Respect Yourself! Feat. John Coffman

Picture keying yourself up every single morning right to the edge of a headache, then backing off just half a notch, and holding yourself there for twelve to fourteen hours a day, every day, for months. That was daily life for one young superintendent working on a high-stress nuclear power plant project early in his career.

Then one July 4th weekend, a headache came that never went away. A splitting, brutal headache led to a fever, then a small hospital stay, then a transfer to a larger hospital sixty miles away, still with no diagnosis. It took a doctor pausing at the foot of the bed and asking one simple question, what you do for a living, to finally get somewhere.

The Real Pain: Superintendents Who Never Learn to Manage Stress

This is not a rare story in construction leadership, it is closer to the norm. Superintendents tend to be, by their own admission, stress junkies. Change is a constant part of the job, travel and relocation come with the territory, and if nothing changed on a project by the end of the day, most superintendents would say they did not do their job.

Stress itself is not the enemy here. The real pain is that almost nobody in this role was ever actually taught how to manage it, understand it, or recognize when it has crossed from useful pressure into something dangerous.

The Failure Pattern: Confusing Endurance With Strength

The failure pattern looks like dedication from the outside. Working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, treating exhaustion as proof of commitment, and viewing rest as something other people need but you personally do not.

The body, though, does not care how dedicated the intention is. Pushed far enough for long enough, it will eventually force the issue, and by then the cost is usually much higher than it would have been to address earlier.

A few warning signs tend to show up before a body forces the issue, and they are worth checking honestly:

• Working seven days a week for extended stretches and treating a day off as something to feel guilty about.
• Noticing physical warning signs, persistent headaches, exhaustion, irritability, and pushing through them instead of addressing them.
• Believing that stress management is something crews need but leaders are somehow exempt from needing themselves.

This Isn’t Weakness, It’s a Blind Spot

None of this makes a superintendent weak or careless. Most were simply never given any training in managing their own stress, even while receiving extensive training in managing schedules, safety, and quality for everyone else on the project. The culture around this role often rewards the grind without ever teaching the skill of sustaining it. That is a training gap, not a personal failing, and it can be closed the same way any other skill gets built.

“You Are a Stress Junkie, and It’s Killing You”

Here is what that blind spot can actually cost. After days of unexplained fever and an unrelenting headache, the internist finally sat down and asked about work hours, family dinners, sleep, exercise, and meals. Then came the diagnosis that mattered more than any lab result: this is a stress-related illness, and if you keep doing what you are doing, you will be dead within six months.

The stress had driven the immune system down so far that a systemic viral infection was able to attack the lining of the brain, a case of meningitis so severe that lying flat with pillows braced on either side of the head was the only way to keep the pressure bearable. Recovery took real, sustained effort: rebuilding an exercise routine, cutting back on hours, and finally learning, with a spouse’s help, how to actually manage stress instead of just enduring it. It took years to fully figure out, but it was figured out, and that superintendent kept building for decades afterward.

Why It Matters: The Cost No One Talks About

This matters because the cost of never learning this skill is rarely a single dramatic hospital stay. More often it shows up as a quiet, industry-wide pattern: very few superintendents remain active in the field into their sixties, and a disproportionate number of marriages in this profession do not survive the strain.

Marriages, as one superintendent put it, do not usually end because people fall out of love, they end because people fall out of like, and it becomes remarkably easy to fall out of like with someone who never learned to manage their own stress. At the far end of this same pattern sits construction’s sobering suicide rate, a reality that makes this conversation far more than a wellness suggestion. It is a matter of keeping good people alive long enough to keep building.

Teach the Framework: Respect for People Starts With Yourself

This is where respect for people, a value construction leaders already claim to hold, has to expand to include one more person: yourself. Respect for the crew, the trade partners, the neighbors near the project, the designers, and the end users all matters. But none of it fully makes sense while ignoring the person actually responsible for holding all of it together.

Leader standard work is built in a deliberate order for exactly this reason: faith and values first, family second, yourself third, and only then the chaos and demands of the job itself. Safety and quality on a project cannot be delegated to someone else, and the same principle applies to your own health. Nobody else can go to your doctor’s appointments, get your sleep, or manage your stress for you, any more than a project’s safety program can run itself without a superintendent actually owning it.

A few practical markers separate a superintendent managing stress well from one heading toward a breaking point:

• A personal organization system and a real to-do list exist, not just for the project, but for personal health, sleep, and family time.
• Days off actually happen on a regular basis, the same way a crew is never expected to be productive seven days a week without a break.
• Physical warning signs, headaches, exhaustion, irritability, get addressed early rather than pushed through and ignored.

Turning This into Daily Practice

None of this requires an elaborate wellness program. It starts with the same discipline used to run a good project: a plan. A morning routine, a personal to-do list, and leader standard work that actually blocks in time for health and family, not just for the job, make the difference between managing stress and simply absorbing it until something breaks.

Cutting back from seven days a week to a sustainable schedule, adding regular exercise, and treating a doctor’s appointment with the same non-negotiable priority as a safety inspection are not luxuries. They are the maintenance schedule for the one piece of equipment on the project that can never be replaced.

Connecting It Back to Building People, Not Just Projects

None of this happens without leaders willing to admit that managing their own health is part of the job, not a distraction from it. Teaching that skill alongside scheduling, safety, and leadership is exactly the kind of training that keeps good superintendents in this industry for decades instead of losing them far too early.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow, including the personal habits that keep the leader running the project healthy enough to keep leading it.

The Challenge

So here is the challenge worth carrying forward: take an honest look at your own stress level the same way you would assess a struggling zone on a project, without excuses, without pride, and without waiting for a crisis to force the issue. As John Coffman put it, “Respect yourself, and pay attention to yourself. Listen to your body and take care of yourself. You’re responsible for that first.” On we go.

FAQ

Why are superintendents especially prone to stress-related health problems?

The role runs on constant change, travel, and pressure, and many superintendents take pride in pushing through long hours without a break. Without any real training in managing that stress, the body eventually forces the issue, sometimes through a serious health crisis.

What actually caused the meningitis in this story?

Sustained, unmanaged stress drove the immune system down so far that it could not fight off a systemic viral infection, which then attacked the lining of the brain. The doctor was direct about the cause, identifying it as a stress-related illness before any lab test confirmed the specific infection.

How does respect for people connect to a superintendent’s own health?

Respect for people is often applied to crews, trade partners, and customers, but it has to include the leader as well. Just as safety and quality cannot be delegated on a project, personal health cannot be delegated either, it has to be actively managed by the person living it.

What practical steps help a superintendent manage stress better?

A personal organization system, a real to-do list that includes health and family, a sustainable work schedule instead of seven days a week, and regular exercise all make a measurable difference. Leader standard work that blocks in time for faith, family, and self before work priorities helps ensure these things actually happen.

Why does this topic matter beyond individual health?

Unmanaged stress in this industry contributes to shortened careers, strained marriages, and, in its most serious form, contributes to construction’s difficult suicide statistics. Building a genuine culture of self-care is not a soft add-on, it is part of keeping good leaders in the industry and alive to keep building.