Fixing Performance Reviews for the Field with Ryan Englin

0:00He was a great foreman when he showed up, but his boss ignored the attendance problem for a week and two weeks, then three months. The first week went by and superintendent's like, oh, maybe he's just getting back in the habit. We didn't say anything. Then the next week goes by and we're like, you know what? I'm too busy to say anything. Then the third week goes by and we're like, oh, I don't want to piss him off because he's really good and he's been showing up a little bit, but we're still having some problems. And then it's three months later and you're like, now it feels weird to talk about it.

0:27And the crew paid a price. The project paid a price. The client was mad and the company suffered. And a conversation that should have been simple became painful. Performance reviews are so hard because we do them once a year. And it's like now we got to cover everything that happened in the last year. It feels weird. Creates that internal conflict. We don't want to deal with it. That's what happens when daily accountability gets postponed until the annual performance review. You pile up a year of frustration, you sit the employee down, you connect the conversation to a pay raise, and then you unload.

1:01If someone's not doing a good job, we got to deal with it right then and there. Same with performance improvement plans, same with firing. Never should it be a surprise. Accountability should give people clear feedback while they can still act on it. Then the performance review becomes a useful conversation about alignment, growth, and what comes next with no surprises. So how do you make that happen? Let's dive into it right now.

1:57Ryan, welcome to Construction Genius. Eric, thanks for having me. Yeah, you're back on the pod because I enjoy chatting with you. So today we're going to talk about two things, accountability and performance reviews. And I know those are both things that people, they either they struggle with accountability and or they don't really do performance reviews consistently or well. So there's a ton of value here for everyone listening. So let's start with accountability. Yeah. Tell me in your view, what accountability actually means. Accountability is making sure that the things people have committed to that they follow through on.

2:35And I think that's a big, big, important distinction on accountability versus say micromanagement or performate is making sure that people have committed to the things. See, you can't hold somebody accountable to something if they've never committed to it. So that commitment is a key component to accountability. Yeah, I think that's one of the first stumbling blocks and breaks in relationships with people is that they're not clear on what it is that they're supposed to be doing. And a lot of the times that's because you haven't clearly communicated it to them. And then you attempt to hold them accountable for that.

3:06And they're like, dude, what's up? Yeah. I didn't know I was supposed to do that. Absolutely. You've worked with hundreds of companies. What is something the best leaders do differently when it comes to accountability? What you just talked about, it's confirming that they clearly received the message that they understand. Too often we share something with somebody. We say, hey, we want you to do this. And then we walk away because we're busy. We get distracted. We got other things. We never took the time to say, tell me what you heard. Do you agree? Are you on board with that? Because if they're not, you're going to come back in three weeks.

3:40You're going to be mad. You're going to do your best to hold them accountable. It's going to feel like you're hitting them with a stick. They're going to get frustrated. and it just spirals downhill from there. So let me ask you, why is it when I have to hold someone accountable, even if I've been clear in what I want them to do and they've agreed to do it, why do I still feel uncomfortable? What I've seen, and maybe this isn't every scenario, but you take too long between the time that you had the commitment and the time you hold them accountable. I'll give you an example. we had a client that was dealing with a foreman, great guy.

4:18When he showed up to work, he was amazing when he showed up. So they had this conversation about his attendance, his tardiness, this conversation. Well, the first week went by and superintendent's like, well, maybe he's just getting back in the habit. We didn't say anything. Then the next week goes by and we're like, you know what? I'm too busy to say anything. Then the third week goes by and we're like, oh, I don't want to piss him off because he's really good. And he's been showing up a little bit, but we're still having some problems. And then it's three months later and you're like, now it feels weird to talk about it.

4:47But if we would have said, Hey, you know what? We're having attendance issues every single morning. When you get here, I just want you to stop by. Let me know you're here. Now, when he shows up late, it's really easy. We talk about it right now, but we don't do that because we're busy. We got other things going on. We don't want to rock, rock the boat. And that's why it feels weird. Cause we take too long from the time that we agreed to the time we say anything about it. That's been my experience. That's interesting. Yeah. When you were saying that, I popped into my head a framework I use with a lot of my clients is sort of the X, Y axis, you know, where this is pain and then this one is time.

