Speaker 2 (00:09.048)
Hello and welcome to the Management Under Construction podcast. I'm Brad Wyant.
And I'm Dee Davis.
And today we're going to be talking about how to help your people manage their stress. So I'm going to start off with a story about what managing stress isn't. And then we're going to let Dee talk about what managing stress is. Early on in my career, I was on a very stressful project where the project team was concerned we weren't going to hit our deadlines and we weren't going to be effective. And it was stressing me out. I was worried every day. I was anxious. It was affecting my work and my sleep.
And one of my great mentors, a boss of mine at the time, noticed that and said, hey, look, you got to bring it down a notch. I've never been on a project where the project didn't get built except for one. And that company went bankrupt and that was not our fault. The thing you got to realize here is that this is going to keep going. just prioritize and execute. And if something doesn't need to get done that day and you can go home and it's already been 12 hours.
Go home. You're not going to do yourself any favors by being tired and continuing to try to work. You're going to get to a point where diminishing returns are greater than the marginal benefit of continuing to work. As much as I thought that was managing stress, it was really just task management and knowing when to leave. It wasn't dealing with the emotions that were going on. It certainly was some consolation that the project will get built. And I was able to ratchet my emotions down a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:45.506)
That's not the same thing as managing the emotions that cause stress. D, why don't you give us an example of how you have managed stress in your
Managing stress is something that most of us don't get any kind of training on and I have been one of the lucky few who have received very small amount of training on managing stress, but I didn't get it at work. I got it when I was volunteering. So I was a volunteer rape crisis counselor for a number of years and being any kind of counselor, you're taking on other people's stuff.
by taking on other people's stuff, you have to manage your own stuff because you have to do that to be present for them and to be there for them. So I used to volunteer for this wonderful organization called the Center for Community Solutions. They provided us as part of our training. I had to go through 30 hours of training, I think, with them, specifically with their organization for all kinds of different things. And one of them was stress management. They taught us that
It's not just here's how to manage your stress, but it's you must. If you're going to last very long, you must manage your stress. You must find an outlet for yourself that is appropriate for you and stress relieving for you. And it's a little bit different for everybody. We're going to talk about some examples a little bit later on. So I learned to start managing my stress because I went through some training for it. And in that
environment, people check in with each other pretty frequently. Not just undergoing the stress management techniques, but check in, hey, how are you doing? And it taught me a lot of empathy and a lot of people management skills going through all that training. think I was a better project manager and a better leader after doing that training for that organization because
Speaker 1 (03:45.13)
It taught me to not just look inward and manage my own stuff, but to look outward and look at the people around me and just check in. Hey, seems like you've been a little on edge lately. What's going on? Is there anything I can do? Is there anything I can talk about? Sometimes being there for other people is a little bit easier than looking in the mirror. Looking in the mirror can be a little bit rough. I remember working on a project where this
inspector that I had known for ever. I worked with this guy on and off for over 20 years. He was always a happy-go-lucky guy. Hey, how you doing? What's going on? yeah. And you'd shoot the ball. And I was with him on this really large, really high stress job. I can't think of a job that I've been on that isn't high stress. And he just was like crabby. I would even go as far as saying
angry and just snappy and short. I started asking around and just, I don't know. Yeah. He's just been like that for a while. And I asked him several times, Hey, is everything okay? You seem a little off. I'm fine. I'm fine. Why does everybody keep asking me that? Come to find out the guy had some really tough drama going on in his personal life and
Like most of us, he didn't know how to manage that stress. And so he was managing in unproductive ways that were affecting his work. Yes, of course there was stress at work, but that was not the root cause. So we're going to talk about root cause, determination of stress. We're going to talk about how to give people some tools to help manage the stress and how to detect the stress as a leader.
In episode three, speed to market, and episode four, mental health, we talked a lot about stress in life and at work and how it's not exclusive to the construction industry. It's certainly more prevalent in the construction industry, but it's certainly not exclusive to that. In those episodes, we provided a few tips on managing the expectations of clients and the responsibility as leaders to watch out for our people because they are our responsibility.
Speaker 1 (06:08.748)
In today's episode, we're going to expand on the conversation of how to help your people and yourself with stress management. And we can avoid the pressures that lead to people leaving your company or having mental health issues or finding really unhealthy ways to deal with their stress. So we have to be concerned with the whole person. And this is one of the aspects that makes leadership really hard.
Being left brain engineer types, I think a lot of us really want to just focus on the thing and just get the work done, get the production done, get the job built, get to the next milestone.
What you're saying that construction people are goal oriented problem solvers who don't want to talk about their emotions. That's crazy. I've never heard that. That's too far off. Wait, no, that's exactly who our people are. That's exactly us. Okay, go ahead.
Okay, that's who we are. So worse than all, that's who we are and it's okay. It's good to understand where we're all coming from and why we tend to avoid this topic so much. It's a little touchy feely. What do we tell people? We tell people to rub some dirt on it, suck it up, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just keep going. It's fine. It's fine. No, it's not fine because eventually the stuff starts coming out in really unhealthy ways.
