Why Trust and Culture Drive Results in Construction Leadership with Jesse Hernandez

In this episode of Activating Greatness, Alec McChesney sits down with Jesse Hernandez, construction leader and founder of Depth Builder, to explore what it really takes to build culture, earn trust, and drive performance in today’s workforce. Jesse shares his journey from execution-focused leadership to a people-first approach that prioritizes communication, accountability, and trust across teams. The conversation challenges traditional leadership thinking, emphasizing that sustainable results come from investing in people, not just processes. If you are looking to build stronger teams, improve culture, and create lasting impact in your organization, this episode delivers practical insights you can apply immediately.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Well, hello, hello. It's Alec here. I just wanted to jump in real quick before the episode and preview this a little bit. Jesse Hernandez is one of the most exciting individuals that I've come across with over the last couple of years. And certainly I feel lucky to have been able to interview him. He's a construction leader, a trainer, his own podcast. He does all of this content and really lives and practices what he preaches. Today's episode, while it's focused on construction, I think there's so much for all members of different industries to be able to take and learn from it. We talk about the overlooked investment within construction, other industries. Isn't technology, it's not strategy, it's people. And that human-focused approach can transform teams, it can transform results. And the construction case, it can transform job sites. I know you're gonna love this episode. It's absolutely a roller coaster. Jesse and I had a lot of fun. I think you will too. Enjoy. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Activating Greatness, the show where we dig into what it really takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact. As always, I'm your host, Alec McChesney. And every episode we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and change makers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Here we talk about the real stuff: leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results. Because greatness, it isn't a title, it's a choice. It's something that you activate every single day. So thank you. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Now let's dive in and meet today's incredible guest. Today's guest is Jesse Hernandez, a construction leader, trainer, and podcast host who brings a deeply human, execution-focused approach to leadership in the construction industry. Jesse came up through the trade starting as a plumber in the 90s, later working as a subcontractor before dedicating his career to developing construction leaders across the country. Does that with depth builder? He believes the value isn't a new terminology or flashy frameworks, but how leaders show up, how leaders treat people, and how they execute consistently. And in my opinion, he also creates some of the best content on LinkedIn. Uh, I've got that listed as ChangeMaker, but it's also him and Jennifer Lacey. You can find that Changemaker or no BS with Jen and Jess. Make sure that you go at the end of this episode and connect with them. His work centers on helping construction leaders build trust with their crews and trade partners, retaining top talent, earn preferred pricing and performance, and deliver reliable results, all by prioritizing people first. Now that was a mouthful, Jesse, but I had to do it because man, am I fired up about this episode? I I stumbled upon you months and months ago, and I knew you were going to be somebody that we had on this show. So thank you so much for spending your time, sharing your expertise with the Activating Greatness podcast. For those who aren't familiar with you, Jesse, uh, you want to add any more to that introduction and at least let me take a drink of this water here before I actually I'm gonna try to take some out because um I like to set low expectations.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

And what you just said was you set some pretty darn high expectations. Um, I think the most important thing that I want people to remember or know about me is that I first I'm a selfish servant, and I spend as much of my time as I possibly can helping the men and women in our industry do more gooder on and off the clock. Like I'm about the whole person. Um, I'm a production monster and I give a damn about people, but I didn't always care about people. So I want to make that clear. Like I was one of those, yeah, I was one of those. Um, but I've come around, man, and I'm excited to talk to you and and maybe drop some nuggets for for your audience.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, absolutely. And listen, one of the there's two rules that I have for the Activating Greatness podcast. One is that I make all of the rules, and so I can come up with any uh bad question, good question, all the above. And the second one is, you know, I'm gonna hype you up a little bit because in in preparation for this, right? Like I've had to do the deep dive on your LinkedIn and your content and how you present yourself. And I think the interesting thing, Jesse, that I have seen as an outsider from the construction industry, you know, really not knowing the realm of this business up until a handful of months ago and diving deep into the business as a whole, seeing so many individuals have this commitment to investing in the people and really putting people first. And before we got uh before we went live here, I was telling you about the the Matt Uliman podcast that aired a couple of weeks ago, and seeing somebody who a lot of people would perceive as a money bottom line business, and all Matt cares about is relationships and people and putting people first. And it gives me goosebumps. Like I have ready to run, I'm like ready to run through a wall. And I think you're you're part of that movement within the industry and putting people focus, putting people first, having that human-centered approach. So I'm gonna ask one of those bad podcast questions right out of the gate. What was the turning point? What was that? You know, you're coming up through the industry. What was that moment that said, hey, here's a light bulb, and I'm seeing that light bulb be clicked on for other people in the industry. I need to seize that as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:14

