How to Truly Support Trade Partners and Individuals
In this blog, I want to share a powerful concept that reshapes how we look at leadership, people, and lean implementation in construction.
The idea is simple but profound, if you love the flower, you must also love the soil, the water, and the sunlight.
You can’t pluck a flower from its environment and expect it to thrive. Loving the flower means caring about the entire ecosystem that keeps it healthy.
Love Extends to the Environment
This analogy applies beautifully to life and work. If we love our spouses or partners, we’ll also love the things that make them healthy like their independence, rest, free time, and support systems. If we love ourselves, we must also love the environment that sustains us: sleep, balance, health, and breaks.
And in construction, if we love our people our teams, our foremen, and our trade partners we must love the systems and environments that help them succeed.
That means embracing things like:
- Clean, organized jobsites
- Clear communication and visual planning
- Preconstruction meetings
- Safety systems
- Lean implementation
When you truly care about people, you’ll naturally care about the tools, processes, and environments that help them thrive.
Leadership
Service Over Significance
This principle connects directly to leadership. Too often, leaders are drawn to the significance of their position the corner office, authority, or recognition. But real leadership is about service: creating the conditions for others to succeed.
When leaders prioritize their own significance over service, they become bottlenecks. I’ve seen organizations halt lean implementation because a leader needed control, security, or attention more than they cared about serving their people.
Just like a superintendent holding all the plans in their head can slow a project, a self-serving leader can stop an entire company’s progress.
Elevating Our Mindset
If we love people, we won’t resent lean practices or meetings. We’ll embrace them, because we’ll see them as essential parts of helping others thrive.
- Love the people: love the environment that helps them.
- Love your trade partners: love the systems that keep them safe and successful.
- Love leadership: love serving, not significance.
If we want flowers to bloom, we honor the soil. If we want teams to thrive, we honor the environment that sustains them.
Key Takeaway
True leadership means loving not just the people, but the environments and systems that allow them to thrive. When we shift from significance to service, we create conditions where both individuals and trade partners can flourish.
If you want to learn more we have:
-Takt Virtual Training: (Click here)
-Check out our Youtube channel for more info: (Click here)
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Click here)
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Click here)
-The Takt Book: (Click here)
Discover Jason’s Expertise:
Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction IST. As the company’s owner and principal consultant, he’s dedicated to taking construction to new heights. With a wealth of industry experience, he’s crafted the Field Engineer Boot Camp and Superintendent Boot Camp – intensive training programs engineered to cultivate top-tier leaders capable of steering their teams towards success. Jason’s vision? To expand his training initiatives across the nation, empowering construction firms to soar to unprecedented levels of excellence.
On we go