We talked in our mental health episode about how this comes out as alcohol abuse, drug abuse, anger issues, and people like my friend on the job site who was just lashing out at everyone around him because they were just so overwhelmed and didn't have the tools to deal with it. That's not an uncommon issue at all. Have you ever been on a job site with somebody who's just angry all the time?
Speaker 2 (07:55.022)
Oh yeah, yeah. And it's miserable. The people that are angry all the time are so hard to work with that you have to spend energy and effort working around them or preparing what's every single thing that could possibly ask about so that you're ready to have a conversation with them before they start shooting you down and having a reason to be mad at you, which is such a negative head space to be in anyway, but it's the worst.
And it puts a toll on the entire team when you have somebody who's just so stressed out that they cannot manage and they can't focus at work to manage their own stuff, let alone deal with everybody around them. So stress certainly comes from every direction, work, personal relationships, family situations. And this is why developing relationships with people
beyond just the work that's in front of you is so important because you need as a leader in particular to understand the whole person, to understand where they're coming from, what's going on, doesn't mean they have to tell you the details of their personal life. If they don't wanna share it, that's totally fine. But understanding that maybe it's nothing I can do.
for them here, maybe it's not work related stress or not work related stress so much, but that doesn't relieve your responsibility of taking care of the whole person and making sure that we're handling what we can at work.
I think a lot of people are going to hear that and say, it's my employee's responsibility to take care of their personal business outside of working hours. I pay them to be here for a certain number of hours to get things done within a certain timeframe. And yeah, but we're all human beings. Doctors offices are only open nine to five. If your kid is sick and that's driving you nuts because it's keeping them awake and they don't get their sleep because their kid's dealing with a sinus infection and they don't have somebody to take them to the doctor.
Speaker 2 (10:00.92)
giving that employee that hour off to go to the doctor or two hours, probably whatever it is, they're going to be a more rested, more attentive human being at work.
The math on that solves itself pretty quickly.
Everything impacts an employee's ability to do their job, whether you like it or not, whether you want that to be true or not. It just is. In episode nine, we talked about the kinds of trainings our employees might need or want. What if we provided training to help them learn how to manage their stress? Have you ever had any specific training to learn how to manage your stress, I think you're with the majority. I really do.
No.
Speaker 1 (10:44.684)
I think the majority of people have had zero training to learn how to manage stress. And I've seen people absolutely have meltdowns on jobs. fact, now that I think I say the word meltdown, it triggered a memory. I used to have a rule in my job site trailer. Everybody was allowed one meltdown per project.
Isn't that terrible?
Yikes. And I'm sure that many other managers have had and have that rule. I'm not saying it's a bad rule. It's just that it's like the fact that we have that rule. Where, what are we doing? How did we get here?
me get here. I used to tell my people and I would say this to them in words because I wanted them to know that an occasional meltdown was acceptable and you would be forgiven and we'd all just yeah okay and move on because these jobs are so incredibly stressful and life can be so incredibly stressful that not everybody's going to be able to behave 100 % of the time. So instead of teaching them stress management
That was my technique, which I don't know. I should have done a better job. I should have been a better leader. I maybe should have found a better way to deal with that. But I remember telling them, look, you're allowed one. If you start having multiple meltdowns per job, there's a different problem. I don't know, I guess I would have sent them to counseling or something, but teaching people to manage stress is a much better way of handling that. So finding healthy outlets for stress.
Speaker 1 (12:23.904)
on a regular basis is how we manage stress. By the way, that's the secret to stress management. Just in case anybody out there is, okay, this is all great, but how do we do it? This is what I have learned. The key to stress management is finding a healthy outlet and using it regularly. So what does that mean? It's gonna be different for everybody. I'm gonna give you some common ones.
any kind of exercise. And that does not mean that you have to go run a marathon. Okay. That's not what I'm talking about. Any kind of exercise, just taking a walk, a bike ride. And it could be something strenuous like kickboxing or running. I used to take Krav Maga classes. That was great.
the
because I got to punch things and kick things and go all out. And those are the best for stress management.
take these Pilates classes where they say, okay, take 30 seconds to get out of your head and into your body. And I think that's the key phrase that describes why that's so effective. you're up here, if you're in the cerebral state, you're doing nothing but typing all day, you're hunching over, you're doing this, if you get out of your head and into your body, you're going to leave that stress behind, you're going to find a way to recenter yourself in a really meaningful way.
Speaker 1 (13:52.76)
Yeah. And stress management is so different for everybody because I am a person that has a really hard time relaxing yesterday. Yesterday. I said, D it's a beautiful day. Go outside, sit in the sun. It was been raining. It's going to rain some more. I'm going to go enjoy the sunshine and I'm going to sit and I'm going to relax in the sun. I even took my little sourdough starter outside with me. name's Jane Doe.
If you're a sourdough person, you get that. And I took my starter outside with me and set her in the sun next to me. We were both sitting there and warming up in the sun. And I lasted about five minutes before I started going, I need to do this. I need to do that. I need to do this other thing. need to da da da da. And my brain wants to make a list.
and wants to start checking things off. I made myself stay out there for a while, maybe 20 minutes. That was about as far as I could go. I couldn't turn my brain off. I was so overwhelmed with all the things I could be doing that were more productive than what I was doing, which was sitting out in the sun enjoying a beautiful day, listening to an audio book. I just couldn't. I ended up leaving Janie out there by herself for a while. And I came back inside and started doing more productive things. That might work.
perfectly for one person, not so perfectly for another person. I have a really tough time with those kinds of things now. Had I gone for a walk would have probably been a better idea. That works for me. Had I gone for a hike in the woods, that is the best for me. Just the smell of the pine, the quiet of the woods, hearing the birds, hearing the breeze in the trees.