Yeah, there's two, Alec. The first one, I was uh plumbing foreman at the time, and my boss and former mentor, he's passed on since then. He pulled me to the side and he said, Hey Jess, you're really good at making money, you're really good at finishing on schedule, but our clients hate you and people quit on you. And I said, Yeah, I know you need to hire better people and get better clients. He's because I was just single-mindedly focused on making money, getting the work done, and I didn't care how many relationships I ruined, and really the metric is I didn't care that I had zero relationships after the project. Um, and so we were having this conversation, and he says, Okay, it's like you can continue operating the way you operate right now, and you're gonna be a great foreman, you're gonna make money and you know all the things. And I'm like, Great, because that's all I want to do. I just want to beat my peers and and kick butt. And he says, Okay, but here's a list of the people that are in line that are in the succession plan for superintendent, who were some of my peers. And I said, I ain't working for them ding-dongs, like they're meatballs, they're they're scrubs. I ain't gonna work for those guys. And he said, Okay, the problem, I can't put you on this list because of your the way you treat people. He says, if you want to grow your influence and like that you can have in within the organization and like longer term, you got to do two things. One, you've already got you're great at financial performance, but you got to develop people, and you have to do both really well to continue growing and advancing. And I said, Okay, well, what the hell do I gotta do, man?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah, what does that actually look like?

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Right, and so luckily, I was working for TD Industries at the time, amazing organization. They had the frameworks, um, the leadership development, and the philosophy. I mean, we were talking this was back in 2000, right? Um, we were talking that we had a culture before culture was like the hot topic. Yeah, so the culture there was serving leadership, and it's okay, we're gonna put you in these classes, you need to do them and do good, and that'll get you on the list. And I was like, Okay, I didn't now I want to be clear, I didn't want to be a superintendent, I just didn't want to report to dummies. That was my motivation, so that was step one. That was kind of where I started realizing, like, under learning about situational leadership and learning about communicating the plan and being setting clear expectations and like all of that stuff. I'm like, oh man, like if I just do that, I'd have less arguments, I'd be pissed off less. Yes, yep. It's so it started me down this path, and I was like, Oh, it's like a lot less friction. And um now it didn't happen overnight, right? It took a lot, but what the interesting thing was, and I think this is important and true for all construction professionals that are still in that like just get it done mindset, yeah, was the amount, and I'm gonna use some bad words here, Alec, but there is emotional burden that comes with operating that way. I know because I lived it, I just suppressed it, I just diluted it with substance abuse and self-medication. Um, and so it was an unsustainable model. When I started being more like human, uh, it wasn't as hard, and I didn't hate myself as much, right? I was a little and I got invited to lunch and I would get swag, and I'm like, what is this world? Like, this is weird, and all I had to do was just slow down a little bit and shift to focus on the people that I'm leading on how to best serve them to achieve the objective, and so over years, you know, I I didn't do it great, and I still have a lot of room to improve, but that was the first like slap in the face to say, wait a minute, it doesn't have to be done that way. Is it effective? Absolutely, is it sustainable? Not long term, and so that's that's kind of the determining factor that helped me keep an open mind and has continued me forward.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I I have uh I told you beforehand, I'm a goosebumps guy, and I'm like ready to run through the wall, even just that answer right out of the gate. Because well, two twofold answer and and maybe a follow-up question. The first is that organization recognizing your potential and investing in you as a person, right? And in whether it took a week, a year, 18 months, whatever it is, but showing you that there is a better way and recognizing that you have talent at one, two, or three things, but hey, we need to invest in you and not saying good luck, go do it, or if you don't do it, you're fired. But hey, look at what's the future. This is where you're headed, and we want you to get there, or there's you know, kind of the before and after type of approach. And that's that is something that not enough organizations do, they plan for people to fail, but they're not planning for them to succeed and investing in them to succeed. So the follow-up question, Jesse, talk to me now, right? Like you're I wanna, I wanna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna drill you a little bit on some specific questions within construction, but what do you do? Like, what are you integrating for teams on on a day-to-day basis? What are you preaching for lack of a better term, after those years of of learning and evolving and continuing to get better?

