Unlock the secrets to becoming a leader with unshakable integrity and the skill to make decisions that resonate deeply with your core values. That's precisely what Jeannine Martin from VRCA brings to our latest discussion. We revisit the powerful connections from our last interview and delve into the role that trust plays in leadership, particularly within the construction industry. Jeannine opens up about the profound influence that her mentors have had on her journey, offering a roadmap for how our trials and tribulations in our formative years can lay the foundation for the kind of leaders we grow into.
Prepare to be captivated as we navigate the complex terrain of nurturing talent, especially those in the critical two to ten-year experience bracket. These are the change-makers of tomorrow, and their retention is paramount to the longevity and innovation of any organization. We'll dissect the ever-evolving strategies of leadership development and the subtle art of succession planning, where adaptability is king. And as a special treat, we pull back the curtain on how corporate finance lawyers ingeniously craft buy-in and option plans, providing a ladder for aspiring leaders to climb. As the conversation shifts, we also underscore the life-changing power of personal finance education, highlighting how savvy investment can steer one towards lasting financial security. Join us for this eye-opening journey through the pillars of leadership and the transformative impact of mentorship and financial literacy.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
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Unlock the secrets to becoming a leader with unshakable integrity and the skill to make decisions that resonate deeply with your core values. That's precisely what Jeannine Martin from VRCA brings to our latest discussion. We revisit the powerful connections from our last interview and delve into the role that trust plays in leadership, particularly within the construction industry. Jeannine opens up about the profound influence that her mentors have had on her journey, offering a roadmap for how our trials and tribulations in our formative years can lay the foundation for the kind of leaders we grow into.
Prepare to be captivated as we navigate the complex terrain of nurturing talent, especially those in the critical two to ten-year experience bracket. These are the change-makers of tomorrow, and their retention is paramount to the longevity and innovation of any organization. We'll dissect the ever-evolving strategies of leadership development and the subtle art of succession planning, where adaptability is king. And as a special treat, we pull back the curtain on how corporate finance lawyers ingeniously craft buy-in and option plans, providing a ladder for aspiring leaders to climb. As the conversation shifts, we also underscore the life-changing power of personal finance education, highlighting how savvy investment can steer one towards lasting financial security. Join us for this eye-opening journey through the pillars of leadership and the transformative impact of mentorship and financial literacy.
PODCAST INFO:
the Site Visit Website: https://www.sitemaxsystems.com/podcast
the Site Visit on Buzzsprout: https://thesitevisit.buzzsprout.com/269424
the Site Visit on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-site-visit/id1456494446
the Site Visit on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5cp4qJE5ExZmO3EwldN1HH
FOLLOW ALONG:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thesitevisit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesitevisit
Welcome to the Site. Visit podcast. Leadership and perspective from construction With your host, James Faulkner.
Speaker 2:Live from BuildX Vancouver 2024.
Speaker 1:Janine hello.
Speaker 2:Hi James, how are you?
Speaker 1:Wearing Fuchsia. I like it.
Speaker 2:It's Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:It is, it's Valentine's Day, not?
Speaker 2:to mention pink's, my favorite color.
Speaker 1:I do. It looks very good on you.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Here we are at BuildX, you and me yes, from our last interview that we had. I really enjoyed that, by the way.
Speaker 2:As did I. Thank you, I think it was such a great experience. I told Craig it was so fun. I really loved every minute.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely thought that over a nice glass of French wine we could really dig into a lot of stuff. I also thought that it wouldn't necessarily always be a podcast conversation. I find you very interesting in general, so it would be really cool to even hang out one time and just chat. So that's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:That's lovely, I really appreciate it A new relationship.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Craig. Craig is over there in silence.
Speaker 2:But he's listening and I just Dashing a man. I just start. Craig is the best I said. Aren't you coming with me?
Speaker 1:Anyway, yes, he is.
Speaker 2:But I just started listening I haven't finished it yet your podcast last week with Jesse Unkey and Colin Cox. Colin Cox. I had not heard of him, but now of course I was looking him up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you should bring him in and talk about leadership stuff.
Speaker 2:I wondered yeah.
Speaker 1:He's really a great strategic thinker and sort of just thinks on a different level which is kind of cool. So what do you think of BuildX?