I go from up here to down here just like that, really quick.
Speaker 1 (15:50.624)
What kinds of things do you do, Brad, that allow you to enjoy, relax? Is it working on a car maybe for you?
It could be, often has been, I think. The things that really work for me at the end of a workday are to sit in the kitchen and cook. It's such a, it's the kind of thing that demands so much of your attention that you can't be making a list of things you could be doing at the same time as you're slicing, because you're going to cut a finger off. You just sit there and you're like, all right, I've got the recipe, follow the recipe, get food. I'm a food motivated person, like a yellow lab.
I will do anything for food. So that's a little bit too much of my personality to give away on a podcast anyone can listen to, but I am food motivated.
Hey ladies, he's single, just FYI. We got a good looking single young man here and he's food motivated. By the way, my husband is too. I always joke that he fell in love with me for my cooking skills and he just is happy as a yellow lab every time I feed him. So I get it.
The way to anyone's heart is through their stomach. That is a core tenet of my belief system.
Speaker 1 (17:01.486)
was my grandmother's advice.
It's so true. Someone once said that meditation is focusing the front of the mind on a task so that the back of the mind can wander. For me, cooking achieves that. For me, cleaning achieves that. I like to clean stuff up sometimes. If I'm feeling really cluttered, there's this book, Scattered or Decluttering the Sun. The whole point of the book, that I can't remember the name of the title, was that if you're the kind of person who can't move forward until
You can check a box, spend some time checking a box that's a simple, easy, verifiable box, like cleaning something mundane, and then move forward in the satisfaction of that achievement that you will end up being through your physical efforts. Most of us listening to this podcast are probably people who are spending a lot of time at a computer and thinking about other people's emotions.
and thinking about the politics of situations and try and communicate these very soft skill cerebral thoughts. Even some engineering things can be very cerebral, not so rote. There's a lot of creativity involved. A task that requires you to be more physical than cerebral is gonna help you disengage in my opinion. It's gonna help you have the de-stressing outcome you want.
Absolutely, especially when I'm really stressed or really worried about something that something physical. I remember I was going through a divorce, very stressful, very emotional time in my life. My dad's septic tank started backing up and we needed to dig it up to unbury it and get it pumped and repaired. His septic tank unfortunately did not have permanent access to it. Every time he had to have it pumped, we had to dig it up, which
Speaker 1 (18:59.118)
It's a whole nother story. But the timing was perfect. I was over there shovel digging, relieving a lot of stress and my brain was still going. was menial work, didn't require a lot of brain power, but I was able to think about my situation. I was able to physically exert myself in a productive way. And for me, I can check two boxes.
I'm getting exercise, I'm being productive, and I'm giving myself space to think. Actually, it's three boxes. I'm a list maker and a box checker. It's really difficult for me to do things that are not in some way productive. So it was perfect. The timing was perfect. We got that thing dug up in record time.
Rest in success.
Yeah, water is something that is psychologically proven to be very calming and meditative for human beings. Being around water, whether it's a river, a lake, an ocean, whether you're in the water or you're just around the water, when we build hospitals with water features on purpose, that's a very key element to resting, relaxing,
regenerating. And it's a very primal need that we have because we're going to die without water. It's very lizard brain part of being able to rest, relax, rejuvenate because that life giving water is nearby. The color green is also something that we are primally programmed to help us relax. That's why they have green rooms, right? In acting.
Speaker 1 (20:56.418)
Backstage they have a thing called a green room for the stage actors. Did they have those when you were doing stage?
in my high school and middle school musical theater productions know we had green rooms, but it was like a concrete block space underneath the stage. It didn't have any plants in it, which is because it was a public high school.
They called it a green room, but it green.
Yeah, it was not green. was. Yes.
That's the point.
Speaker 1 (21:26.85)
That's the point in a green room actually. And I've been on stage productions too that have a green room and I'm like, it's not green, it's just a room. That's not what a green room is supposed to be. A green room is supposed to be green. It's supposed to be painted green and it's to have greenery in it to help calm and soothe and relax because we are primally programmed to be relaxed when we're in nature. That's why even people who love to live in cities, where are they always escaping to?
the country.
yeah, that too.
The country, nature, open space, we're programmed for that to be relaxing. I have a friend who has a very high stressful job. She's in our industry and a related piece of our industry. And for her at sleep, that's her go-to. That's her rejuvenation is she loves to sleep. And that's what she will do to recuperate. I can't sleep.
I'm one of those five hour a night sleepers. I got to go, I got to get up, I got to get stuff done. Yeah. Shocking, right? So yes, people ask me all the time, when do you sleep? As little as possible. I love to sleep, but I just can't. I very rarely sleep eight hours. So being outdoors, being around trees, grass, nature, solitude for some people is their thing. For me, I love to hike either by myself.
