In this episode of the Transform Your Workplace podcast, host Brandon Laws sits down with Gamut Project Solutions founder and friend Josh Durham to discuss his Foundational Five series and other timely leadership advice, all taken from his successes and failures over his years in construction project management. The episode highlights Josh’s insights on relationships, negotiation strategies, empathy, and the need for inclusivity and psychological safety in the construction industry and beyond.
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.”
THE FOUNDATIONAL FIVE
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.
This program aims to help individuals look inward — to their relationship with themselves — and eventually outward — to their relationship with others as the foundation of effective leadership. After all, according to Josh Durham, relationships are “everything” when it comes to leading well.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
When Stress Won the Day
“The last time I went down really sick, I was down for about nine weeks. You know, I’m thankful for it now. It was hell when I was going through it. And ironically, I never even stopped working during it. I worked from my bed. […] It gave me a lot of time just to think and reflect and ask myself, ‘How did I get here? Why am I in this bed and not out there being the dad and husband and son and friend that I want to be?’ And I, like so many people, worked my way into that illness. I put myself right there.”
The Power of Connection
“I couldn’t be doing the kind of work I’m doing today without going through all those challenging projects. I found myself in many pits of despair, right? […] But I look back now, and I reflect fondly and thankfully for all those opportunities. Even as hard as they were, none of them put me in the ground at least, but they were really challenging. And the construction aspects — the technical aspects of building — are challenging, yes, but it always came back to managing the relationships with people and communicating effectively with folks and leading them in a way that folks actually want to follow you and trust you. I didn’t learn that overnight.”
A Little Give and Take
“Early in my career, I figured out that taking the hard line all the time doesn’t really win the day anymore. Maybe it used to. I think it used to. And I think there’s still a perception that that’s the only way it is in construction, and it’s really not. There’s lots of other folks that, like me, believe in compromise, you know? And now, in part of the series that I teach, I talk about negotiating relationships.”
Stepping Into Their Shoes
Early in my career, I was all about knowledge. […] I always wanted to come into that discussion with all the facts, right? And that only got me so far. At some point, you wear people down so much. It doesn’t matter if you know all the facts, they don’t want to work with you. They don’t want to follow you either. I would say it was an evolution of realizing that the ability to meet people where they’re at, again, whether it’s a subcontractor or your own internal team members or a client or a designer —- whoever it is — everyone’s bringing their own stuff into the relationship, their own knowledge, and their own abilities. My ability over time to meet folks where they’re at and show empathy for their struggles is really what made me a successful leader.”
Changing the Industry
“The truth is this industry cannot remain a male-dominated industry. […] The vacancy gap is growing. It’s not shrinking. And part of that is because of that culture that this is just a job for guys. Particularly, it’s been white, male-dominated. That is changing, and it has to change for all the right reasons. If we want to keep building buildings, we need to give folks a reason to come work in this industry. And if it’s going to be an industry that’s based on shame-based and fear-based leadership that’s not inclusive, then you can forget about it.”
Safety and Productivity
“If you have a respectful workplace where people feel psychologically safe, you’re going to minimize the distractions on the site, and you’re going to maximize productivity, which all leads into the core things that any general contractor is focused on, which is safety,
budget, schedule, quality — all those core things that everyone knows how to talk about, right? […] So I think there’s a perception in the industry right now, because this is still a newer concept, that this is just kind of one new thing, another program, right?
Another shiny object that people are going to talk about for a little while, and then it’s going to go away. But I just couldn’t disagree more. This is core to creating a safe job site and safe workplace. And if you can’t have that, then you’re not going to have folks that want to work on your projects or in your company.”
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.