The Experience Gap: Building Safe, Effective Leaders

Rob Jones | Leadership Instructor | Echelon Front

Leigh Conducy | Director of Mobile Training | Missouri Valley Line Constructors JATC

Melanie Russell | Vimocity

Hello, and welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us today.

Today's topic we've been hearing about more and more across the utility and construction industries.

Organizations are navigating a growing experience gap as experienced workers retire, newer employees take on more responsibility, and teams work to maintain strong safety, communication, and operational performance.

At the same time, many employees are stepping into leadership roles earlier than ever before, often with strong technical skills, but little formal leadership training.

We're going to talk about what organizations can do to develop leadership capability earlier and why leadership principles matter at every level of the organization.

Before we jump in, just a quick note on how to make the most out of today. This session is being recorded, so you'll be able to go back and reference it or share it with others.

Feel free to drop any questions you have in the chat at any point, and any questions that we don't get to during this live event, we'll make sure to follow-up via email after the live event. We'll also be sharing some awesome free leadership resources at the very end, so stay tuned for those QR codes.

All right, let's get started. My name is Melanie Russell, and I'm a communications specialist with Vimosity.

For those who are unfamiliar with Vimosity, we work with safety and operations teams to help prevent common injuries by delivering practical expert led content to crews across the places they work. I'm really excited about today's conversation because we have two guests who bring different and very complimentary perspectives on leadership development.

First, we have Rob Jones. Rob is a leadership instructor with Echelon Front. He's a retired US Marine combat veteran and an expert in applying leadership principles to high consequence environments.

Today, he helps organizations strengthen accountability, communication, and performance through the principles of extreme ownership.

We also have Lee Conducie. Lee is the Director of Mobile Training for Missouri Valley Line Constructors, JATC. He works directly with apprentices, contractors, and utility organizations across the industry.

Lee brings a unique perspective because he's seen firsthand how leadership challenges are showing up in today's workforce.

I'm going to turn it over first to Rob for a quick introduction.

Go for it.

Yeah. No. I think that you did a great job of, introducing me already, but my background is I spent five and a half years in the Marine Corps. I was a combat engineer, so anytime we were out and about in Afghanistan, it was my job to go out and try and find hidden improvised explosive devices, find safe paths through the the areas that we thought there would be IEDs in there somewhere.

And you can't see that on camera, but in two thousand ten, I stepped on an IED, and I lost both my legs above the knee. And I went on to do a bunch of things in sports. I went to the Paralympics, rode my bike across the country, ran thirty one back to back marathons. And like you said, now I'm a leadership instructor at Echelon Front.

I get to go around and teach people how to lead themselves and lead other people so that we can all work together towards a common goal and accomplish the mission.

Awesome. Thanks, Rob.

Lee, same for you. Give us a quick introduction and tell everyone a little bit about the work you're doing.

You bet. Thanks, Melanie. And thank you, Rob. Truly, you're an inspiration to a lot of people.

And I just am blown away by everything that you do and that you bring. So thank you very much. My name is Lee. My last name is Canducy.

I'm the I run the mobile division, but I am a lineman by trade. And I've worked all across the United States as as a journeyman lineman, on distribution, transmission. I've also been a director of safety for one of the largest union contractors in the United States.

My passion's in training and in leadership, and I love what I do. I just am appreciative of Vimosity and allowing me to share what I know, and hopefully it makes everybody better. So thank you.

Awesome.

Thanks to you both for being here today. So let's just jump right into our discussion.

Lee, I want to start with you because you're spending a lot of time with apprentices, crews, organizations.

Can you tell us what's different about developing leaders today?

Well, everything's changed. And I mean, I think if you look back to like when I started in the nineties between now and what a job site looks like from every level of management, of operation teams and how performance teams and the type of work that we do and the type of equipment that we do and how we do it and the tools that we use. Everything progressively is growing exponentially. And that's definitely It's definitely shown us that we have huge learning gaps when it comes to teaching, how I was taught how to do trade versus how we have to teach the people that are trying to do it today.