Speaker 2 (22:34.798)
That's not either.
Speaker 1 (22:58.646)
or walk by myself or with a friend. One person that I can chat with and relax with that I enjoy being around. Working in my garden. For me, some companies have started this. They put a garden out in the back or on the side of their business. If people want to go garden and it's relaxing for them, they can take a break and go garden for a little bit. I would love that. That's amazing. Taking a hot bath.
That was something that I did a lot of when I was doing counseling with people. I would come back after a particularly difficult session and I would run myself a steaming hot bath and just sit at it for a little bit and maybe turn on some relaxing music or something like that. It's different for everybody. Detail work, painting those little ridiculous Christmas village pieces.
The ceramic ones, I'm not very good at it. So it requires all of my attention. Like you said, I can do that for hours and hours and I'm not making lists in my head when I'm doing that or thinking about what else I could be doing. What I ended up doing after sitting in the sun yesterday and unsuccessfully trying to relax in the sun, I cooked.
Yeah.
I came inside and made a big meal for us. So that is something that I enjoy doing to relax too. It may look different for your people and maybe you, I think a good exercise to do is to just have this conversation with people. What do they enjoy doing to relax? What kinds of things can take them out of it? I can relax on a massage table. I can forget all about my list making.
Speaker 1 (24:49.048)
for an hour.
What is it that they like to do? You learn a lot about a person just by having these discussions about what kinds of things are relaxing for them. Having regular stress management training available for your people. Stress management is a skill, just like any other skill. Having regular stress management training available. They've got to learn, they've got to practice doing these things. Maybe for some people who are interested in meditation and learning how to meditate, maybe you can bring somebody in.
that teaches the skill of meditation and gives them some resources to practice on their own, as well as the focused training that they're getting. It's not going to be everybody's bag. It's not going to be my bag, probably. I'll keep trying, but I'm not motivated by that one as much as the other more active methods.
But what if you brought somebody in to teach people how to meditate? What if you brought them in to even learn about what it is and explore what it is for them to figure out what works for them? I think most people are going to be like you, Brad. They're going to be like, you have one thing on your list, cooking. Can you think of anything else?
The working on the car one definitely does it for me too. That's a great place to escape to, exercising. If I don't do something outdoors every day, I get a little bit crazy. I've integrated biking to and from grad school into my life in a very positive way. I think that's another thing where you have to be paying attention. You're on a 20 pound steel bicycle and there's a 4,000 pound SUV next to you with somebody who's on the phone with screaming kids in the back.
Speaker 2 (26:35.072)
And you're like, okay, just got to stay alive. Just got to head on swivel. One of mine being during that activity. Anything where you can do anything where you can get that front of the mind working hard on something menial and physical and the rest of the mind.
Yeah. Adrenaline sports, the adrenaline, something a little bit dangerous. have several friends that are really into mountain biking. I have mountain bike. I do not use it like a mountain bike at all. These guys are nuts. Talk about an adrenaline sport. When you go hiking up in the mountains of Colorado in the summertime, there are these mountain bikes.
trails and they have lifts that are just for the mountain bikes that take them to the top of these ski runs and these guys come down like a bullet. It's crazy.
I've done it and I've seen the guys that do it and I agree, it's nuts. I had a friend who got me into mountain biking. He's like, this is the best. Trust me, you're gonna have a ton of fun. I was like, all right. And I went up the chairlift with him one day and I was talking to some of the other guys on the chairlift that were in their 50s and they were like, yeah, you stay in the sport long enough, you're gonna have some non-OEM parts, some non-original parts. I'm like, really? Yeah, new knee, new plate in my head. really, okay, this is, hmm.
I like going fast up the hill and really working hard and trying to keep balance around these switchbacks, which is hard, like going uphill, really steep hills and then turning. It turns out that's really hard. But then the guys that are flying off the mountains, I'm like, yeah, you guys do that. I'm going to inch it down just because that makes me happy. Don't. So the other side of this, simply for Colorado people is don't get hooked up with people who are too adrenaline seeking for you either because that's going to stress you out too.
Speaker 2 (28:34.03)
whatever activity you're whatever level is comfortable for you. Don't try and Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen if that's not where you are, but don't make chicken nuggets either. Find a level of this activity that works for you that doesn't stress you out more.
Yes. Oh my gosh. I worked with this guy for a while that every weekend is a 14 or I'm like, yeah, no, that is not for me. That is not fun. That is not enjoyable. I'm the more, Oh, look at the beautiful scenery. Isn't this nice kind of hiker versus the, I'm going to do an ultra hiker and the mountain bikers. Oh my gosh. So is your hiking some of these trails you crisscross with some of the mountain biking trails.
I have been almost taken out by these mountain bikers because they can't stop. They couldn't stop that fast even if they wanted to. They are coming down these trails so fast that it's all I can do is sit there and just go, whoa. And around these rocks and through these really treacherous, steep trails, there's no way I would eat it. And that would be it the very first day.
