Leadership

Recently, I vis­ited a con­struc­tion site. It is a 50 mil­lion dol­lar bridge con­struc­tion job. The con­trac­tor build­ing the bridge does between 100 & 200 mil­lion dol­lars of con­struc­tion per year. I was meet­ing the man respon­si­ble for over­see­ing this par­tic­u­lar job. I spoke with him (a friend) on the phone, and he told me he was com­ing to the part of the job I was on. A crew of car­pen­ters was work­ing nearby. He drove up and got out of his truck. I noticed he had some­thing in his hand. It was a bunch of carpenter’s pen­cils. No big deal, right?! Until I thought about what was going on. Here is this guy, that makes 6 fig­ures a year, fetch­ing pen­cils for guys that make $10 an hour. Now I know this leader, and he under­stands what it means to empower his team. I swear some of the labor­ers on this job would go to war with him before they knew the details of the con­flict. My friend really knows what lead­er­ship is. He works to keep every­one sup­plied with what they need to do their job, whether that’s pen­cils or major deci­sions that affect the entire project. Next time some­one says they are empow­er­ing their team look to see what they really mean. Are they fetch­ing pen­cils or are they just abdi­cat­ing responsibility?