Speaker 2:I'm very impressed. It's very interesting, so busy, so many familiar faces, but also so much new. I haven't even made it halfway around yet. Yeah, it's pretty big, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It's like one of those things where you can't see the end. It's like the infinity lights.
Speaker 2:Indeed.
Speaker 1:I can't see where it's kind of like Star Wars in here, yeah. So how's things going at VRCA right now? You guys excited, got lots of initiatives you're doing.
Speaker 2:Things are going great at VRCA and in fact last night we had our annual general meeting and voted in our four new board members, which is great so who you got on now. So we have added a few people to the board. So Craig Ends from Elaston has joined. Ronan Dean from North American Construction, sam Bresden from Fort Modular, who also helps us with our reconciliation action plan, and then Nicky Keith from Wilson Beck.
Speaker 2:So, the VRCA board is somewhat balanced between general contractors, trade contractors, professional services and manufacturers and suppliers. So our board reflects roughly the makeup of those four areas.
Speaker 1:Well, that's cool. So you've got all those perspectives covered, so you can actually I'm going to look at my notes here. Because, the one thing that I wanted to Look how nice my notes are.
Speaker 2:Isn't that nice? Wow, that is nice.
Speaker 1:Formatted typeface and everything I wanted to chat with you about leadership and how. One thing that you and I have had a number of interactions over the past couple of months and what I noticed was you have an amazing sense of integrity in knowing instinctually how to do the right thing. Where did that come from?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you so much. What a compliment. That may be the best compliment I have ever received, so thank you very much for that. And I think it's. Built over time and different leaders, and certainly my family, my parents, you know you emulate actions that you love, that you feel are authentic and pure, and you adopt them as your own. And maybe not everybody sees them the same way. So I have worked for some pretty fantastic people, great sponsors, in my career and I have, I think I've, tried to adopt some of their approaches. Also, with age comes some grace and the ability to look at a situation, and not everything is black and white and some things are quite gray and, you know, elevating a reaction in times of stress is not a great idea. Things like things I have adopted over time, for sure.
Speaker 1:I mean, I would think it takes courage in order to conduct oneself that way, because it does have a vulnerability to it, because you've got to kind of put yourself out there with what you're trying to like. I always find that, you know, in order to do the right thing in business, sometimes you feel like you're putting yourself out in the wind sometimes and you could be blown over, and but you have to have that faith in yourself that you're doing the right thing. Do you with your teams and the career that you've had in the past? I mean, has this been something that has been a theme for you over the years?
Speaker 2:Sue, I've always felt quite passionate about certain things and willing to go out on a limb for those things. But some things that resonate with me is, you know, most recently, when I was at Carlson Construction, we had a leader there, chris Pirmett, who used to say to me I know you're going to make the best decision you can today with the best information that you have at this moment in time, and that is not to say that tomorrow that is not going to be the right decision. That is still going to be the right decision. And I think having someone put their confidence in your ability to make decisions and to build you up to the point where you feel capable of making a good decision gives you the confidence to go out on the things that you know and think are right.
Speaker 1:So Well, something along the way has enabled you to be like that, and it's kind of interesting. Can you think back of a time, maybe, you know, in your 20s or in your 30s, when you were not sure what the right thing was to do and then you did that and it paid off? Is there some kind of a situation where you're like, ah, this is how I learned this?
Speaker 2:So it's probably more. I learned it through making a lot of the wrong decisions. As they say, failure is how we figure out the future. But another thing that I would say is I think again with, as you progress in your career and as you are given, you know, the confidence and you are built up that comes with that, like there is some I'm trying to say it so so some privilege that comes with being in a position where, where one, what, what you say, people listen to, there's, there's a lot less, maybe people walking away or not going to oh yeah, don't adopt what she said so.
Speaker 2:So there's that, but there's also the privilege that goes with. Like, when I was younger, I needed to pay the rent, I needed to do these things, and so I probably was a little bit more cautious in the things that I did and said, whereas now, you know one, I'm smarter, so I am more firmer in my beliefs, but also I'm probably not going to lose everything because I make a wrong move.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:So I think there's some, there's some privilege is less at stake. There's less at stake, maybe, maybe less at stake because I'm less worried about losing it.
Speaker 1:I see.