5:21Yeah. And the more time goes by, the more pain increases. And so when I delay accountable conversations, it increases the level of discomfort it seems, or even the possibility for a more intense conflict. Yeah. We're going to talk about it, but that's why performance reviews are so hard because we do them once a year. Yeah. And it's like, now we got to cover everything that happened in the last year. It feels weird. Creates that internal conflict. We don't want to deal with it. But I still, I still think there's something more though, because it's like, I know when I'm thinking about some accountable conversations with some people, I'm thinking this is going to go fine.

5:56It's okay. They're not going to mind. But then I think about other people and I know they're going to be pissed because I'm holding them accountable. And that creates in me a resistance because I don't want to get rejected. I don't want to hassle with having the conversation with someone who's going to get mad at me. How does someone handle all of that stuff? I mean, I'm just kind of being open with you about it. Some of that internal story that we tell ourselves, oh, they're going to be pissed. Oh, they're going to be mad at me. Oh, they're going to ruin my day. Oh, they might quit. Oh, they might take someone with them.

6:27That's a story we tell ourselves. Yeah. And when we hold people accountable, we're doing good for the people that are doing their job. Like, that's the thing we have to remember. We're so focused on that one person, the foreman. But what about the crew that sits around and goes, where's my boss today? Yeah. Where's the guy that's supposed to lead us? We forget about them. We're so focused on the one to one relationship we have with the guy that's struggling that we tell ourselves this story. We make all this stuff up. And it's funny because when people push through it and they just do the thing they're supposed to do, they have the conversation they're supposed to have.

7:01It's never as bad as they told themselves it would be. Yeah, yeah. So that's a really good way of looking at it is to think through the impact that this person has, as you rightly said, on the crew. You could think of then the impact on the project, the impact on the client, the impact on the company. And as you reflect on those ever increasing circles of impact, it brings you back to the simple conversation that you need to have and you begin to understand it's really important. But then also that fear of death is always overblown. Always. When it comes to these difficult conversations, the worst that someone can do is they can cuss you out or, you know, they can call you a jerk or they can quit or something like that.

7:42But that rarely, rarely happens. And if it does, then that's in most cases a good thing. Bullet dodged. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. What role does preparation have in someone being able to not only execute an accountable conversation well, but also to control themselves and make sure they're not missing anything in those accountability conversations? Too often, what I see is a lot of people, they go into this accountability conversation and they're going in it with a stick. They feel armed. I need to punish them. I need to make them feel bad for what they've done. But if you really want to come in from a position of power and control the conversation, which is what you need to do as a leader, the preparation is key because you need to know what the outcome is that you're looking for.

8:29That's an important distinction in accountability is it's about outcomes, agreed upon outcomes. If I walk in and I just say, hey, you're late again, you're late again, you're late again. Well, now it's like I'm coming across and attacking. But if I come in and I say, hey, we agreed that you would be here on time every day, five days a week to support the crew. Like that's the outcome we'd agreed on. If that's the conversation, it's a lot easier for them to say, OK, let's I don't need to be defensive. I don't feel like I'm being attacked. I agreed. I let the team down. Kind of deserve this. And that's what we hear from people.

9:06When you get really good at focusing on the outcomes and not the person, it becomes a lot easier to have those conversations. It's interesting when I think about accountability, one of the words that always pops into my head is kindness. And we often misrepresent or misdefine kindness because we think kindness is the same as niceness. When in fact, kindness is being willing to tell someone the truth. Again, you don't have to be a jerk about it. But to tell someone the truth and to hold them accountable is an actual act of kindness. Yeah. Not an act of not niceness. I like the way you said that, you know, when someone starts having attendance problems, and this is one of the things we found out this, this employee that was dealing with this, he started having attendance problems.

9:53Turned out he was taking care of a sick family member. But see, we don't ask the question. We just go, what's the impact to me? He's not showing up. He's not doing his job. You know what? A quick conversation would be, oh, look, he's going through something. Now he's still letting the team down. He's still letting the client down. He's still letting the job down. He's still doing those things. We can have that conversation, but he's human, right? Life happens to people. And the more we come alongside and so we'll be there for you. I did a training with a group about 15 service managers at this one contractor.