SPEAKER_01 12:00

Yeah, I think the easiest way for the easiest but convoluted way to describe how I do that now is because you know, now I'm a consultant coach trainer, and so I've historically I think our industry entirely has been super processed system focused because those are the easy things, yeah, right? Yeah, that's the easy stuff, and we completely ignore the like the human element, the the people part, and our business is a social technical business, yeah. All of the emphasis is on the technical elements of our business, the building and the you know, attaching. I I jokingly, but mostly seriously, uh, when I'm you know talking to a prospect folks that want to bring me in and do some consulting with them, they're like, Well, you know, we're considering these production systems, which one do you think is the best? And my answer is always all of them, every single one of them is perfect, yeah, until you put human beings in it, yeah, and then it gets messy, like it doesn't matter. Um, and so the point being, like we have to account for human beings being human beings, and so in terms of how I help, because I'm obsessed, I'm an obsessive maniac about process and systems and metrics and performing all those things, but I also figured out along the way that oh, there's there's this human element part, yeah. And interestingly, because of my career trajectory, right? You already said I started off as an apprentice, uh, four years of apprenticeship, foreman, superintendent. I had some pretty heavy responsibilities on the subcontractor side of the business. Then I went to the like a super big general contractor, I had regional responsibility, uh, and I had to learn how to play and dance on that floor. Um, and then I went to work for a national brand with national responsibility, and I had to play within those constraints. And what I was able to see was like, oh, we're all human. We all have the same problems. They might be a bigger revenue number tied to the problem, but they're the same, um, the same issues of how do we communicate, how do we listen, and people respond in in almost predictable ways. Like when you do, I'll give you an example.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Please.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Some leaders, I used to be one of them, come up with an idea to fix a problem because the problem hit my inbox. I don't like the red on my inbox, and I'm gonna send an email effective immediately, thou shalt do X. I don't care if you're a GC owner, uh, PhD laborer, everybody's gonna read that and say, Yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Predictable response.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Why? Because of the approach, and so that's a simplified example of what people can expect when they're deploying change. People will respond in predictable ways, yeah. And so the question then becomes how do we approach it so that we minimize the negative predictions and optimize for the positive prediction uh uh outcomes, right? And so when we're going through the processes, whatever, I always combine like, okay, these are the processes, these are the steps, and here's what we need to be thinking about or coming up with countermeasures against or in support of the human and social element of what will happen when you deploy this change. And I know that's a little fuzzy, but I think the summary is we're gonna do the system and we're also going to consider and take into account how people will react so that yeah, we can be prepared and welcome the reaction, harness the reaction so that we can cultivate trust. And then when we get to deployment, guess what? Is we're golden, like it we're trucking at that point.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Yeah, and one of the things that we talk about all the time at at velocity within this whole human is each of those humans also is different, right? And so you can send a message to Alec and Jesse. And Jesse, I'm gonna I'm gonna make some assumptions about you through uh all of the YouTube, uh, LinkedIn, and our conversations. You have you have a very interesting in our disc profiles and birds, you have a very interesting profile because you you provide parrot energy in terms of there's great vibes, I could talk to you for hours at a time. Everything you talk about from your background really reads owl and eagle, though. Like, hey, I'm just gonna get the damn thing done. I see, do the damn thing in the background on the wall, which I'm gonna ask you about in a minute. And then from a numbers and portfolio and PL, all of this stuff, it's owl. So you have this super interesting like, how do you read it as an owl? How do you read it as a parrot? And the way that I read something is also different than the way that Jennifer or Amanda or or John is going to read that message. And so when you send that email that says effective immediately, we're doing this, there's gonna be some eagles that say, I don't care, I'm doing this the exact same way. There's gonna be some doves that are frankly a little upset and sad. And they're like, Did I do something wrong? Did I and now all of a sudden all of these different chaotic circles are happening internally? And I say all that, I say all that as a everybody should know how your team communicates, what they want to communicate, like what that style is. But it goes back to this point of the whole human being and how essential that is in order for teams to be successful, for us to be able to remove friction on a job site, at a home office, in between the G the general contractor and the subcontractors, all these different parties at play, actually understanding where they're at and what they're looking for, and vice versa, gives us a leg up on the competition as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

Oh my god, a hundred percent. I mean, that's yes, right. We all have different responses, and again, they can be put in buckets. You're talking about the disc profile. There's a lot of these things that they're not new, we're like the same damn humans all the time, all the time.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

