what to do and where to go. They promised support, but they never came or pointed me to YouTube. My disdain grew quickly, and I moved on as fast as possible.
Nobody knows everything, but if you are leading people, you need to know what and how they are doing it. The fastest way to lose people is to make unrealistic or unreasonable requests due to your lack of knowledge. The best way to gain knowledge is in the trenches. You learn three critical things in the trenches: your people, process, and timeline. Combine those three things and understand the cost, and you have a profitable, successful endeavor.
People respect leaders. People disdain bosses. Hard decisions come with leadership. You are going to have to let people go. It’s part of the gig. If you want to let people go with a clear conscience, you better be in the trenches with them. If you don’t like to know your guys because it makes it easier to let them go, congratulations, you aren’t just a boss. You are a coward as well.
Leadership is about YOUR people. It’s not about your next bonus, profit margin, or any other financial metric. If you take care of your people and lead well, those things will become a symptom of your leadership. It goes the same in the opposite direction. If your highest value is financial metrics, you may meet those metrics, but along the way, you will burn through people and your reputation. New people are getting harder to come by nowadays, but a new reputation? Almost impossible to acquire.
So, if you are reading this and realize you are a boss or you may be a boss, it’s time for a dramatic change. Take care of your people, and everything else will take care of itself, and even if it doesn’t, you can look in the mirror and see a leader instead of a Big Ole Sack of Sh**.