10:27And I asked him, I said, why are you so loyal to this company? Like I'm hearing the words coming out of your mouth and there's just loyalty, just covering everything that you're saying when you talk about this company, tell me why. It was crazy. Every single one of them had a personal story. I went through this thing and they helped me through it. I went through this thing and they coached me through it. I went through this thing and they gave me time off to recover and heal. And every story they had is, and that is what earned the loyalty. You know, we talk about how we've got this labor crisis in the trades and in construction, people aren't loyal anymore.

11:03Well, have you given them a reason to be loyal? Yeah, it's interesting. Too often we don't. That just reminded me of many, many years ago, decades ago, I was working with a company. I was going through some personal challenges in my life. And just what you described there, the owner of the company, he just came right alongside me because I was a high performer. And then because my personal challenges, my performance was dipping. And he said, hey, Derek, what's up, man? He was willing to have that accountable conversation. I was able to be open with him because I trusted him. and he said, hey, dude, we're here to support you in any way that we can.

11:34And that, dude, I'll never forget that. I tell this story multiple times. I know. Here we are. I know. How long has it been? And you're still telling the same story. I love it. It's a trip. And like in my head, you know, I'm thinking about the place where the location was on, where I worked. I started thinking about all the stuff that I went through like 25 years ago and stuff like that. What sticks with me is he was just willing to stand right by my side. It's so interesting, though, because I think a lot of times when people are struggling And we misunderstand this as well is they're waiting and they're hoping that someone will notice and actually talk to them.

12:06And it's almost a relief for them when someone is willing to man up and hold them accountable. Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of times we need this. You know, they one of the big challenges and I don't want to get into the mental health crisis that we have in the trades right now, but I am going to bring that up for a second. Is that we've got a lot of guys out there right now that are keeping it all in and they're doing their best to make it happen. and no one pays attention, no one notices, no one comes alongside and says, hey, we're gonna work through this together. And when you do that, it just changes, not just that person, it changes the job site, it changes the company culture.

12:41And here's the irony in this whole thing. Most contractors that I know, the leadership team, they adore their people. Like they care for their people immensely, but they struggle to communicate it. They struggle to come alongside and say, hey, you're going through something. I care about you. Can I help? Can we go through this together? We struggle to do that. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why I think, but you're right. If we would just say, hey, you're not doing the things that you promised. You're not following through on the things you committed to. You're letting your team down. They're like, you're right, boss.

13:16Let me go fix that. And it's crazy the conversations that I hear when people have the willingness and the courage to stand up and call them out. Yeah, that's great. So assuming you've communicated clearly your expectations, They've agreed to them in advance. Give me the structure of an accountable conversation. And I'm looking for something that'll just kind of remove the drama from it and really help someone to execute that accountable conversation on a consistent basis. So if we're struggling with the thing we thought they were gonna do, it's almost too late at that point. You have to reset.

13:48You almost have to say, you know what? I know we talked about this three weeks ago. We're gonna reset right now. I'm gonna pretend the last three weeks didn't happen because I didn't do what I was supposed to do right the first time, which is I want to sit down and I want to have a conversation with you about what my expectations are of you. But I also want to hear what your expectations are of me. What does accountability look like? Because everybody gets held accountable some different way. Everybody gets accountability some different way. Yeah. And it depends on your level in the organization.

14:17It depends on what you've got going on in your life. It's personal. And so to sit down and have a conversation with somebody says, Hey, we'll talk about the attendance one. Hey, we're having this attendance problem. I get that you're going through some stuff, but here's what I need from you right now. Is this clear? Repeat back to me what it is that you believe I need. Tell me what you're going to do differently so that I get what I need. Now, what do you need from me to make sure that you can do that? And it was years ago. So years ago, we had an auto mechanic shop. He had like six locations.