Okay, let's bring it to the so what. We're in these positions often, if you're at a more senior level as a manager with a company, you get to dictate things like training budgets and you get to dictate the pace of a project and you can say, we're gonna do some stress management training. It's coming a problem on the job site. I'm noticing that it's impacting people's professional and personal lives. Can't have it. You can make that choice. What about somebody
in a middle management position, maybe a junior manager who can't decide, you know what, we're going to go do this. We're going to go get some stress management training. What about somebody who wants to set ways of working on a job site or in an office, whatever space they're in with their team and say, hey, this is how we're going to handle stress as a team. This is how we're going to help each other. I worked on a small project here at business school last year.
Speaker 2 (30:41.742)
with a of people I really respect and admire. And somebody brought up to me before the project started, you know what you ought to do? You ought to take those guys out for a beer and spend some time establishing your ways of working with them, what stresses you out, how you deal with your stress, how you need people to give you space or not give you space and tell you, hey, you need to go get some space when you're getting stressed out. And we had this great conversation before we started on the project. It was like, all right, team first.
If we're a solid team, can do the rest of the work together. But if the team is the first priority, we're going to be high performing. And we had those conversations of what stresses you out. What don't you appreciate in the way that somebody communicates to you in a high stress environment? How can we help each other be better teammates? How can we range other in when we're pushing too hard or we're losing the force for the treats or we're allowing stress to overcome our working lives?
what are the signs that we need to point out to our teammates so that they can help us be our best selves. Just setting those kinds of boundaries and expectations and ways of working can be a really beneficial step to take in my opinion.
love that you guys had that conversation in advance. Not a lot of people do that. We've talked about a distest before, and the distest does that for you. Each person takes the distest. You learn about yourself and you share it amongst the team and you learn about each other and how people can work best together. But not everybody's going to have the opportunity to do that. Not every situation. So just simply sitting down and having that conversation and saying, Hey, I'm this kind of person. I don't like it when.
I feel like you're hanging over my shoulder. don't like it when this or that. What works really effectively for me is if you just tell me very clearly what it is that you want and when you want it by. Tell me what good looks like. Tell me in words what your expectations are. And I will make sure that I meet those expectations. I don't do good with vague explanations or, Hey, go do this.
Speaker 1 (32:52.67)
not giving me specifics on exactly what it is that you're looking for. Again, everybody's different. So having that conversation upfront is very powerful. If you're not the kind of person who likes to talk about your feelings, it doesn't have to be about your feelings. It can simply be you talking about yourself. I am this way. I like this. I like precision. I like clear definition. I like clear boundaries. I want to make sure that
I know where Brad's responsibilities stop and might begin.
And you just talk, you're just telling about yourself. think that's a really great way to approach that. Did it work well for you?
It was great. We had some really stressful moments where we were working 14 hour days in a foreign country with people we'd never met before. And there were a lot of tensions, but we had those conversations. We went back to our ways of working. We're like, all right, where do we stand? What can we do? And that just changed the game entirely.
that is an absolutely wonderful way to deal with stress is avoid it.
Speaker 2 (34:07.758)
It's not that we were avoiding it, it's that there was stress and we knew there was stress and we knew that we had a plan for it.
Avoid is the wrong word. I should not have said avoid. I meant prevent.
Mitigate attack notice when it occurs and deal with that. That's what I that's the way I would phrase it We would see okay. Hey, we're all getting stressed. We're getting a little snippy. Let's have conversation before it gets
I have definitely done that when working in a team environment in a construction trailer when somebody is clearly just, Why don't you go take a walk? Or why don't we go take a walk together? Or why don't you take the rest of the day off? I'll see you Monday.
Get yourself together because you clearly need a break. And it's not a personal statement. It's not a negative. It's about that person. Have you ever sent yourself home? I have. I sent myself to my room before at home.
Speaker 2 (35:11.214)
Yeah, yeah, the self-awareness that it takes to do that is pretty high. And the confidence too, if you're the kind of person who, let's be honest, a job site is a very ego-driven place. If somebody projects that they can't cut it, that they aren't up to something, then all of a sudden, they've lost face. It's a whole emotional, hierarchical thing. So if you set the tone as a manager, as a leader on a job site of, no, we're human beings.
If you know that you need some time, you're not doing any of us justice if you don't take that time. If you don't step away, you're gonna make it worse. People will sit in meetings and yell, scream and moan and then compromise in the middle of something on no basis whatsoever just to be done with something. And then six months later, why did we make that deal? That was a terrible deal. That was the worst torture we've ever done.
And now we're obligated to all this stuff that we're not supposed to be responsible for, because that person was not their best self in that moment. And they made a bad emotional decision because they couldn't manage their stress and they couldn't walk away and they couldn't find a way to come back down. On these tight jobs, on these stressful projects, there's no room for that. You can't have people performing at anything less than their best. Can't afford it.