So, yes, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

That's what it is, and and we try to pretend or we've convinced ourselves, or maybe been conditioned to think that when I get the title, then they'll listen to me. That ain't true, right? When I get this certificate and this degree, then they'll listen to me. That ain't true, and yeah, I'll give you another kind of interesting example when I do like my favorite audience, or maybe another way to think about it, the demographic that I'm best equipped to serve is subcontractors because I spent almost 20 years on that side of the business from installer to you know doing all kinds of other managed middle management stuff, and I got insight for GCs and owners, so you know, like I could help a lot, anyways. Foremen are my favorite because that's the hardest damn job I ever had in my life, Alec. Like it not because of the work necessarily, but I had to shift from getting my instant dopamine hits at the end of at like at lunch, and at the end of the day, when I could turn around and see what I did to all of a sudden the the fruits of my labor was the production of other people, not me. That works hard, man. And I'm a dopamine fiend. And so, anyways, I ended up doing the designing some training to help foreman go from installer to foreman because everybody gets promoted to foreman, and then they get told how much they suck, but nobody can help them do better at the job. And so we had this whole system again when I was at the organ at T D and I was doing the training, and then I left, and somebody else took over the training. Exact same slides, exact same message, exact same thing. You know, we did the handover and all the thing, and the guys stopped doing the stuff. And I'm like, Why'd y'all stop? Like, y'all already know, like, dude, you can't get mad at us, you don't work for us anymore. It's like, yeah, I know, but like why aren't y'all still doing the training? And they said, Yes, but but it's not the same. And I'm like, Okay, you gotta tell me more. And it was awesome because they said, Jesse, when you teach it, you were teaching how to do you know, the one-week plan and the six-week plan and all the thing, measuring performance. You were doing that, and you said it in a way that it would make my day better if I used the tool, and so it made sense to me, and I tried it and I would practice it. The other guy says it in a way of if we don't do it, you're not fulfilling the expectations that project managers and production manager and ops manager, and I'm like positioning, right? I wasn't aware of it, but I remember when he told me, I'm like, Oh, so I've carried that into what I do now. And um, I know it's kind of sometimes I could see from like executives are like, What why are you talking about this? We should be talking about that. I'm like, I know, but like you said, it's about positioning. If I'm like the tool, the process, the system, whatever it is, if it doesn't serve the human first, it's never going to serve the business, right? Like it's going to be on life support forever. But if we can figure out how to make it serve that human being, they're gonna be more apt to do the damn thing and iteratively learn and improve, which ultimately produces the business outcomes that we're after. And I think. Where people get it twisted largely is there's I can't remember what book I read this from, but like when you're trying to deploy sustainable change, there's three types of we'll say feedback loops there's the human feedback loop, there's a social feedback loop, and then there's the business. And so what we typically do is we preach and position the change in terms of the business value, which is months, quarters, years before we can actually realize the business value as on the PL. Yeah, but it makes no difference on my check. The social value that's a little easier to see, but we ignore it, we don't design that into the deployment, and the human value, we don't even think about it, and that's the one we can make happen today, yeah. So that's kind of some of the stuff I bring to say, hey, let's think about this a different way.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

It it it's it's it's the positioning of it internally from a requirement to an investment at the at the business level and at the individual level. We get that individual buy-in. It they if they believe in it, they're more likely to do it, they're a part of that change. And I had uh an episode that just aired on, so today is March 17th. Happy St. Patrick's Day to those who are St. Patrick's Day's fans. I guess neither you're wearing a little bit of green. I'm not wearing any green. Um, you got a little bit of green on you. We the episode that came out yesterday was with Jose Sequet, the CEO and chairman of Pan American Life Insurance. And one of his comments about culture and people was you can't put an ROI on it. You if you are so stressed about ROI for culture initiatives or people initiatives, you're going to be unhappy. But if you do it right and you do it well in three years, you'll know it have worked. You you will have you will know that it have worked. And I guess that this leads to another question around, you know, when you and I first connected, you talked about, I think it was the pick and shovel approach to leadership development. And let's focus on execution, not new vocabulary. I love the not new vocabulary because I'm always thinking about like shiny object syndrome that people chase and everything that we've talked about in the first 24 minutes of this recording. To me, it's like, well, yeah, why would we not be doing this? Right. And so, what do we get wrong? What do we get wrong about training? Why are we not just simplifying this and saying this is a standard of operations, this is a standard procedure? Tell me why. I mean, I obviously you and I are in a little bit of the same shoes where we're both trying to sell into these companies that like this is a no-brainer, but but from your perspective, why did we get this wrong?