And that's just a huge responsibility that we embrace, but we also have to embrace how unique and different it is. And that's really hard when you're used to doing something one way and you have to learn and grow a completely different way.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's something a lot of people listening can probably relate to. And you mentioned that we're asking people to take on more responsibility earlier in their careers.

What are some of the biggest gaps you're seeing between what new leaders are expected to do and what they've actually been trained to do?

You know, I think that the truth is is that our trade has spent so much time being like a skills base. There's so many skills that you learn and need to know to be competent in what you're doing to do your work.

And over the past forty or fifty years, we've really focused on getting the work accomplished and not building the person themselves as to how how how to be a better leader. And how does a leader, be better? And how do how do you and the other thing that I think that pops up is with high performing teams is there's so many teams out there. We're all fighting or competing against each other. That's created an elevated need to to increase the efficiency and the performance out on the job sites.

And so every team is looking for every edge that they can possibly get when it comes to bidding work. And so that what you see from that is an underdeveloped leader and an overdeveloped executive team that are bringing all these tools and concepts and ideas into their world. And they're not ready for all that. And they have never had training on all that.

Yeah. So now turning over to you, Rob. When organizations invest heavily in the technical training, but don't invest in leadership development, where do you tend to see that show up first?

Yeah, one of the things that tends to happen is people usually get elevated to formal leadership positions based on the performance in their technical job. So we think that since somebody is good at performing the job that they've been hired to do, they would probably naturally be good at leading other people, to do that job. And sometimes that works out, but quite commonly, it doesn't work out quite as well as we would expect because leadership is different from doing a technical job. Leadership is being able to influence, interact with other people, and influence them, and galvanize them towards working towards the same common goal. It's it's dealing in human nature. It's not doing the the job of alignment. It's it's a little bit different.

So when you don't invest in teaching people and training people how to lead other people, all the metrics that you measure, the performance of the team are going to decline. The way that we usually would measure that or collate that would be in the four laws of combat. Cover, move, simple, prioritize, execute, decentralized command. So cover, move is about teamwork.

So when people aren't leading each other to work together towards to work together as a team, then teamwork falters. The people on the same team will start to compete against each other and work against each other. And, obviously, when you don't have people that are working together towards a common goal, the performance of the team is going to decline. It's gonna go down.

Second law of combat simple is all about making sure that everybody understands what we're supposed to be doing. They understand the mission and making sure we're communicating effectively what the mission is. And, obviously, if people don't understand the mission, mistakes are going to happen. You have to rework certain things.

People are gonna be confused, and that's gonna decline the performance of the team as well. Third law of combat, prioritizing us execute is all about making sure we are focusing on the right priorities at the right time. So when we all start working towards the same mission, problems are gonna arise. Situations are going to change.

Priorities are gonna change. So we have to make sure that everybody's focusing on the right priority at the right time. And fourth law of combat decentralized command, that is all about making sure that everybody on the team is empowered to lead. So people are gonna be out there experiencing problems, and they're if they can lead, if they can make decisions on their own from their position, they're not gonna have to be checking with the boss to make to ask what they're supposed to be doing.

They can make decisions in the moment, and that's gonna make a huge difference not only in safety, but in making sure that the project stays on time, on budget, and the performance of the team continues to increase.

Yeah. I think that brings up a good point around when people hear the word leadership, they immediately think supervisor, foreman, manager.

And like you've mentioned, one of Echelon Front's core beliefs is that everyone is a leader. So what does that mean in an industry where leadership is often associated with a title or position? And what are some examples of leadership from people who aren't a supervisor yet?

Yeah. There's a there's a classic view of what a leader is, and that is somebody that stands up in front of the team, and they're yet barking out orders, telling everybody what to do, directing everybody over here, and they're very loud, and they're getting to people's faces, and and that's what a leader is. It's a person that goes around telling everybody what to do, and they control everything. But that's not effective leadership.