14:49He got to the point where he would go to his guys and say, what do I gotta do to get you here on time? And they're like, I just struggled to get up in the morning. He goes, I will call you and I will be your wake up. It will be your wake up call. And he'd do this. He had half a dozen guys. He'd call every morning at 6 a.m. and say, it's time to get ready. That's what they asked for. Now, there are people listening going, yeah, I don't have time for that. Because, I mean, as you say that, I get it. But then the pushback on that is, well, dude, don't even hire these types of people. Go find someone else.

15:17Right. So how do you do that pushback there? Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. Don't hire these people. but there is a point where we have to bring in the next generation. We have to bring in the kids these days, right? Like everybody complains about kids these days. They're entitled. They're not loyal. Sure. Great. At some point we have to bring them in. We have to put our arm around him and say, we're going to teach you to be a man. We're going to teach you to grow up. We're going to teach you what it means to do this adulting thing. And I get, there's a lot of people listening right now going, that is the dumbest thing ever.

15:49Right. Well, that's the world we live in. That's the world we live in. They were raised on social media. They were raised on the internet. They were raised on always on information. I saw this thing the other day, just talking about video games. In the eighties, we had three lives and the game was over. We had to put a new quarter in. Nowadays, video games are auto saved, real-time feedback. Like this is what people grow up with. This is what they want. Real-time feedback. How am I doing today? We have to do that. All right, quick break to talk about my book, Construction Genius. This is what I want you to do.

16:27Go to Amazon, search for the book, read all of the five-star reviews because there's a ton of them, over 50 to be precise. And the reason I want you to read them is because real people wrote those reviews who've actually read the book. And it'll give you an idea of why you should go and buy a copy right now on Amazon. And here's the deal. If you purchase 10 or more copies for your company. And then send me an email, ericatconstructiongenius.com. I'll come in via Zoom and do a one-hour Q &A and a bonus training session with your team at no charge. I normally charge$4 ,500 for an hour of my time.

17:04And again, for you, I'll do it at no charge if you buy 10 or more copies of my book. And the reason you should buy it is all in the title. It's effective, hands-on, practical, simple, no BS, leadership, strategy, sales, and marketing advice for construction companies. So if you're in the construction industry, this book is for you. So you can get it on Amazon. You can also get it on Audible in the audio version as well, narrated by yours truly. And I know you'll really enjoy it. So go out and get the book. And now back to the interview. It's interesting. I think what's really true what you just said is that when you are hiring young people, you are actually involved in their maturation process.

17:46A hundred percent. And you are, you know, like I think about my, I got two boys who are in construction right now and they're fairly responsible, but they are young men, you know, one's 21 and the other's 20. And it's like, okay, they got growth there and they're spending time at work. So, you know, they're in the majority of their, well, not the majority, but at least a third of their days is spent at work. And that's where a third, at least of their maturing is going on, if not more because of the conflicts and the difficulties and the challenges that they face. Yeah. And so that's why you have to have that right mindset.

18:17I suppose it's a matter of just drawing your boundaries in terms of the levels that you're willing to go to, to help someone mature and the points where you're going to say, Hey, you know what? This place isn't a fit for you because of whatever reason. I didn't work with this guy. He's like, I figured out my problem with dealing with millennials. This was probably 10 years ago. And he goes, I stopped hiring them. I only hire boomers. I go, what are you going to do when they all retire? He goes, I got a four-year exit plan. I was like, well, if that's your plan, you figured it out. But for a lot of people, that's not it.

18:48You have to figure out how to deal with the challenges of the modern workforce, especially that younger generation. Yeah, that's really great. Let's move on then. Sort of like a big picture on accountability is this idea of the performance reviews. Now, when I think of performance reviews, I know there's a lot of folks listening who maybe have smaller companies and they're like, why do we need performance reviews? Because they don't need a performance review because they've started their company and they've built their company and they don't need anyone patting them on the back and telling them good job because they're just not built that way.

19:23Or they don't need constant feedback because they're always just figuring out their problems and learning how to grow their business. But our employees who don't have the same mindset, they don't have the same way of looking at things. Why is it the performance reviews are important? I want to back up on something you said, because I would argue that the guys that started these businesses, they get a performance review every single day. Yeah, right. Their clients calling them, their superintendents calling them, the job's not right, the materials didn't show up on time. The client's like, why are we off schedule?