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah, I think I think I'm gonna tie it back to the ROI statement that you made.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Please, please.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Traditional business thinking is around AR ROI, and I completely get it. I got a business, right? There are metrics that I need to maintain, otherwise, I'll end up doing my plan B, which is dancing on tables, and nobody wants to see that. And so there are metrics that I need to keep track of, however, we overvalue those metrics. Like, this is a total Jesseism because those are kindergarten metrics. Yeah, anybody can measure them, nobody has manured measured anything differently. It's addition, subtraction, multiplication for forecasts, and division for quarters, like it's nothing fancy, any of the fancy mathematics only comes into projection, and that's imaginary. So it's kindergarten crap, but we let them govern us entirely, and so the things that are meaningful and impactful are extremely difficult to measure. Example What I love the most is talking to construction executives, they're like, We're here to make money and we want to get our return on investment, and those like, okay, so you meant, yeah, yeah. Like, okay, what were the metrics you used that made you decide to have kids? Right? Because if you were talking about ROI and PL, you wouldn't have done that, right? Like, you would not do that, and so when it comes to making the biggest decisions in our life, we don't have metrics for that, but we live fulfilling and we have miraculous experiences in life with or without the freaking metrics. So, anyways, where did we get it wrong? The pica pala, right? Pick and shovel approach. It is the simple that's why I said I take a pick and shovel approach because it's just the simple fundamental things in construction. A pick and a shovel, I don't know. A single job site did not not have to use a pick and a shovel at some point, and I don't care if it's a a snow cone stand or a mega billion dollar capital expenditure, they all have a pick and a shovel in them, and so, in terms of where we get it wrong as construction, as business leaders, as uh field leaders, etc., is we don't account for humans, and then even simpler than that, we get distracted and blinded by our assumptions, and we do not know how to listen. We are fantastic at talking, we're great at making mouth noise and calling it communication, but we cannot listen worth a damn. And so, fundamentally, those are the things that I see undermine hunt high-performing teams, or maybe the other way to think about it is because I've been able to travel all over the country and I've worked with hundreds of leaders. The small number of leaders, now I don't say companies because there's hot spots and cold spots in every damn company. Yeah, but the decision makers within those on those job sites or within those departments and the teams, the thing they all shared in common with the high performers where the team was thriving and growing and like they were making stuff happen, they valued people, they understood the value of pausing and asking more questions than speaking. They understood the value in contributing to everybody's path and success, and they didn't just pat everybody on the butt. When people were slacking, they took immediate action on the low performers, etc. And so fundamentally, it's that listen more, understand there's human beings, and don't get don't let the the PL, the those KPIs, OKRs, whatever stupid acronym comes out next year, govern the way you treat human beings, let it inform, but not govern.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah. I when I started at Velocity, I asked everybody, what is the through line for all of the companies that have been successful with Velocity? And to your point about recognizing the human, almost every answer was they believe that this was an investment in the company, not a burden. And that meant the investment in the people was an investment in the business, not a burden that we have to do. And that's the same for every industry that we work within. And one of the things that brought me so much joy in this conversation, our past conversation, a couple of other construction ones that I've had is what feels like this dichotomy of how construction is perceived and the change that's trying to happen on job sites and behind closed doors. Two weeks ago was Women in Construction Week, and you saw all of these unbelievable videos and content and stories about women leading the charge. I have my birds are right here with my eagle and my parrot, and I've had them since I did this process. And I'm talking to a uh an HR leader at a construction firm last week, and she goes, It's so funny. You're on the job site and on their hard hats, these grown men will have birds on their hats, and they'll be like, Oh, you owl, oh you parrot, and it feels like there is widespread continuity and agreement that the traditional preference towards toughness over vulnerability, over conversations, over communication is going by the wayside. Is that a sentiment that you agree with? Is that am I am I just seeing that because I'm in a little pocket? You're you're all over the country. I feel like you're in a different location anytime I connect with you with a different team. Is that a sentiment that you're seeing? And have you noticed that change over the last couple decades as well?