Yeah. And unfortunately, television and movies don't give us a good example at all. The TV that I do watch tends to be cop shows and burger mysteries and things like that. And every single time the person is overly involved, it's a friend, it's a relative or whatever, and they're shoving themselves in the middle and they won't take a break and they're told to go home and they won't go home. And, that stuff is glorified. you're a hero.
because you push through. That's not how works. In reality, that person is going to have a nervous breakdown and something really bad is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (37:11.84)
Made-for-TV dramas where the yelling and screaming and overly emotional person gets their way are not what we should model our lives on. That's a very interesting comment on our culture. Think of how many dramas and comedies are workplace, episodic, periodical, like The Office, Parks and Rec, but then also Law and Order, I'm watching The Lincoln Lawyer. All these things are like workplace-centric and they...
prize that person who, like you said, puts in the extra hours, doesn't let it go, gets emotional, digs in. And that's why I love Scrubs. Scrubs was my favorite TV show growing up because a lot of the time those characters would solve their problems when they were able to step away. that's what it is. And then they'd move on and it'd be this aha, quiet, peaceful moment. They talked to real doctors when they wrote that show, but don't live your life
for the sake of becoming a TV drama star. That's not effective business communication.
It's not real either. But they're the examples that we have. So if we go to work and we don't have good examples around us and we watch TV and we have really bad examples, finding that good example is harder. so modeling that behavior is even more important as a leader because people need to know what good looks like.
And so you as a leader taking care of yourself and managing your stress and stepping away when you need to step away, models what good looks like and tells people that it is acceptable to number one, be a human being. And number two, do what it is that you need to do. And if that is stepping away, sending yourself to your room, taking a day off, taking an afternoon off,
Speaker 1 (39:08.098)
Going on vacation. my goodness. The people that I know that never go on vacation. I've been that person. I'm still that person. It's a little different now because I do consultant work now. So I'm away from my clients. I'm not necessarily in that space on the job sites every day anymore. Depending on what kind of contracts I have at that moment. Am I the best at scheduling vacations? Do I have one on the books right now? I do not.
I
This is kettle.
Speaker 1 (39:44.696)
I need to get on the phone with my travel agent. And yes, I still use a travel agent.
I do. love my travel agent. It depends on what it is. If it's something really minor and we're just going away somewhere, not too far for a weekend. We've been there lots of times before. I won't do it, but when I have vacation, I will because number one, if I've never been there before, this guy is amazing. He's been everywhere and he sets up really good.
Deals for us. Could I get it a little bit cheaper if I spent hours and hours pecking around on the internet using all these crazy websites and yeah, I probably could, but you know what? It's not how I want to spend my time. I'm not going to invest 30 hours in planning a vacation. Not going to do it. I just want to go.
inverse of the millennial attitudes, we're going to enjoy the vacation as we're planning it. Be like, living vicariously through the Instagram influencers and observing where they go and plotting all out. That's the gap there.
Yeah, it's a potentially a personality difference too, because I am a checkbox achiever. So I am not checking any boxes when I'm spending time doing all this research and scanning the internet for deals. My time is my most valuable asset. So I'm not going to spend it doing that. I'm going to let somebody else who does that for a living, spend that time and that energy, and then I'm just going to pay them.
Speaker 1 (41:16.298)
Hahaha
You're starting to film me. Once I'm back in the income generating community, I might look into that. That could be compelling.
Yeah, as leaders, how do we identify the root cause of stress in our people?
Okay, so I've come up with a little bit of a flowchart here, because that's the way I think engineers think of flowcharts. First, you want to look at the root cause of that stress. You want to talk to that employee who is exhibiting signs of stress. An easy thing to rule out, are they overloaded? Are they being burdened with more work than any human being could considerably take on? I think we see this a lot in our industry, the fast horses get the most stuff.
run to the ground. This happens in the military, this happens in construction, it happens across working America. The people who do the best work get the most of it. So if they really truly are overburdened and that's causing stress, address it. Redistribute that workload, even if that stressed employee took on the work, the extra work of their own accord. So that can be tough thing to do. You worry that you're going to get a degradation in quality if you
Speaker 2 (42:28.61)
give some of that work that High Performer has been doing to some of your mediocre folks, but you can't burn the good people out because they're just going to stop doing quality work for you eventually.
Yeah, I just want to insert that there are people that you might have on your team that are such overachievers. They don't like the idea of anybody else doing it. And so they're going to take everything. They're going to say yes to everything. And they're going to go like this. They might even get mad if you take something away from them, but they're going to sign up for everything because they think they're the best person on the team and they might be right.
But is that serving your purpose well? And that person's certainly gonna burn out.
Yep, having that conversation with that person is gonna be difficult because they're not gonna wanna hear it, but you gotta find a way to make them listen. So let's say you've ruled that out, they're not overloaded, or you have reduced their workload and they're still stressed.
The next question you want to ask is how clearly is the employee viewing the problem? Are they making mountains out of molehills or is the situation that they're encountering truly so dire that they should be this stressed? Usually the answer should be no, that there are other things they can do to mitigate the actual critical nature of the problem that they can talk to people within the company who have expertise and get help there. They can use other resources.
Speaker 2 (43:57.666)
But if they're making mountains out of mill hills, then you need to help pull them away from the desk, away from the task and make them see, okay, big picture here. How important is this really? See everything else that's going on the job site, find a way to help them gain the perspective. I guess for me, for example, I was working on a project where we had these very special light fixtures and the client was...
excited about the light fixtures, there had to be a certain way to refract light the way the architect wanted, and they were going to take too much time to get here. And I was like, oh my God, this is the worst thing ever. It's going to cause a delay to the project. And my project manager goes, did you pick the light fixtures? No. Did you impact the lead time by not getting the submittal turned in on time? No. Is there anything you can do to solve this problem? Is this within your control? I don't know if I just.