19:55Those are performance reviews. Yeah. You're getting them all the time, all day, every day from a hundred different directions. You're getting that real-time feedback. You do a post-mortem on your jobs. You're getting that real-time feedback. You know, you're doing it all the time. And what we forget is we forget that people need feedback. People need to know if they're doing a good job. I see what happens a lot of times. We do performance evals once a year. Usually right around the time we're thinking about doing annual raises. Yeah, right. And it's like, if we're going to check the tension, the tension.

20:27Yeah. If we're going to give you 5 % or 3%, I need to tell you what you've done or haven't done to earn that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what we do. And I can have employees come out of this. They do surveys and they tell us, they go, they told me I was doing this thing wrong for the last 11 months. And that information would have been great 11 months ago. Cause I didn't want to be doing the wrong thing for a year. Yeah. Right. I didn't want to miss the mark or disappoint anybody for a year, but because you didn't tell me, I've been doing the wrong thing for a year. I believe that performance evals are less about a, you're doing well here and you're doing bad here.

21:03And more about, let's talk about where we're not aligned in the role. Those expectations I talked about earlier, where my expectations not being met, where your expectations not being met. Because if you're not doing a good job, I need to tell you that right now. You know, I don't discipline a puppy for peeing on the floor three weeks after he peed on the floor. He would never learn. I don't discipline a kid a month later for something they did. He would never learn. We need to think about it like this. If someone's not doing a good job, we got to deal with it right then and there. And when we don't, what message does that send to the rest of your team?

21:41Yeah, yeah. They're watching you going, oh, he's not holding him accountable. I guess I don't have to do it either. So it's almost as if your performance review should not be a surprise in any way at all to anyone. Should not be a surprise in any way. Yeah. Same with performance improvement plans, same with firing. Never should it be a surprise. And if I'm clear in communicating how compensation or bonuses is tied to performance, and everyone understands that, then when the performance review comes at the end of the year, let's say, and the discussion about the money comes in, There's no surprises there.

22:16Absolutely. Yeah. We got to be very clear. And too often reviews are very subjective. Raises are very subjective. And people are like, I don't know what I got to do to make more money around here. I don't know what I got to do. I just got a call from a client this morning. They had somebody quit in the project management department. If you know anything about that, hiring project managers right now is nearly impossible. And all she wanted was career path. She just wanted to know, how do I grow my career? How do I make more money? How do I achieve my life goals? and there was never a conversation about that so as you're having those conversations about bonuses and things like that with your clients i find in construction because when you're building a construction project there's so many dynamics like i could be on a construction site as a pm or super and i could do my job perfectly and the job still lose money because of other people that i have no control over you know what i mean yeah how have you seen the best contractors navigate that sort of gray area to be able to bonus people appropriately, regardless of sometimes even what the bottom line of their job is saying?

23:18Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, if there's no money in the job, there's no money for bonuses. That's my personal opinion. I don't expect anybody to go into debt to bonus people. It's a team effort. And somewhere the team didn't do what they were supposed to do. It could be we didn't bid the job right. That's never the PM's fault. The job didn't get bid, right? So those things can happen. I think, back to your point, things happen that are outside their control. Performance needs to be about the things that are within their control. Did they manage the job better than I thought they could?

23:53Did they go above and beyond to manage the job well? Were they ahead on their commitments? Were they making sure that they were making the phone calls when they saw the schedule was going to get behind, not when the schedule is behind? Right. Are they proactive in what they do? Those things we can measure. And that's what we reward people for. And maybe, hey, this job didn't do so well. I'm going to catch you up on the next one. Just continue to do that. But when we have that conversation, there's nothing worse than a job getting done and people finding out that there was no money in the job. Yeah.

24:22So I know when I talk to my clients, I'm thinking of, you know, these these middle managers who are tremendous performers. They spend 60, 70 hours a week sometimes working on projects and then performance reviews come up and it's a tremendous burden to them. You know, particularly if they have, you know, they're a typical middle manager with maybe 10, 12 people reporting to them or something like that. And and performance reviews come along. And on the one hand, they want to do them and honor their people. But on the other hand, there's so much time that it takes. It's really a pain in the neck.