So what we believe is that everybody on the team is a leader, which means that everybody is empowered to make decisions at the at the very frontline level. That's what it means. You are empowered to make decisions at your level, and every person on the team, the decisions that they make can affect the overall mission and can guide the team regardless of whether or not they're a frontline person, the CEO of the entire company, whatever level they're at, they can make make decisions that help the mission become successful and guide the team. And so a a very common, issue in with being alignment in any kind of blue collar industry is is safety.

So a way that a person can lead in the situation, or a good example of this would be if they see somebody doing that something that is unsafe, but they're just alignment. They're not in charge of anybody. They're not there to tell anybody what to do. They can say something.

They can lead. They can interact with that person in a way that keeps them safe or reminds them of what our safety procedures are, and they can prevent a safety incident. They can prevent a person from getting hurt. They can prevent a person from, from dying.

So that's just one example of how a person can can lead from their level in a way that seriously affects the mission.

Yeah, absolutely. Great examples there. And one thing that I've heard you both mention is the idea that leadership really isn't about the position, it's about ownership.

That kind of leads perfectly into the concept of extreme ownership that you are so familiar with. So what does that actually mean in regards to safety and operations environments?

Extreme ownership, in order for any team to be successful, every person on the team must recognize that they are responsible for everything that affects the outcome of the mission in any way. That means they're responsible for all the problems, figuring out what the solutions to those problems are, and taking the actions to make it happen. And along with that, that means that they're not gonna be making excuses when things happen. They're not gonna be pointing the finger and blaming other people when when things happen.

They're gonna be be accepting the ownership of the situation. And what that does is it empowers you. It gives you control to solve problems and to make things happen. Because if if something happens on the job site and I point my finger at Lee and I say it's his fault, Lee points a finger at me and says it's my fault who's working on the problem then.

Nobody's working on the problem and then time is gonna go forward. No changes are gonna get made and the same exact thing is gonna happen over and over and over again. But if something happens and I point the finger at myself, Lee points to figure at himself. Now both of us are working towards finding a solution to that problem.

That problem's gonna get solved, and then time's gonna go on, and that's probably not gonna happen again because we took ownership of it. We took the responsibility, we solved the problem, and we made sure it's not gonna happen again. So extreme ownership is taking full, complete, total, absolute one hundred percent responsibility for everything that affects the outcome of the mission.

Yeah. And that's, you know, such a powerful way to think about it.

We you know, I would love to know what does ownership look like on a high performing crew?

So first off, Rob hit on something that's really unique. Okay. So extreme ownership is amazing. It's incredible.

I've embraced it. We've embraced it at Missouri Valley in our program and our apprenticeship, and we continue to teach ourselves. There's something that he hit on though that's really important, which is extreme ownership is taking ownership of everything within your, within your leader, anything in your world. And so for operations teams and safety teams and leaders that are in those management levels, one of the things is you can, if you want to truly every accident that happens usually happens in the field.

So it's very easy for you to point your finger at the field.

And this is a trick here because you're pointing your finger. You're listen. If you wanna blame the worker for everything that goes wrong out on a job site, you can do that for the rest of your career until you retire because you can always blame the worker. You can always find fault in everything that they do, whether it but the truth is is an extreme ownership.

And what does ownership really look like is when operations teams and safety professionals stop blaming the worker and start looking at operational success and what they can do to infuse their ownership of what's happening on the job site. So when something goes on around on the job site, it's my responsibility. There was a breakdown here. And so you asked me to kind of highlight what does it look like?

And I would say sometimes what it actually looks when I say when you say look at something, I naturally think, like, visually to look outward and I can see something. But a high performing team, I don't necessarily need to look at what they're doing. I could actually look at what they're doing through the lens of their documentation, which every organization definitely has a record logbook, requires our workers to perform daily job briefs and working procedure. High performing teams that take ownership of what they're doing, you're going to see processes and procedures and those documents, could pull them for weeks and months.