SPEAKER_01 31:15

Yeah, so I I'll say I have seen a dramatic change. I mean, back when I was in the field, like doing real work, if I saw a woman on site, she was either with the staffing agency or secretary. Um, and that's not the case anymore, right? Yeah, they're freaking the the executive of the project, like and and I and it needs to be that way. Um, yeah, and I also know like back in the day when when I was with T D, we were doing a lot of like uh collaborative planning, last planner system, a lot of kind of things that that are kind of the norm with the caveat with an asterisk. I'll come back to the asterisk. And so for it was uh absolutely abnormal that we were doing it. All the general contractors we worked with are like, what the hell is this? Just go go work. We're like, no, like you gotta get things organized and let's let's understand what the workflow is so we can make better decisions. Um so back then it was rare, yeah. Uh fast forward, and I'll say in the last we'll say the last 10 years, dramatic shift that people are even talking about substance abuse, mental wellness, women in construction, like that wasn't a conversation. I think social media helps amplify that, or maybe gives us um uh an overly optimistic perspective of what's actually happening. Because in the bigger in the bigger organizations, or maybe another way to think, when I say bigger, like within the construction companies that work regionally or even have offices in different parts of the country, there's a high density of those being on the front end of understanding people, behavioral-based safety, and these types of progressive programs. When you get into outfits that are just local to one business unit or one state, that ain't the same. And guess which one is the largest volume? It's the locals. And so the I think if we counted, and I don't know, this is me just talking, but if we counted the number of organizations that that can say they're doing something progressive in terms of uh appreciating and valuing people, the majority would be the bigger organizations that have a larger footprint nationally, right? Um the smaller ones, it would be uh just like it used to be. Now, that at the same time, those larger organizations with bigger full footprints, I've played with a bunch of them. Yeah, and I've been on a lot of their projects, and I know a lot of their leaders, and a small percentage of their leaders are the ones that are like, hell yeah, they're the people I'm down with. The majority of their leaders are just like the other one, and so I think that there's a uh compensation reward um thing that's out of alignment, but that's that's a whole different episode.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah, it I I love that you said that LinkedIn social media might be overly optimistic about it, right? And I think that's a it's a really important lens to take a look at. Social media is a great tool for a lot of reasons. It's also a negative tool, right? And it's gonna amplify negative news if you seek out negative news. And certainly within LinkedIn, I'm not over here trying to seek out negative news. And so I'm able to see a lot of that content. That is, because you mentioned the substance abuse, depression, uh, all of the things that come with the industry. You do see a lot of content talking about that, but it's still only eight percent of the industry, right? That is that active and engaging with it. And there's uh a long way from the LinkedIn to the job site in you know, Sedona, Arizona, or whatever location it is. And and I think the positive sign is that there's more voices in those conversations. There's more leaders like yourself, there's more leaders asking those questions, right? And I think for a long time they just didn't know what question to ask. And and now, especially one of the things that we're seeing is the Gen Z generation that's coming in, there is this huge gap between them, even the millennials, and certainly older generations that on a job site, expectations are way different, skill sets are way different, requirements for me for that individual to want a job somewhere are way different. And companies have to react to that. And it's kind of a a Trojan horse, if you will, of trying to solve some of these problems from within without the companies maybe even necessarily knowing that that's what's occurring by having that generational gap between the teams.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Yeah, no, I think it's the perfect storm, right? Like, yeah, if if I if we if we could map it out in terms of intensity of change to uh adopting or maybe reconciling the fact that people are important, I would say the last five years it's been it's just freaking hockey stick, right? Now, what I say the perfect storm is we have the exodus of experience because the baby boomer generation is leaving the industry. Um, we have this newer generation, and props to them, man, because they're like ultimate advocates for themselves, like they got a skill set that I never had. I'm learning it, but man, I love it. Like it pisses me off, but I love it because you have this situation, and and we've had a gap of people coming in. So, what's happened before where employers could just throw money at people and and advertise you know competitive wages and benefits like everybody does that, shut up, big deal. Yep, you can't throw money at people anymore, there's just not enough people to do the work. This generation is not gonna tolerate being uh neglected or abused, and the old the the folks that did tolerate it, they're gone. Yeah, so you have to like you have to dramatically change the way you're doing business, and you see it. Some people are going real hard at AI and technology and tools and ERPs and all the stuff, which those things are fantastic, but they do not solve people problems, man.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

