In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, industry expert Josh Durham, founder of Gamut Project Solutions, delves into the critical aspects of leadership within the construction industry. Drawing on his extensive experience overseeing multimillion-dollar projects, Durham introduces the Foundational Five program, with a specific focus on the aspect of personal leadership. Through insightful anecdotes and practical advice, Durham discusses the power of making thoughtful decisions, delegating effectively, and fostering trust, collaboration, and transparency.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Josh Durham is an expert in the construction industry with over seventeen years of overseeing complex projects worth over $1 billion in various sectors. Josh founded Gamut Project Solutions to offer guidance and support to his clients as they face the high stakes of commercial construction.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
LEADERSHIP AT EVERY LEVEL
Gamut Project Solutions offers a program called the Foundational Five, which provides practical tools and focuses on leadership, relationships, and communication. The five guiding principles — agreements, communication, leadership, agency, and relationships — are based on recent guest Josh Durham’s personal failure stories and the lessons he learned from them.
Today’s episode focuses on leadership, and we’re not just talking about leadership “by title.” Leadership at every level is, at its core, “personal leadership” according to guest Josh Durham. He explains, “The old saying that I didn’t make up is that you can’t lead others if you can’t lead yourself first, right? And so the core of the leadership principle is really based on how you lead yourself through life, and yes, how you lead others as well.”
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
What Makes a Leader
“I’ve had some really great leaders in my personal and professional life, and I’ve had some poor ones too, and I think I’ve learned a lot from both, but one of the core things about the leaders that were great ones for me that, you know, I try to embody as a leader myself is those are the folks I knew when I had a big problem that may or may not have involved them, I could call them and knew I wasn’t going to get reprimanded for the problem. I was going to get advice and guidance. I’ve had other leaders who are the last person that I would want to call and talk to about the problem because it would be an accusation session rather than something productive that I can use to solve whatever issue I’m bringing to them.”
Masked Leadership
“This type of leadership is designed to protect your own interests. First, the goal is to have and maintain a position of power and a title. This type of leadership usually uses fear or threats to lead and influence others. Someone who’s leading like this typically does not admit their own mistakes and is going to blame others for failed outcomes. And then, ultimately, at the end of the day, I say that masked leadership is less efficient and more costly for organizations. […] There are plenty of organizations, large organizations, out there that use this approach, and sure, they’re getting away with it. It’s happening, but I promise that they have a higher rate of turnover, and they are simply less efficient.”
Purpose-Driven Leadership
“This type of leadership is authentic and transparent and meets people where they’re at, and that creates trust and agency. It generates honest communication with team members, which is core to having a high-performing team. It’s going to encourage knowledge sharing and collaboration. If that honest communication path is there, you’re going to have people more willing to share and collaborate with each other. A really key piece of this is it invites people into a shared story that gives every person in that story purpose, a reason for doing the hard work, right? And this approach also acknowledges that there’s no courage without vulnerability.”
You’re Not the Centerpiece
“I think it was Andrew Carnegie who said, ‘If you hire dwarves, you’re going to stay small. If you hire giants, watch how big you’ll get.’ That’s the idea behind purpose-driven leadership. Be vulnerable. Be okay with not being the center of knowledge and power in your organization. Distribute that and empower other folks. Ultimately, it’s got to make your job easier and less useful, right? If you spread that knowledge out and empower others to do great work, then you’re not having to do it all.”
The Power in Waiting
“The older I got and the more folks I had to lead, I really found that taking a moment to think and then think again about the decision you’re going to make and what those ripple effects are is highly valuable in this fast-paced business world that we live in. Everyone wants an answer and a decision right now in this very moment, […] and while, yes, sometimes that works — and intuition and gut and experience all play into that — taking a pause to make a thoughtful choice about, the big decisions that you have to make as a leader is critical to your success and to the success of the people that are working with or for you as well. Because our decisions as leaders ultimately impact so many things, whether we’re talking about construction or whether we’re talking about an HR firm, it all still comes into play.”
An Actionable Mission
“I think mission statements turn into these big fancy silver tongue paragraphs that become useless. Our script is very simple. It’s actionable, has tangible deliverables, and they have an end. Missions have an end. So a mission statement is not something that stands the test of time. Those are your guiding principles. Missions have a beginning, middle, and end, and they have some sort of tangible outcome. So in our organization, we have three different missions going probably all at once, but they all have tangible deliverables and they all have an end. And then we set out on new missions when that one is accomplished, again, based on the guiding principles of the company.”
Holding You Back
“If I were going to try to pick one thing out of the air that has been and still can be a trap for me as a leader is trying to solve everyone’s problems for me, right? Thinking I have to be the one to solve every single person’s problem that works for me or works with me — like not delegating effectively to other people, too. […] I’m not saying it’s a bad trait, but it’s a detrimental trait to your growth as a leader, and it’s also holding back other folks from being able to grow. We have a limited amount of time to solve issues every day. And we talk about it in the leadership section that time is the most finite resource on earth. It’s not lithium or fossil fuels. Even the richest people in the world can’t make more, and so the way that we treat our time is absolutely critical.”
LEARN MORE
Find out about the Foundational Five Series and more at the Gamut Project Solutions website or connect with Josh Durham directly on LinkedIn.