And I could look at every single day that they go to work. You can see what they're doing, how they're doing it, who's doing what, who's accountable for each specific task. And that's done just in the documentation phase. And then when we actually are able to travel ourselves out to the work site, what you see are those teams, everybody is involved.

Everybody is a part of what's going on. Everybody understands what their task is.

And when there's a and ultimately, though, when there's a breakdown in the system, when somebody gets hurt or when something goes wrong, everybody from safety to operations to the field, because they have to take ownership of that too. But as a group, what they all do is own that there's a gap there and work to fix it.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's so helpful to hear what high performing crews are doing right and how to strive for that.

Rob, anything to add in regards to maybe common misunderstandings that people have around ownership?

Yeah, I think to Lee's point, I mean, what's the difference between a high performing team and an a not a high performing team? Is a high performing team, they make less mistakes, and they're able to do their job more effectively. And so how do you get more effective at being able to do your job? Well, you recognize your weaknesses, and you take ownership of figuring out how we can strengthen those weaknesses.

And how do you make less mistakes? Well, you make a mistake, and then you figure out how you cannot make that mistake in the future. And that requires everybody on the team to take ownership of the mistakes and take ownership of making sure that our team is as good as it can possibly be and as effective as it can possibly be. So that's the difference between a high performing team and, you know, a lower performing team.

Yeah.

Lee, I'd love your perspective on, again, the reality in the field here, because I think a lot of people listening probably have experience where they were promoted or they know someone that was promoted and suddenly they're managing people who used to be their peers. So where do you see organizations struggle most when trying to create accountability without damaging that trust?

Melina, you always say, like such difficult questions, but also difficult questions often have like pretty simp simple answers. You know? And and I would say that enforcing accountability is, you know, how or if you're a safety professional, you think to yourself, how do I make the people in the field do what we're what's expected of them? And the the you know, before before they've earned the foundation that makes accountability work, you have to have clarity and consistency and connection. And when those three things are missing, accountability feels like punishment instead of leadership. And most accountability problems, they're not actually accountability problems. They're relationship problems.

They're communicationship problems. They're expectation problems that show up as accountability issues.

Yeah, and like you said, this is such an important topic and can be difficult to bring up. So appreciate you both diving in and giving us all the GC expert insights here. And I think we've talked about a lot of the challenges and what good leadership looks like.

Now let's dive in a little bit deeper on how organizations can actually develop it.

Lee, anything to add for what you've seen the best organizations are doing today to develop leadership skills before someone gets promoted?

Absolutely. And I think you have to really, if you want to start at the beginner level, before you get promoted, you have to have a pathway to promotion. And you have to make sure that the person is prepared for what the role is. Before you expect them to perform, you have to prepare them.

And so I think that more organizations are starting to drive like a true like leadership foreman development program. That's more of a systematic approach. It's where you're seeing Vomosity and Echelon Front bring in such value and the military perspective of getting like a high risk operation complete. Well, how do they do that?

And you're seeing this is how we do that. It's not just we go in there and take care of business. There's a process, there's a procedure, there's a checklist, there's check sounds, there's constant communication, there's read back that's happening. That's like, in our term, in our world, we might say that we use three way communication or in their world, they might use the term read back and we embrace that and we understand it, but we never truly like, if you go out and see people missing the opportunity to actually do that.

And so a formalized training is needed for foreman and for leaders in the industry.

Rob hit on it earlier, which is we often take the highest performer and make them the leader.

And that is weird to think about because just because you're the highest level performer doesn't automatically categorize you as somebody that's good at like making Rob a better, you know, like teaching and leading somebody. It's like a different category. You can be the best lineman in the country and you can be absolutely horrible at teaching people how to do what they need to accomplish. And it can be very frustrating if they've never had training for that because they're trying to teach somebody how to do something, not realizing that it might be as simple as them being left handed and them being right handed.