They're a tool, it is a tool in the bucket, it is a tool in the bucket, but it is not going to solve not only the people, but just people decisions, hiring decisions, the way that you're you build up your team. If you're if you were making bad decisions for before, you're just gonna make bad decisions faster, right? Like that's all that you're going to do from that process. And I you said it about the money, and this is something that you know we really look at from the Gen Z to the different generations. And I I had a I sent out a poll a couple weeks ago to to to some of my connections that are uh spanning the different uh generations, and I said, Would you take$25,000 extra dollars to work at an office five days a week, or would you give up that$25,000 to work at home the five days a week? Everybody under the age of 27 said, I don't need the$25,000. I would like to be at my house. And everybody over the age of 35 said, I will take the$25,000 and I'll work in the office. And it was 10 people, but it was like so obvious that one direction was going to go this way and another was gonna go this way.$9,000 or a 2.5% raise is not going to make somebody stay if they're unhappy in that generation. They want those programs, they want to know that you see them as a potential leader, that you have a pathway, a succession plan, a career plan, a career program. They want to be invested in at the human being level and see the impact for the company more so than they want a 1.5% cost of living raise that isn't going to impact their check that much anyway. Right? Like let's let's just call a spade a spade on the 1.5% raise anyway. So it's really it's a really interesting time. Um, and I don't know what direction everyone's gonna go, but I think there's gonna be clear winners in about three years. There's gonna be clear winners who invested in this and made it a priority intentionally.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I'm seeing it now, and when I'm like, you know, I've had this weird observation because I've been doing training and stuff for a long time, but here in the last we'll say six months, what I've noticed is I got a lot of people that are interested and asking questions. And when I say a lot of people, I'm talking about the ones with the highlights, like me, right? And the young people, which used to be the situation was the guys with the the with the highlights, they sat like this. Yep, and as soon as class was over, they were gone. And so I saw that as a signal like they're looking for a different way, they're done with they clearly have surrendered to the old way ain't working, there's got to be something different. So I reached out to some of my friends, Jennifer Lacey, Sean Moran, a few people that I know that are you know involved, like have national reach, and they're like, you know what? I'm kind of seeing the same thing, and so the what I see is like the people, grassroots, right? The superintendents, project managers, project engineers, foremen, installers, they want a different experience, they just don't know what that does that look like, yes, right? And so the decision makers, the leaders, the project leaders, the department leaders, the business unit leaders that figure out how to systemically demonstrate appreciation for everybody that comes on their job site, they're gonna win, they're gonna get the talent, and when they get the talent, guess what? They're gonna produce better outcomes for their clients, which means they're gonna be able to lower their costs, gain market share, and smoke everybody. Like, there is no doubt in my mind that that's exactly what's gonna happen. Even you're confirming it, right? And so I'm just here for like those leaders out there. They're like, hey, I know I want to do it differently, I don't know exactly how to do it, and maybe I'm not good at connecting with the field. I can do that, right? I can help you, I want to help you because there's too many people working in a situation where they're not gonna thrive and they're not gonna grow, and those decision makers within that firm don't care. I want to free those people.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yes, I this is coming right out on LinkedIn. That's a LinkedIn snippet uh next week, uh, because it's it's so good and it's uh it's a fantastic segue for us to get to the the rapid fire questions before I get you out of here because I just looked down. I told you I looked down at one point and it would be 40 minutes in, and here we are. We easily could record two or three of these. Maybe we'll do a we'll do a uh 2027 episode, like we'll we'll do a forward looking. I do want to say you said something there that has been a crux, uh it's been an obstacle for teams and individuals for all of eternity, which is I don't know what different would look like. And that is not a reason to not find different, that is not a reason to not ask for different, it's not a reason to not try to find a new way. And so if you're hearing this, and whether you're in the construction side and you're like, ah, this all makes sense, or insurance, life science, whoever it is, the saying I don't know what different would look like is not a reason to not pursue different. We have to find better ways to do business, and and this is a perfect example of that, Jesse. Four rapid fire questions, about 30 seconds each. Uh, we'll see. I don't I don't think that you're gonna be a 30-second each kind of guy. We'll we'll see. We'll see what we'll see what you come up with. We're just gonna go uh rapid fire. Uh, first question what is one leadership habit that you rely on every day?

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Oh, so one leadership habit that I rely on every day is making giving myself permission to make myself a priority, meaning food, like nutrition, exercise, sleep. I give myself permission to get more sleep than I want to. To go and get the damn workout done and to craft my day so that I'm not eating garbage. Like that, because you know, that ties into everything else.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

I love that answer. And there have been many guests that have talked about, like, oh, I, you know, I want to get up in the morning and I have, you know, I have to have this. I just love the way that you said it because it's not going to look the same every day. I can't wake up at 4 a.m. every day and have a workout, like especially with the daughter at home, like it just looks different. But hearing, I'm giving myself permission to choose and invest in myself and make myself a priority, uh, that's fantastic. Question number two What's the most underrated skill that a leader needs in order to be successful?

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Oh, easy. Listening, the ability to listen, internalize, and take action based on the intel you have gathered to serve the person in front of you. None of that service, beautiful stuff happens if you can't listen.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Listen to understand, not to respond, right? Oh gosh. I love that one. All right, number three, on the opposite end of the spectrum. What is one thing that you believe great leaders should stop doing?

SPEAKER_01 45:15

The one thing that great leaders should stop doing is um abusing themselves for the less than outstanding outcomes that they want to achieve. Uh, they need to give themselves grace and and look at how far they've come and how big an impact they've had on people's lives, not just within the PL statement, but outside of the office, at home, the families, their families, the generations that they're actually impacting. Uh, one bad quarter, it's just ink, man. But there's real lives out there that you're affecting.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

And when you allow your yourself grace and you allow to give yourself grace, it shows up for the rest of the team, right? They they see that, and we all need to be a little bit better at that because it's easy to give it to somebody else, but it's a lot harder to give it to ourselves. All right, last one here of the rapid fire. What's the best leadership advice that you've ever received, Jesse?