24:53If you could completely redesign the performance review process from scratch, what would it look like? It would be about the misalignment of expectations. It would be about the things that annoy us about each other throughout the year, not about someone's performance. Performance should be dealt with in real time. I'll give you an example. So if we know that one of the responsibilities or one of the activities that the project manager is supposed to do is communicate status updates with all parties. That's it communicates. So often what happens is the PM thinks they're doing a good job. Their boss is like, man, you could be doing way better.

25:29I'm tired of getting the calls from the client. I shouldn't be getting the calls from you. Yeah. But you know what? We don't always look at that as a performance gap. We're just like, oh, well, it's a difficult client. It's a difficult job. It's got this, it's got that. There's all these outside things. So we don't say anything because we are able to justify the fact that maybe he's not performing as well. I don't want to have a conversation about performance. I want to have a conversation about that gap. He thinks he's a five. I think he's a three. Let's have that conversation because that means that I'm not doing my job as a leader to let him know that he's not meeting my expectations.

26:05Or what about the other way? He thinks he's a three. I think he's a five. I'm not doing enough to let a top performer know and encourage the top performer to continue doing what they're doing to be the example for the rest of their team. Either way, that's more of an evaluation on me as their leader, not an evaluation of them. But what it does is it cracks open that conversation and makes it super easy to have. You rated you, I rated you. This result is we need to have a conversation. So let's have a conversation about this gap. And we see it happen all over the place. I mean, the gaps are big sometimes.

26:40And it's because we're not having the right conversations with our people. Yeah. I remember, I'll tell you a funny story. I was working back in the day, selling copy machines, right? When I first got out of college and the first job I had, I struggled so much. I was working for this small company, no training. I was just listening to Zig Ziglar on the tape deck back in the day in the nineties and trying my best, but getting rejected all the time. And I came to the end of my career with them because I was leaving the area. And I thought, man, I really sucked at this job. And so I was going to interview for another job.

27:13And it was actually still in the copier trade, so to speak, selling copiers. And I was interviewing with this woman who owned the company that I was going to, which is kind of a bigger company in a bigger town. And she looked at me. She said, if I called your boss from your last company and asked if I should hire you, what would they say? And I was like, well, of course they'd say hire me, right? Because, you know, I'm totally awesome. But like in my head, I'm thinking, man, I kind of sucked. And so you know what she did? She picked up the phone right there. I don't know if you can do this anymore.

27:39This is the 90s. She picked up the phone and she called the dude. And I was sitting there thinking, great, I'm smoked. I'm not going to get this job. And then she had the conversation. She hung up. And I'm like, so what do you say? And she said, he said that you were the best employee they ever had. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just telling you that because of that gap in the way I perceive myself and the way they perceived me, because I perceive myself as failing from a sales point of view, which was true to an extent, but they saw that I was trying my best and that I had integrity and I showed up every day and I didn't give up.

28:13You know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's interesting. So how often should we be doing performance reviews? If I had my way, they would happen at a minimum quarterly. Okay. And if you could pull it off monthly. Wow. That sounds like a lot. It does. But here's what happens when I have a year's worth of stuff to talk about. I got a year's worth of conversation to prepare. I got to have a year's worth of conversation. You know what happens when I have a monthly performance eval? They're 10 minutes long, 10 minutes, because there's not a lot happening. So if I got 10 people, I spend two Two and a half hours a month, 10 people.

28:55And guess what? I, everybody knows where they're at. Everybody's aligned. Two and a half hours a month. Do you know how much easier my month gets when everybody's aligned? Yeah. I mean, it's exponential the amount of time you get back when people know what they're supposed to be doing, how they're supposed to be doing it, what your expectations are of them. And it makes you feel good too because you probably walked out of there going, I am the best employee there, right? Like, I mean, it raises you up. It energizes you when you hear those things. And you don't have to be afraid of it going to someone's head.