Is there anything that you know you can do to solve this problem? Have you called the vendor? you done it? Yeah, I've done all those things and I can't make it come any faster. Okay, then you can't make it come any faster. Reality sets in and then you just communicate reality when reality occurs. Oftentimes in construction, it's very admirable to see people who take such a personal investment in creating a great outcome and solving problems in making the project go well. But if things are outside your control, don't try to control the things that you can't control at a certain point.
stuff is going to happen and you need to be able to communicate that effectively to people and not take responsibility for things that aren't truly your responsibility at the end of the day.
separating what you can control from what you can't control is a huge part of stress management. We as humans, especially in the construction industry, but certainly not limited to that industry. If you're the kind of person who takes responsibility and who grabs ahold of it, it's hard sometimes to let go of the fact that you don't have control and that it isn't your responsibility.
Speaker 1 (46:03.938)
very good friend of mine, I have to talk to him about this all the time. He gets so wrapped up and so wrapped around the axle around this and that and I say, hey, not your monkeys, not your circus.
It's really hard when you're the take responsibility kind of person to remind yourself constantly that it isn't your monkeys and it isn't your circus and you didn't choose the light fixtures and you have no control over the lead time and you did your part. Are you going to continue to contact the vendor and see if there's any way you can get a better spot in line? Yeah, maybe you're going to do that. Maybe you're going to find out does the vendor have any.
rush program? Is there a fee we can pay if it's important to the client? Do they want to know if there's a fee they can pay to get cut in line? That's about the limit of what you can do as a contractor. Some manufacturers go no cut sees. If the lead time is what it is and take it or leave it and if you just have to take it, you just have to take it. The owner can choose if it's that important to them, the wait. If it's not that important to them or they'll find a work around.
Right.
Speaker 1 (47:18.55)
If it's not that important, then they'll change the fixture.
Speaker 1 (47:24.462)
That's one of the hardest lessons you have to learn as a consultant. When you first start consulting, you're so used to being a hundred percent invested in the company that you're working for, your leadership chain, whatever all that is, you're so invested in what's happening right now and what that means for the future. That one of the hardest things to do is to learn that
people are gonna make the decisions they're gonna make. You don't have to live with the consequences. And it's hard because you wanna be that invested. And I am so invested sometimes with my clients that I have to really remind myself that it is their decision. Even if I don't think it's the right decision, it's their decision, it's their money, it's their project, and they're gonna have to live with those consequences. All I can do is make sure that I verbalize, well, this is the consequences of this decision.
This might happen, that might happen, this other thing might happen. And if they go, I still want to do it, OK. And you let it go.
You walk away.
Don't allow your emotions to be controlled by things that are out of your control.
Speaker 1 (48:36.75)
Absolutely. So mountains and molehills. I've heard that term ever since I was a kid. I remember my dad saying, don't make a mountain out of a molehill. And I think what we often mean by that is don't get too emotionally invested in something or respond to something in an emotional way that maybe isn't your thing or your issue, your problem, or get too terribly emotionally invested in an outcome.
It leads to disappointment and the stress of something not going the way you want it to go will create a lot of stress for you.
Also react proportionally. If you get a little bit of gruff from subcontractor, nah, give him a little gruff back and move on. If a subcontractor tells you you're lying, cheating, stealing SOB in front of everybody with no basis, react strongly. like, that's not true. And meet that at that same level. Don't blow up on somebody for giving you a little gruff and don't
let some huge attack on your character pass by with just a little bit of a whatever. Be present enough to understand the severity, the degree of whatever is going on. Have the perspective to see that and then react accordingly.
That's a very good point. made me think about one of the important stress management skills that I learned in my career was especially dealing with people, assigning intentions behind something that somebody did or said. We do that in our head a lot without realizing it. When somebody does something or says something, we do this. What did they mean by that? And why did they say that to me? Or why did they act like that? Me learning to
Speaker 1 (50:34.282)
look at that in a broader sense and say, do I think that person acted that way towards me because there's really a problem here? Or does that person act that way towards everyone? Not that I'm accepting their behavior or excusing their behavior, but do I need to pay attention to it? Is it a red flag for a potential problem with my relationship with this person?
Because if it's somebody whose opinion you care about, them saying something hurtful or sharp to you causes an emotional stress for you. And, if you said to me, Dee, shut up. I think that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. would be like, I care about Brad's opinion. So that would be something that I would be like, whoa, is Brad having a bad day?
Is Brad in a bad mood for whatever reason? Or am I being ridiculous? Or is there a problem in our relationship that we need to resolve? Did I somehow tick him off without realizing it and he's lashing out because he's irritated about something that I've done or said?
So the perspective of mountains or molehills or even I'm going to use an example from a class that I just taught a friend of mine and I co-taught two day workshop. We did six different segments on people skills, human skills, and one of the ones was perspective. And we used the beach ball. know how a beach ball has all the different colors. Though from your perspective, you might be seeing green. From my perspective, I might be seeing yellow.