SPEAKER_01 46:18

The best leadership advice I ever received was make a decision and go with it. I got that from Ed Mauricio. I was an apprentice, a second or third year apprentice when I got paired up with him. He's a pike fitter welder. Um, and he he I was overthinking. I get caught up on the layout of the mechanical he's like, Jesse, make a decision and go with it. You won't know it's wrong until you make a decision. And if it's wrong, guess what? We'll learn and we're we'll adjust, which is where the whole do the damn thing comes from, right? Make a decision, take a step, and everything else will reveal itself.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

That's uh we we we like to reference that as the sometimes you just gotta eagle up, you know. Eagles don't need every every piece of information. Uh get to 60, get to 70, go trust it, and then you learn, you learn and adapt. Um, I'll put you on the spot one more time. Who do we interview? Who do we interview next, Jesse? Who is somebody that you come in with? You know, and by the way, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a video of you saying this and I'm gonna send it to him, and I'm gonna say, Jesse, put you on the spot. You gotta come on the show. Who who are we interviewing next? Who's somebody that the Activating Greatness Podcast network and audience can learn from?

SPEAKER_01 47:33

I'm going to say, I mean, I have a list, but the one I want to recommend is Miss Stephanie Wood with Cold Build Construction. Or anybody at Cold Build Construction, they are doing things. I think they're creating a um template, a blueprint, a playbook for transforming the industry exactly like you and I believe it should be. They're doing it like they're actively deploying it right now. I love it. I don't know anybody that any organization that is taking these kinds of steps to make an or craft an experience for everybody that comes on their job site, like nobody. So Stephanie is is your person.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

She she's on the list. She's gonna get a video of you ranting about that uh at some point in the next week or two, Stephanie. We look forward to to getting you on the show, Jesse. This is exactly what I wanted it to be, exactly what I thought it would be. Before we get you out of here, we wrap up this episode of Activating Greatness. Final thoughts. What's something that you would want everybody to take away from this discussion today in the construction industry? You know, what's that recap that you're you feel really confident in and excited to push on people?

SPEAKER_01 48:52

Yeah, the one thing I want the the audience out there, the activating greatness nation to take away is sure, things might stink, but you can transform the world one world at a time. And the best way to do that is share your gifts and talents in service to others. If we all did that, it would be a much better place.

SPEAKER_00 49:18

For those who are listening, not watching, I just dropped pretending it was a microphone. I can't drop the microphone, but I that's also that's coming on LinkedIn. That's uh that that's coming out on on LinkedIn. You will see that snippet on there. Um, I I think that it comes back to that find a better way. And I think that is just such a it's a beautiful sentiment. And one of the recurring themes, Jesse, I'm gonna get you out of here, I promise, but one of the recurring themes of all of these episodes, we're now, I think you're episode 28 in in 2026, and we are just off and running, has been that we can make work better. We can make work human, we can make work better. We have to do it for 60, 70, 80 percent of our lives, depending on who you are and when you started and where you're at. Let's let's put it in a way where it's not something that we have to dread on Sunday night, and that is not meant to be cheesy. It is not to it's not meant to be that you're gonna wake up and get in the ice bath and then the sauna and the mouth tape. I do wear mouth tape, it's really good. I'm not gonna lie, I don't do the other two, but it's not meant to be uh a fake thing, a fruit fruit thing, like an unattainable thing. We can we can do better. And if it stinks today, um, you might not change the world overnight. But to your point, you change three people on your team's world, it will feel like you changed the world, and you will feel that at the individual level, and frankly, you'll feel it at the business level too. So um that's my that's my I just you got me fired up. I told you, Jesse, that you would be everybody's listening to this and they're thinking, what a great episode. Make sure when you see this, that you leave it a five-star review. Continue to download, leave the comments, but go find Jesse on LinkedIn. Um, his content is fantastic, and he is who he says he is. And that's something that I really believe in and super passionate about. You're gonna sense the energy from this 51 minutes, and then the next couple of times that you see Jesse on LinkedIn, you're gonna have that same energy. So go connect with him. Um, go check, go follow the change maker, the no BS with Jen and Jess, um, and and just continue to make an improvement one day, one decision at a time. Jesse, uh, I'm gonna let you go, but I cannot thank you enough for spending the afternoon with us and spending this hour. I think people are gonna really enjoy this episode.

SPEAKER_01 51:42

Good. Thank you, brother.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

Absolutely. As ever, as always, everyone, thank you so much for listening, for being part of the community of activating greatness, and we'll see you on the next episode.