29:26Sometimes it's okay to let people know that they're doing well. We do a lot of exit interviews. And in the exit interviews, people tell me they didn't say thank you. They didn't appreciate my work here. They never told me I was doing a good job. It was always no news is good news. And the news that anytime you talk to them, it was bad. Nobody wants to work in an environment like that. Let me ask you this. When you're thinking about that monthly review or the quarterly review, it would seem like it would benefit all parties involved to be really clear on what they're going to get reviewed on. And perhaps instead of sort of doing the nits and lice of every single part of the job, maybe narrowing it down to key areas where that gap that you described exists and focusing on those gaps, maybe for a quarter or for even 12 months and really base the performance reviews around that, around more specific areas.

30:15What are your thoughts on that? Absolutely. When you get out of the review, when the review is done and you've identified the couple of gaps, and here's the thing, you're going to see 12 gaps, 15 gaps. You don't focus on all of them. You chase more than one rabbit, you lose them both. You focus on one or two that's really going to move the needle. And then you say, here's what I want to do over the next month. I want to work with you on this. Over the next quarter, I want to work with you on this. And you're just focusing on one or two of them. You're not focusing on all of them. Yes. And that's how people really grow.

30:45Yes. But what we do, we almost never focus on growth. We almost never focus on the gap. We almost never focus on the things that they could do to get better because we're too busy. We're too short staff. We're too time. Whatever that story is, we tell ourselves. Think about the last time you promoted someone into a leadership role and it failed. Why did it fail? I can tell you one reason. People know how to build projects, but they don't know how to build and lead teams of people. Construction comes with its challenges that only insiders truly understand. Generic leadership training doesn't cut it.

31:20You need a program to train your leaders built specifically for construction professionals led by an industry expert. And my online course, The Shift, is exactly that course. It has five modules. It'll teach your people how to control their calendars and reduce stress and embrace chaos and accomplish their critical tasks. It will teach them the three essential messages they have to communicate every day in order to motivate and lead their team effectively. It'll show them how to build and lead a high-performing team. Give them a framework for running effective meetings so they'll be able to solve problems in less than an hour.

31:59And also give them a higher perspective on their leadership. That will enable them to work on the business and on their teams and not get stuck in the weeds micromanaging. So go out to my website, theshift.constructiongenius.com, read all about the course, and then enroll yourself and your leaders in the course, and I guarantee that it will transform your leadership. If it does not, you take the whole course and you didn't get benefit from it, you just send me an email, eric.constructiongenius.com, and I will cheerfully refund you 100 % of your money. I'm really confident this course will transform your leadership.

32:36So again, go out to the website, theshift.constructiongenius.com. Learn more about the course and start taking it today. Yeah. Now, I know you guys have been working on some technology to help folks with performance reviews. Can you explain what you've been doing there and how it could benefit people? Yeah. So I developed a software platform called FieldCon. And the whole premise of this software is to make performance evaluations, conversations easy for the guys in the field. This is an important part. See, I think one of the things we do too is we got to have our performance evals in the office.

33:20We got to bring everybody off the job site. We have to shut down the job site. This software is designed to do it on a tailgate. Like go have the conversation on the tailgate, go have it in the cab of the truck. And the way it works is it looks at these gaps. So there are two areas it looks at. One is, do they fit culturally? Are they behaving in a way that's consistent with our core values and what we expect? And then the other one is, do they have the skills and abilities to do their job well? Notice I didn't say, do they do their job well? I said, do they have the skills and abilities to do it?

33:54Is the potential there? because if the potential is there, I've got something to work with. If there's no potential, now we have a problem. And it's a very simple process. The manager takes an assessment, usually around 20 to 30 questions, takes about eight minutes. And then they send the assessment to the employee and the employee takes the exact same assessment. Exact same, and it's one to five, scale of one to five. I mean, some of these guys, they blow through them in three minutes. And then what happens is the system takes that and analyzes a whole bunch of information to determine what is the proper review conversation going to look like, given what we know about the gaps, what we know about the role, what we know about the employee.