Speaker 2:So and you're like there's some authenticity there, right? You can be much more authentic when you're not worried about what everybody is going to think or say yeah, that's true, yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you what are often? Do you have some sort of personal values that are things that you sort of abide by, like things that are you kind of say to yourself when you come into any sort of a conflict or you think of no, jeanine, remember, you do this, you do this, you do this and this is how we do things in in the, in the genie I'm going to the genie in a sphere. Is that a word?
Speaker 2:Genie in a sphere it certainly should be.
Speaker 1:Come on into the genie in a sphere everybody.
Speaker 2:I know I think that I don't have a mantra so much that I follow in that area, but I do try to. I think that the things that have made me the person I am today is people that have shown confidence and interest in what I was doing and built me up in a way that I felt more comfortable being who I am. I think that's the other thing. When I look at even our team at the VRCA, being able to invest in this group to let them spread their wings, doing the things that they love and building up their confidence to be successful, just makes me feel even better and more confident to keep doing the same thing. I think you follow some values and certainly I learned values from my parents and things that, as I always tell my son, if you never lie, you never have to remember what you said, these little mantras that we maybe think are pretty simple.
Speaker 2:Also, I haven't always been this way. But being kind, you don't have to get your point across when something isn't going right or whatever. Kindness is so important and it cushions any outcomes. When you are kind, when you take the time to be kind because you can say the same thing a lot of different ways, but if you can be kind, it will come across so much better. That's one of the things I think about a lot.
Speaker 1:When we look at we've talked about labor shortage, we talked about it on our last podcast and we think about the different generations coming into construction and the leadership that I think you are, via osmosis, putting through at VRCA. When you said kindness, I instantly went to thinking of there is a triteness of the younger generation of judging each other for lots of weird things.
Speaker 1:I mean it's an instant judgment based on how many followers do you have? Again, all of this sort of stuff Coming in with kindness is almost like an art now, isn't it? I can imagine that companies are having trouble making people actually care enough about everything rather than just being so transactional.
Speaker 2:I don't disagree at all and I think, when you look at the value systems of people coming into business now, and not value system in a way that they don't have values, in a way that they value different things, and I think we even touched on this in our last conversation whereas they maybe value more of their time out of work than they value the time in work.
Speaker 2:The investment in what that looks like is going to change the face of business, the more when I look at construction being so entrepreneurial that 90% of the construction companies are 20 people or less. That's an entrepreneurial environment. So you're either going to be an entrepreneur or maybe you're going to get a really good work-life balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the work-life balance, that's an interesting one. Craig's like uh-uh, not this conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't let Craig have any balance. No balance.
Speaker 1:No, it's work only Craig no.
Speaker 1:No, there's no balance. Csaw on the work side sorry, yeah, okay, it's a Craig. The CSAW social life up in the area. You don't have any. That's yeah I. So how do you with VRCA and just knowing you, this little time that we sort of spent in the genious sphere, do you find that you hear a lot of how do I deal with people? Problems from members Like how do I? Is there a leadership gap? Do you think that there is a? Is there a skill set? That's kind of missing.
Speaker 2:You know that's interesting. I don't certainly not a lot of people calling me directly to ask about that.
Speaker 1:For fair enough yeah.
Speaker 2:But I would say that, for instance, we were planning for a construction leadership forum. That's coming up in. May and when I go to the board and other people for feedback on what topics they think are hot for this year and what we should talk about. Absolutely like leadership development, succession planning, working with staff One of the things that I've well, I shouldn't say I coined it because I'm sure I didn't, but you know, this retention of this certain two to 10 year people is so important.
Speaker 2:And skills, whatever that skill is, and of course we keep reading the stuff that says it's succession planning, it's career planning, it's this, that, and this is an evolving topic because of course it was something else 10 years ago. You know, now somebody walks into the company and they want to know give you an actual charted path of how they're going to run the company some day.
Speaker 1:It's terrifying for some people.
Speaker 2:However, if you look at that and you look at all the companies that are out there, how many of them are going to look even remotely like they look today? Next year, two years or whatever. So charting that path has to be way more fluid and I'm not sure if you don't have the kindness, confidence building and investment in your people, that fluidity will go. Know what? Like people won't stay, of course.
Speaker 1:That's true, because it will inherently just be more transactional.
