Rules (which was followed by Now, Discover Your Strengths) argues that the strength of a workplace can be measured by employees’ responses to 12 fundamental questions. Carnemark finds three especially useful:
- Do I know what is expected of me at work?
- Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work correctly?
- Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
Asking these questions on a regular basis really opens up communications with employees and helps solve virtually any problem involving employee performance or behavior, according to Carnemark. “Most excuses with poor performance are, ‘I didn’t know I could do that,’ or ‘I didn’t know you cared.’”
Clay Nelson is amazed that more companies don’t consider such basic needs. A management consultant with many remodeling clients, he identifies “full and complete communication” as the key to organizational strength and immediate supervisors as the linchpins to employees’ success. “If you delegate something to someone, you’re still responsible for it,” Nelson says. “Check in with them, make sure they’re doing OK, ask, ‘Have I overwhelmed you?’ ‘Do you need anything?’ ‘Should we sit down and talk?’”
Jim Sasko intuitively understands the principles of strength management. Sasko is president of Teakwood Builders, a design/build company specializing in historic homes in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. He created the position of production coordinator expressly for Chris Levitas, whom he had hired as an “overqualified” lead carpenter with a background in architecture and with strong managerial, analytical, and communications skills.
“If Jim is the general manager of the team, I’m the coach,” Levitas explains. “I help leads accomplish their goals, and I sometimes act as devil’s advocate — give them direction when they need it, train them to overcome deficiencies, point out their positives and negatives, basically help them improve.”
In that regard, Levitas realized that although Teakwood’s six lead carpenters received all kinds of documentation — budgets, plans, specifications — they didn’t necessarily know what to do with it. They had Microsoft Project on their computers, but nobody was using it. (Levitas remedied this situation through basic training.) The leads were e-mailed job-cost reports, but they didn’t really look at them. “I showed them how to read the reports and how to forecast costs,” he says, and how to understand actual labor burdens in order to manage, for instance, a $1,000 budget for interior trim.
Like other strength managers, Levitas plays up his lead carpenters’ strengths. One who is extremely efficient but not as detail-oriented as some others, for example, isn’t likely to get that pristine Queen Anne needing intricate millwork repairs. And he relieves his leads of tasks that used to bog them down, such as scheduling.
“People would say ‘There’s a Teakwood way,’ but nobody knew what it was,” says Levitas of the company he joined three years ago. By comparison, he says, “today everyone understands that we do nice work and we’re here to make money, and there’s something in it for them if we do.”
“Maybe I’m overlooking some of the strengths people have,” says Sasko, who is considering adopting strength management more formally. Perhaps it’s something more remodelers should consider.