Elaine Wilson argues that construction managers need to focus more on soft skills.
As organisational effectiveness consultants, ASK is used to reading the trade press not just of our own industry, but also of the sectors with which we work. Doing so, we see similar themes run on and on (there is, it seems, never a shortage of interest in leadership development, or how technology can save us from a problem we might not have previously noticed), or rise and fall on the tides of managerial fashion. Whatever happened, for instance, to knowledge management as the magic bullet solution?
One topic, however, remains persistent across a range of sectors where technical expertise is a foundation of organisational success: helping staff to make the transition from expert to leader. No doubt the topic will already be familiar to readers of Construction Manager – although we hope that familiarity has not bred contempt.
The issues that this transition embraces – the difference between managing and leading, the shift from managing responsibilities to managing (and preferably leading and inspiring) people, the expectation of immediate success and the need for support and development while individuals make a transition that cannot be completed overnight – are important and complex, and the actions that are taken are often revealing of the organisations facing them.
The recent research work of Dr Amanda Goodall, senior lecturer in management at Cass Business School, has challenged some of the old assumptions, showing that in some sectors (medicine and higher education are two examples) an earlier career in an expert position can strengthen subsequent managerial or leadership performance – but the transition must still be made.
One crucial factor in making this transition a success is the environment in which it takes place and the organisational attitude towards its managerial cadre. Our experience of the construction industry is, without wishing to cause offence, that it is a sector that does not make it easy for its managers. This may be partly due to different aspects of the nature of the industry itself.
Construction is, by its nature, largely a project-based activity, operating in difficult economic times with the recent economic climate having been harsher for construction than for many other sectors. The combined effect is often to focus managers’ efforts – and the reward and recognition systems that influence them – very much on fee-earning activity and to leave “managing” as something of an add-on or external activity that is somehow “fitted in around the corners”. While the tasks in hand cannot be completed without people to undertake them, attention is focused heavily on the task.
The performance management process compounds the difficulty, in that managerial skills are rarely accounted for or measured: “managing” is seen almost as a kind of voluntary extra that “promoted engineers” might, or might not, undertake. While the industry can match any other sector for its verbal commitment to skillful management and the value of human resources, the size of the gap between what’s said and what actually happens should truthfully be unacceptable in an industry used to working to fine tolerances.
This is not, of course, to say that the construction industry does not provide development and training, although our perception is that it does so more strongly at middle levels. As passionate believers in the importance of learning transfer, the area of concern, is not provision but follow-up: even the finest training counts for little, while ironically wasting substantial sums in terms of financial investment, where the workplace environment does little to enable the returning learner to put their new skills into practice, or to provide encouragement and support while they do so.
The effect, to use a construction analogy, is akin to the creation of a lavishly appointed balcony with little structural support. Like the new skills, the architectural addition will soon become detached without due care and attention in ensuring that is integrated into the larger structure.
More pithily, the effect can also be described with a familiar phrase: “Do as I say, not as I do”. Too great an emphasis on a “command and control” style can lead to this approach being pursued at the expense of engagement, communication and coaching – and the expense of the benefits that they can bring.
And that kind of pithiness may, in itself, be an important issue. Often site-based in its working, and predominantly male, construction can be characterised – politely – as “a robust culture”. A construction site may be large, but its blueprints don’t often include a great deal of space for soft skills.
The CIOB Skills in the Construction Industry Survey 2013 showed 82.26% of respondents saying the industry faced a skills shortage; 82.02% thought the shortage would persist when economic recovers fully arrives. Yet asked which skills were specifically lacked, Trade, Technical and Construction Management Skills were listed ahead of Leadership Skills (mentioned by only 43%), and Soft Skills were mentioned by just 7.3%. Perhaps it’s also worth noting that (eg admin) appeared in brackets after the words “soft skills” – and for consultants in organisational effectiveness, the view that “admin” rather than “interpersonal skills” best typifies them is probably greater cause for alarm.
We have nothing against calling a spade a spade, but the conversations that may be needed to allow the industry to move on towards a more sophisticated approach to the development of its next generation may need a more nuanced vocabulary. Irony aside, the next revision of the organisational blueprint for many players in the sector should allow substantial room for what we might call a constructive approach.
Elaine Wilson is a managing consultant with ASK Europe
