Being a crew leader is not just about pointing to an assignment and saying “go.” Every crew, every assignment, and every group of workers must be organized as ideally as possible, because the team you put together decides how the work goes.
This is Part 8 of my walk-through of my book Elevating Construction Foremen. If you are just joining, start with Part 1. This part is about organizing workers, the three signs of a miserable job, and the ideal team player in construction.
Short answer: Great crew leaders organize the right team before they send anyone to a task. They know who their runners, joggers, walkers, and riders are and reward fairly, not equally. They prevent the three signs of a miserable job with connection, relevance, and measurement. And they hire, coach, and keep people who are humble, hungry, and smart, the three virtues of an ideal team player.
How Should a Crew Leader Organize Workers?
Workers and teams of workers have their own languages, slang, beliefs, cultures, and personalities. Put teams together with the right dynamics in play. Consider:
- Training
- Complementary skills
- Leadership roles
- Personalities
- Language
- Crew culture
- Specialization
A great crew leader will not just send people to do a task. He or she will organize and build the team first, even if the team is one or two people.
On the research laboratory project in Tucson, Arizona, I needed a task done. The logistics crew leader wanted to wait until a normal crew was available, but I pushed two available people together. They fought the whole way, wasted an incredible amount of time, and one threw the other’s lunchbox in the dumpster out of spite. We had to remove him from the project. I should have followed the crew leader’s advice and organized the right team first.
How Do You Build the Right Team?
- Get to know your team: the individuals, their needs and desires, and how they think.
- Organize your teams around the people who create the biggest impact. Reward by performance and passion, not by function or experience.
- Get people into the right positions, with complementary skills so one is strong where another is weak.
- Focus on your best people. Reward fairly, not equally. Your best people are exponentially better than your worst, and if they run faster, the whole crew elevates its game.
Who Is on Your Bus?
Ron Clark separates people into five categories in his book Move Your Bus:
| Type | Who they are | How to lead them |
|---|---|---|
| Drivers | This is you. You steer the bus and see the roadblocks out the front window. | Keep your eyes ahead and remove roadblocks. |
| Runners | Top performers who show up every day, work hard, and jump in. The top 10 to 20% of your group. | Frontload your bus with them and give them more responsibility. |
| Joggers | Diligent, consistent workers who prefer little change and do what is required, but do it well. 30 to 50% of your crew. | Pop in once or twice a shift. |
| Walkers | Steady but slow. They need to be told exactly what to do and rarely search out the next task. Can be 30 to 50% of your crew. | Give clear direction and the next task. |
| Riders | They only move when someone is watching. They are there for themselves. | Graciously let them find another opportunity, because they will poison the tribe. |
Every crew leader needs a critical mass of runners. Align each person with his or her working genius, which I covered in Part 6, and some might move up. Some will need to be moved off the bus. This section is derived from Ron Clark’s Move Your Bus and a book summary of it. See also Optimize the Workers.
What Are the Three Signs of a Miserable Job?
Each person on a crew must know he or she is relevant, be known personally by the crew leader, and know what winning looks like daily. This is all clearly explained in The Truth About Employee Engagement by Patrick Lencioni, and I covered it in The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. Marcus Buckingham put it simply: people don’t quit the company, they quit their boss.
When I worked for Okland Construction as a project director, I was trained to make sure my people were not suffering from immeasurement, irrelevance, and anonymity. I began scheduling lunch meetings and visits with the people I oversaw. I would communicate why they were relevant and how they could win every day, and I got to know them personally. I received consistent feedback that I was one of the most connected bosses they ever had, and the results showed up in productivity.
How Do You Fix a Miserable Job?
| Sign | What people need | What the crew leader does |
|---|---|---|
| Anonymity | Connection. People want to be known and cared about personally. | Get to know each person, or they will feel disengaged and eventually leave. |
| Irrelevance | Relevance. People want to know what they do matters. | Say, “Hey, (name), you are relevant to this crew because…” and tell them the truth. |
| Immeasurement | Measurement. People want to win, or they get demoralized. | Tell them, “If you do this, you won,” and make winning relevant and achievable. |
People are not robots. If it is good to change the oil in our vehicles, how much more should we maintain and elevate our people by giving them connection, relevance, and measurement in their day?
What Makes an Ideal Team Player?
Patrick Lencioni wrote it best: “The best team players are humble, hungry, and smart.” You can evaluate this in yourself and in your crew members. If you have a problem with a member of your team, it will almost always be rooted in missing one of these.
In my own organization, I have had to terminate people who were not cultural fits. Whether I used the People Analyzer from Traction, Jim Collins’s BE 2.0, or the Netflix keeper test, every non-cultural fit ended up not being humble enough to do the work, hungry enough to deliver value, or smart with people.
Don’t make my mistake and wait. Hire, discipline, and fire according to this pattern. It is not easy to train someone to be humble or hungry. Those are the prerequisites. The coaching comes after.
What Do Humble, Hungry, and Smart Mean on a Crew?
| Virtue | What it means |
|---|---|
| Humble | The person is willing to dig in and do the right thing for the team. Nothing is beneath them, and they step in and support the team when needed. |
| Hungry | They want this. It is not just about a paycheck. They chose this role with the desire to do well and progress, and if they want to advance, they are hungry for it. |
| Smart | They are astute with people. Anyone can learn a task, but only the best can do it with a team while interacting positively with team members, clients, and everyone else. |
You can spot those who need to stay, those who can stay, and those who need to be invited to work elsewhere. I go deeper in How to Be an Ideal Team Player.
So here is the challenge. List every person on your crew and mark them as a runner, jogger, walker, or rider, and then mark whether each is humble, hungry, and smart. Then, this coming week, tell each person why they are relevant and what winning looks like for them.
Bottom line: Organize the right team first, give every person connection, relevance, and a way to win, and build your crew on people who are humble, hungry, and smart.
If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow.
On we go.
Elevating Construction Foremen series:
Previous: Part 7: Onboarding, Communication, and Continuous Reminding
Next: Part 9: Difficult People, the Energy Bus, Gratitude, and the Go-Giver
FAQ
How should a crew leader organize workers for a task?
Build the team before you send it. Consider training, complementary skills, leadership roles, personalities, language, crew culture, and specialization, even if the team is only one or two people.
What are the three signs of a miserable job?
Anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurement, from Patrick Lencioni’s The Truth About Employee Engagement. A crew leader fixes them with connection, relevance, and measurement.
What makes an ideal team player on a crew?
Ideal team players are humble, hungry, and smart. Humble means nothing is beneath them, hungry means they want to do well and progress, and smart means they are astute with people.
People Also Read:
How To Be An Ideal Team Player – Winning Teams
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job – Winning Teams
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Winning Teams
Lean Onboarding Series – Optimize the Workers
If you want to learn more we have:
-Takt Virtual Training: (Takt Virtual Training)
-Check out our YouTube channel for more info: (Elevate Construction on YouTube)
-Listen to the Elevate Construction podcast: (Elevate Construction Podcast)
-Check out our training programs and certifications: (Training Programs and Certifications)
-The Takt Book: (The Takt Book on Amazon)
Discover Jason’s Expertise:
Meet Jason Schroeder, the driving force behind Elevate Construction. As the company’s Founder and COO, 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.