34:40And it literally writes the scripts for them. So when they go to sit down for the review, they could literally just read it and turn it into a conversation. And the conversations that have come out of this, the feedback that we're getting is I never was taught how to do this. Right. It was always a struggle for me because I didn't feel confident as a leader. I wasn't confident in doing this. This has given me that confidence and it's saving me a ton of time because my prep is literally a 20 question, one to five survey. And then for the field, this is the other part that I love about this is it's a voice first platform.

35:17So when you have that conversation, you just hit the record button on your phone. it records and transcribes the conversation and writes the entire performance review for you you don't have to type anything you don't sit behind a computer you don't have to worry about spell check it takes care of all of it that's interesting what kind of feedback have you gotten from people about this sounds too scripted or something like that you go through that process get a script and then you you're a little worried about being wooden or stiff or something like that am i just making that i haven't really heard that yet yeah okay for a lot of guys they just come in and they'll read it and it will feel wooden or stiff but you know what they get comfortable with it.

35:50It gets easier. By the end of it, they're loose. They're having a good conversation. And the conversations that are coming out of it have been fantastic. I mean, that's what I'm hearing from the superintendents and the foremen that are doing this, is that it makes the conversations easier because it's not, Eric, I have something to tell you. It's, oh, the computer is telling me that we're going to talk about this. Yeah. So it sounds like the first step then is the manager answers the question. The employee being evaluated answers the question. Then the script is generated, the conversation is had that is recorded, and then the evaluation is then generated based on the conversation.

36:28Yep. Excellent. And this is all without anyone having to do any writing or anything like that. They don't have to do any writing. They don't tune out. I mean, whoever's administering the platform's got some work to do, but we support them and all that. But as far as the managers, no, they don't have to do any of this stuff. Yeah, they're going to love that because the last thing they want to do is more writing. And then when it gets to the end and it says, hey, let's suggest a growth goal. Yeah. They click a button and it analyzes the conversation. It says, I think based on the conversation, here are three goals.

36:56Which one do you want to work with the employee on? That's good. They pick one and they're done. So if people want to learn more about that, where can they go? Fieldcon.io. F-I-E-L-D-C-O-N.io. Great. We're going to have links in the show notes to that. It's excellent. Ryan, awesome. If people want to get in touch with you and talk more about what you do, just tell us a little bit more about what you do. And I know FeelCon is one thing. I know there's other things that you do. Tell us a little bit more. Yeah. So Core Matters, that's our consulting firm. What we do there is we partner with executive teams, company owners, help them build the right team, whether that's in the field, whether that's the executive team, a team of people they can trust so that accountability becomes easier, so that results become easier.

37:41And ultimately, they get to have that business and that life they always wanted. I love working with the owners of these businesses because there's so much potential. And we built this whole system around it. We do a lot of the work for them because like we've talked about, people aren't trained on this stuff. So instead of training them and making them better, let's do the things I'm good at. They do the things they're good at. We'll meet in the middle and we'll teach them how to do it. That's excellent. And how can people get in touch with Core Matters? CoreMatters.com is the website. And if you want to connect with me personally, I'm really available on LinkedIn or RyanEngland.com.

38:17Excellent. Excellent. All the links will be in the show notes. This has been fun, Ryan. Really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us again today. Thanks, Eric. All right. So if you want to make accountability easier and performance reviews more useful, connect with Ryan Englund and learn more about FieldCon and you'll find all the links in the show notes. And if this episode helped you, like it and leave a comment with your biggest takeaway, Share it with other construction leaders who need to have better conversations with their people. Follow or subscribe to Construction Genius so you don't miss the next episode.

38:49And wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a show rating and review. That helps more construction leaders find us. Thanks for watching or listening, and we'll get you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to this episode of Construction Genius. Hope you found that 1 % of inspiration to help you in the next few days. If you like the show, please give us a five-star review on iTunes. Share it with other construction leaders who you think would benefit. And always remember that the show is brought to you by Kick-Ass Meetings. I've been working with construction leaders since 2004, teaching them how to run extremely effective problem-solving meetings that gets their people collaborating, taps into their creativity.

39:35And to get yourself a free copy of the Kick-Ass Meeting report, go to www.ericanderton.com slash kickassmeetings. Grab yourself that free report, read it, use it in your business. You'll find it extremely useful. And thanks again for listening.