So just to that clarity is more training and better prepared for the technology out there, for the work orders that are coming through, how to do a procedure, how to fill out the processes, how to do a checklist, all of those items. If you haven't been prepped for it, but you just say, hey, he's great, he's high performing, your thought processes is he'll figure it out. And the truth is, is that some of them do for a while, but I'll tell you what else that is something that's not talked about enough is there's a burnout level with foreman in our industry. There's a huge burnout rate where you see them do this for a long not a long time they get to this spot and they're just like you know what for the money this is too much.

Yeah. And I think one thing I really appreciate what you both have said is that leadership doesn't start when you get promoted.

So Rob, what are a few leadership habits someone can start practicing today even if they don't supervise anyone yet?

Yeah. I mean, what I would do is I would the first thing I would do is really teach yourself to take ownership, to take extreme ownership. So what that means, like what? I said it earlier.

So you're gonna be I I defined it earlier. So what that means is you're gonna be looking for opportunities for you to take ownership of problems that happen and figure out how you can come up with a solution and also be looking for opportunities to take ownership of maybe not problems that are going on, but take ownership of of things that you see that that need to get done. If there's any anything that may be that may be needing to happen and nobody's doing it, take ownership of of doing it. And then also figure out how you can apply the laws of combat, cover moves, simple, prioritize, and execute, decentralized command, figure out how you can be applying all those different laws of combat in your in your daily life, on the job because there's just doing your job is a form of training.

But the the difference between it being training and it just being you doing your job is if it's training, you are aware of opportunities to learn something and to and to try something and to practice something. So I would I would recommend be looking for opportunities to take ownership and take ownership. And then also just one more thing, I would be looking for opportunities to build relationships with other people on your team, which means you going to be figuring out how you can support them. You're gonna be building the five components of a relationship, which I know I talk about in the videos that we did together, trust, listen, respect, influence, and care.

Look for opportunities to build those five components with other people.

But then but other than that, just look for opportunities to utilize the laws of combat just throughout the course of your day and just do things that are in the best interest of the team.

Yeah. And that's super helpful to hear. And, Lee, if you're a leader listening right now and you're thinking, okay, this makes sense.

It's kind of a lot to take in. Where do I start? So what can someone do to accelerate leadership development within their teams or organization?

I wanna do a plug for Vimosity here, but you really have to because there's something important going on with the Vimosity movement. It's why I think every contractor in the United States is going to you're going to see them start utilizing this this type of service, because what you're doing is perfect, what you're what leaders in the field need to do right away to start getting this is showing people what good looks like. That term like what good looks like in quick in quicker fashion, in the way that learners learn. People are swiping, and people are learning and swiping in, the TikTok and the Instagram and the in those types of worlds.

Actually that's the way we should develop our program. Showing people what pulling wire looks like. What does good look like as you're doing it? What does it good look like when you're getting in and out of your vehicles?

What does good look like when you're communicating with your foreman or with your apprentices? What does a good job brief look like? People learn really quickly when they see and they can replicate. It's how I learned how to do our job really well.

And when you watch somebody do something and then can see it and replicate it, it's one of the best ways for a leader to, and having a tool, providing them with a tool that allows them to see what good looks like.

We have so much going on, and there's so much information. But when I'm really quickly show them like, this is what this is what I wanna see. This is what a work zone of protection looks like. This is what it looks like to set, to work inside of an energized corridor. This is what good insulate, isolate. This is what good cover looks like. This is what good driving skills looks like.

People gravitate towards that and they see it as a value because for them, for us as craft workers, our entire life's monetization, our ability to make money is founded upon our ability to conduct the work.

And we have to be able to do that at a high level. And so that's why I kind of fell in love with Vomosity is because when alignment sees like, Hey, ergonomically, I see a huge benefit in the right way to do this or the right position to be in. You don't even have to sell it. It's very easily relatable and understandable. And you're right, it's easy to see that. So that's my take on that.