Speaker 2:Well, and you won't be able to have the kind of dialogue you need to have, where you say, hey, they know you're looking out for them, hey, something's changed. It's not going to look like we talked about.
Speaker 1:I'm still your sponsor, I'm still working towards this in terms relevant to that business, you know from dealing with a number of people that have put their succession plans together over the years clients of SiteMax, also other relationships I have in the construction industry. One thing that I think would be very beneficial to have perhaps as a resource would be a corporate finance lawyer to be able to talk about different option plans for being able to have succession work in examples, because some don't realize how creative you can get.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And you know there's different strike prices people can have based on different performances, options et cetera, and once that is there, you basically need to have the leadership be able to demystify a little bit, because the problem is you hit it on the head earlier is that market dynamics in the future. No one can predict the future, so everyone's kind of terrified. The younger generation is like I don't know if I want to sign up for this forever because I don't know where this is going to go, and they're like I don't want you to kill my baby. So it's like Well, you know.
Speaker 2:so I'm from the US and, let's say, 20 years ago in the US there was a huge trend, and it may still be a trend, but you know, the bigger firms were buying some of the smaller engineering firms and part of the reason driving this was the engineering firms couldn't succession plan. They had no one to hand this off to, and the mantra from the owners that we were getting because I worked for a company that was purchasing some of these was that there was people were no longer willing to risk their entire livelihoods to buy into ownership in a company. We're not willing to cash in their 401K or get a second mortgage on the house or things like that. They even then had that attitude that people weren't interested in doing that. But it's interesting when you say if you had somebody who actually explained what it took to do something like that, because it's not black and white, it's actually. You know, some of these buyout plans and the retention and all of that can be crafted in a way that people can have access, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting because you know there's like in the tech world in terms of corporate finance. I know we're sort of dovetailing a little bit out and fitting in from, you know, our leadership conversation. But what I find kind of interesting is that when there's always an impending possible acquisition of a company or a company going public, you know the word options kind of seems to make more sense because there's always this liquidity event, whereas if you have somebody who started a general contracting firm, it's a service business. You know, you wonder, you know, does the brand of the business live with that legacy of that person that started?
Speaker 2:it. That's a real risk.
Speaker 1:And so there's always the well, are you going to buy into my company, kind of thing, whereas you know in the realm of tech or in you know other corporate finance. It's like you just get options and then one day they're worth a lot of money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, that doesn't really happen. It's not terrible either.
Speaker 1:No, but I just don't think that that really happened. So you basically have these two different things that are competing and people hear about. Well, and especially in the youth, it's like you know, and the people in their 20s and their 30s are like, well, my friend works at Google. They got a bunch of options. He's like, oh, how does that work? And that's like, you know, you got somebody who's a project coordinator and they're like, okay, well, I don't have any options. All I got was like, if I stay here 10 years, I get to buy into this company. It's like what? There's this speed and this feeling like there's a miss out on something.
Speaker 2:So I think the corporate finance thing there's a lot of creativity that can be done to actually create excitement, and I think this goes to you don't know what you don't know, and sometimes you don't even know the question to ask to make something like that a reality. I saw this somewhat related to what we're saying. My friend sent me this chart the other day about if you had maybe you saw this if you had invested in the S&P you could have like 4%.
Speaker 1:You're an idiot.
Speaker 2:And I was like, no wonder, when I look at my retirement, I'm like did I save all that, or did I actually make some money? How did that even happen? Anyway, like I think it is not the kind of growth that I was expecting, and had someone educated me 30 years ago, I might have chosen to put that money somewhere else. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, I'm not going to say like, certainly it's okay, but I thought it would be more.
Speaker 1:So let's just talk about people with their go back to values again and leadership and how. Something about showing up. Do you think people are showing up like they used to? I don't know. You can say when we were.
Speaker 2:When we were younger.
Speaker 1:When we were, I think, killers as a song called when we were young All my favorite songs actually. But do you think there's a showing up part that people come and show up for things and are really realized consequences et cetera, like in construction in general?
Speaker 2:So there's certainly people who don't, no question. I think lots of times in those scenarios you have to look at the investment you made in them as a person and in their career. I always think like I would love to be 100% invested in almost every person I meet, but there's just not enough time to balance that all and so, and then when you look at a larger company, how do you scale that up?