And we're just on opposite sides of the beach ball. We're in a different position. So helping people understand the perspective of what is happening and what's going on can also help reduce your stress because it's a conflict. If you're seeing one color and I'm seeing a different color and going, no, that's ridiculous. That's not at all what's happening. And you're going, no, this is exactly what I'm seeing. That's conflict, that's stress, conflict resolution.
Speaker 1 (52:53.162)
is another stress management technique. Be hard on the problem, not the people. We talked about that in an earlier podcast, right? We want to be hard on the problem, not the people. Thank you. Credit Jesus Ladesma and make sure that we're focusing on that and not the people and taking it out on the people and lashing out on the people.
Because people will start reacting to you, not the problem if that happens.
Absolutely. Training our people to manage stress, to recognize stress, wherever it's coming from. Come up with techniques that help them reduce stress, giving them permission to step away, or maybe even saying, hey, it's time for you to step away and take a break. Take the rest of the day off. Go take a walk, whatever. The stress management technique and recognizing that managing your tasks
is not the same thing as stress management. I think what techniques were taught are not really managing the stress. They're just prioritizing the stress.
Helping our people recognize all that stuff, give them the tools and some training to manage it, give them the space to be a person and to be a human is the best thing we can do for our people.
Speaker 2 (54:17.458)
I love that. I think we can end on the rubbing dirt in a comment as actually surprisingly valid because the outdoors is where the dirt is. That's going to stress you. get the dirt is outside. Go rub. Go get the dirt because it's outside. You don't have to rub it anywhere, but just go to where the dirt is.
Yeah, get outside, walk around a little bit, make some laps around the job site. You build a building and the final building will have walking paths and green areas for people to go sit down and eat their lunch and take advantage of that. it's not available and not every job site is in a place where that's available. I've definitely hazarded traffic to go take a walk when there was nowhere on my job site to do anything like that.
Another thing I've done when I was on a job site that didn't have that, there was a park about a mile and a half away. Get in the car, go drive over to the park, watch the ducks, explore some greenery and just breathe a little bit. Huge stress reliever.
Oh, there's a culture on job sites where if everyone eats at their desk and you don't eat at your desk and you're like the junior person or one of the junior people, then you're not cutting it. Then you're not enough. That's what I felt at least when I was very new in my first project. And then somebody took their lunch out of the trailer and it was cool. And I was like, oh wait, I'm making this way bigger than it needs to be. And every Wednesday I went to my favorite kebab spot. It was a very short drive away, but I drove there.
I sat in person and I waited for them to make the food and then I ate it there or took it back depending on if it was sunny outside or not. It was California, it was pretty sunny out most of the time. And no one cared. So much of that stress can be you just making something into something that it isn't in your head. Or maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just exposing myself to somebody who worked through some stuff there. But don't let somebody else's preconceived notion of how you should manage your stress be your be all end all either.
Speaker 1 (56:20.782)
I don't think you're alone in that. think that especially if you're in a trailer with a bunch of other young PEs and you're watching what everybody else is doing, you're watching what the super's doing, you're watching what the project manager's doing, if that's what they're doing, you think that's what you should be doing too. My last project, I brought a lawn chair.
and I kept it in my office and every day I would put it outside and I'd sit there and eat my lunch. It was a really cool experience because I typically hadn't done that. I always ate at my desk. I did that forever and ever. And I said, okay, I'm going to go sit outside. I'm going to do this for me, but I'm also going to do it just to see what happens. It was a little bit of a social experiment.
And it was very cool because people got to know where I sat at lunchtime. They would know that I would be there and they would come over and talk to me. And we would just have conversations. And some people don't like to be talked to when they're eating their lunch. It's never bothered me, but they would come out and the P E's would know he's going to be sitting outside in her lawn chair. So they would come out. They knew that they would kick it, my attention right then and ask me questions.
And that didn't bother me, but not everybody's like that. Some people don't like to be bothered with work when they're eating.
You can set those tones. think that you saying that sound that way being like, Hey, this is not everything there is in life. I'm going to sit outside and enjoy my lunch. That's the kind of thing that sends a strong signal to your employees. So the people on the job site, I had a superintendent who would not eat lunch period. was like, yeah, I was kind of in the trades. I just never ate lunch because I would work through lunch so could leave early. And now I just work longer hours. I kind of like, okay. Maybe I shouldn't eat my lunch at all either. And he's not just be a person. He's like, yeah.
Speaker 2 (58:06.318)
my body now. is not a you need to meet me here thing, even though I took it that way the moment he said it. if you're a leader, know that your people might take something a certain way if you set a certain pace. And if you're a follower, don't necessarily follow that person's pace because you think that's what they expect.
my gosh, anybody that's worked with me very long knows that you must feed me. Do not call a lunch meeting and not feed me. That is a bad plan.
the worst pro-po of all time. is straight to the penalty box. Jail. Straight to jail.
Okay, I think we've nailed this one today. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next time. Watch us on YouTube at YellowstoneProfessionalEd.co. Don't forget to like, share, and follow us. Apple, Spotify, everywhere you listen to your podcasts. You can email us with questions, comments, and suggestions.
Goodbye.
Speaker 1 (59:07.754)
at HayDee at Management Under Construction, H-E-Y-D-E-E to get me or Brad at managementunderconstruction.com.