Well, it's amazing to hear that, yeah, we're resonating with you and people in the field. No, I didn't pay Lee to say that, I promise.

But yeah, I just love all the practical takeaways that you have given this audience on leadership and how it applies in the field. I know we're coming up on time, I'd love, Lee, if you could start if every attendee could implement one thing tomorrow to strengthen leadership within their organization, what would it be from your perspective?

Yeah. The one thing I'm hoping you're willing to share it, Melanie. It's probably my one I hope I hope you're able to attach it and give it to everybody. But I'll tell you the one thing, the best improvement is not with everybody around you, but it's actually with yourself.

And so the one thing I encourage people to do is a development guide and to build a development plan. I've provided you with the one that we often give companies and work with organizations. It's one of the best ways to fill it out as best as you can. Go to your boss, have a blank one to hand to that one, give them a copy, tell them that you'd like to be a better leader and that you want help.

It's funny. It's like, we're so focused on training everybody else and what did everybody else need? And the truth is, is most problems are my problem and it's not about fixing the person outwardly, it's about fixing myself and so the people on the call walk out of here is like you need to work on yourself and I'll tell you when you when you focus on yourself as a leader, the people around you become better leaders. And so there's no excuse for you not to improve.

And the development plan is a great way to put leadership into action. That would be my number one thing is take the development plan, fill it out to the best that you can and find somebody else. And listen, if your boss, if you work for somebody and you're like, yeah, he's not the right person for this, maybe not. Well, find somebody that is, and it'll make you a better leader.

Yeah, I love that. Investing in yourself is so crucial and we'll definitely make sure to send that out with the recap and additional resources. So if you would like that, you can download it.

Yeah. Thanks, Lee. And then Rob, for you, if someone is early in their career, wanted to become a better leader starting today, what's one principle that they should focus on first?

Well, I already said extreme hardship, so I'm not gonna say that one again. What I'm gonna say is, be intentional or just seek opportunities to lead. Look for opportunities to lead. That's what you need to do.

And then when you seek out those opportunities, you need to be intentional in developing yourself as a leader. What that means is plan, execute, debrief. So you're gonna come up with a plan. So you're gonna see an opportunity to lead in some capacity.

You're gonna plan out how how am I gonna do that? What am I gonna do with this opportunity? You're gonna execute your plan, and then you're gonna debrief. You're gonna sit down afterwards and say, how did that go?

You're gonna ask yourself, what I do right? Or what went right? What went wrong? And what can I do better next time?

So you're gonna sit down and you go, alright. How did that interaction go with that person? Well, this is something that went well. I maybe I'll do that again.

This is something that did not go well.

And then what can I do better? Alright. Next time, I'm gonna try this thing. So maybe I I went to Lee and I had an interaction with him and I said, I said the wrong word.

Alright? I the way that I put that last thing that I said to Lee, obviously, I got him fired up and it insulted him in some way. So I'm not gonna say that again. I'm gonna figure out how to say it a little bit differently.

And you come back. Excuse me. Then you come back after that debriefing, you come up with a new plan. And then next time you have an interaction with Lee, you go out and you execute your plan.

And then you debrief your plan. And then you use that debrief. You come up with a new plan next time I go and talk to Lee. So it's about being intentional.

Plan, execute, debrief, and then just so just finding those tiny little improvements you can make on a day to day basis, interaction after interaction, and that is how you get better at leadership. And remember that leadership is all about executing the laws of combat, simple or excuse me, cover move, which is about teamwork. Simple, make sure everybody's on the same page. Prioritize next to you, focusing on the right priority at the right time, and decentralized ban, which is everyone leads.

So those are the four laws of combat that. When I say look for leadership opportunities, look for ways that you can execute those four laws of combat.

Yeah. Amazing. I really just wanna thank both of you for sharing your expertise and insights today. I know everyone walked away with so many valuable takeaways. And thank you everyone who joined us on the call today.

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Thank you.