Speaker 2:And you know I've got 10 people under me that I'm trying to teach to be this way, and then they have 10, each have 10 people under them and that's going to break down somewhere. Not everybody has the skill to do all of that, and so I think for lots of people, if you invest properly, you read the room and you create a career path for them, you can get them to show up, but it won't be passed. You can't passively get that anymore.
Speaker 1:No, you can't Like it doesn't come default. You kind of have to ingrain it in your company's culture. But it's interesting you say that because you know, you said it's. You get a lot of your you know values and beliefs from how you were raised. So there you have it in a way right, because when you think about how does how, do you have a company a certain way? Well, they've all, all the people there have all been raised in different ways and you try and suddenly have this company that's like well, now I'm going to be your parent or parents again and I'm going to try, and you know, indoctrinate you and I don't mean that in a negative way, but indoctrinate you in a new way of thinking, a corporate mantra or whatever that is, in order to conduct yourself at that company for the company's best interest. So what would you say? Is that a how? Would you say that people can navigate that diverse sort of onboarding of different ideas, like people coming in, like it's kind of complicated.
Speaker 2:It is complicated and you're right, everybody's been raised a bit differently and so they're going to approach things differently, not to mention every company is different and every leader is different, so what you're going to get out of that will be different. We are planning for a Women in Construction Leap conference on March 8th, and we were meeting with the CEO of Cape Group yesterday to talk about she's doing our fireside chat, and one of the things we were talking about is you know, authenticity is in right now. Right Like this is in fashion, but I think we owe it to our workforce to give them some guidelines around what authenticity looks like. That doesn't mean you know, for lack of a I always think of like. It doesn't mean that you show up like you're in Home Depot on a Saturday morning. It doesn't mean that you speak to me like you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:I remember there was this weird comparison of like what you would wear to work versus what you wear to Home Depot is kind of the way that goes.
Speaker 1:But like so we want to be authentic.
Speaker 2:We want to be true to our beliefs because it makes our lived experience better and it makes you know we get one life to live and I don't want to spend it pretending I'm someone else. But I also don't need everyone to know every single bit of my flaws, and I don't authentically. I slept in today, so I'm not coming in until like these things are you know.
Speaker 2:So we have to put some guidance around what that authenticity looks like. And also on the flip side and I think you see this a lot more now is that people coming into the workforce are looking harder at whether they are an authentic fit for the environment that they join.
Speaker 2:So, you have. You know those two things have to come together. But I also believe that if you never tell anyone what they're doing wrong, they're going to keep doing it. And we owe it to the people we work with to give them feedback on things that are happening and they don't. As someone told me once, feedback is a gift. The only response is thank you, and then you walk away and you can decide whether you implement that feedback. And so you know, you think, with staff, I'll give you feedback. You don't have to love it. If you don't adopt it, then eventually we maybe we're going to go separate ways, but at least you've not, I've not sat there going. She should know, he should know, they should know. And then you know we go separate ways without talking about it.
Speaker 1:You need to do a cadence workshop to school everybody about that. The tone is like yeah, okay, I get it, I like that you have a talent of being able to do that. Yeah, she's doing a little workshop for people. Like, okay, this is how you give people bad news.
Speaker 2:Wait, I have to tell you you will love this, and I wish I had some of my former staff sitting here, because I read an article the other day that made me giggle and I wanted to send it to them because they used to accuse me of being the queen of the compliment sandwich. I would say oh wow, you did a great job at that. Could have done better with this, but you did a great job at that. And then I read an article the other day that said the compliment sandwich is out.
Speaker 2:It's not a way to give feedback. I don't know that I do it anymore, Do I Craig? Maybe a little bit.
Speaker 1:It's probably like a negotiating technique yes, yes. I think, craig, you know, we said this like two parts sugar, one part vinegar.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, but yeah that's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, this is a short interview today. Love it, but I just wanted you to come by and see both of you.
Speaker 2:Well, we really appreciate the invitation and hopefully you guys are going to join us at 3.30 for cocktails in the VRCA connector lounge.
Speaker 1:Cocktails. I like that word.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:That's good. It's my favorite word Free. Okay, All right, Janine, thank you very much for coming by. That was really really good. I think we got some good nuggets there.
Speaker 2:James, thanks for the invitation. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash, the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.