Why construction SMEs rise and fall on behaviours

Projects rarely go sideways because of a lack of skill. They go sideways because of poor behaviours, weak accountability and culture drift that no one identifies early enough.

If you run a construction business in the £1m to £5m range, the craftsmanship on site is rarely the problem. It is the leadership operating above it.

Culture is not a poster in your office: it is what your team sees you tolerate.

And in construction, tolerance can get expensive. Poor handovers turn into rework. Sloppy communication becomes a dispute. One person ducking responsibility becomes a whole team firefighting.

This is where leadership earns its money.

A residential refurbishment contractor in the south east, turning over around £2m, was struggling with projects consistently drifting past programme. Nothing dramatic, just two or three days slipping here and there, which eventually became one to two weeks. The owner blamed client changes, supply delays and subbies being “flaky”.

But the real problem hit one Tuesday morning on a £450,000 renovation.

The project manager failed to run his Monday site walk. The groundworker claimed the architect had changed levels. The architect insisted the RFI response had already been issued. The client thought she had signed off the revised drainage route. Everyone assumed someone else had clarified it. No one had.

Two days were lost on site while the issue was resolved. Materials were redelivered. The client’s confidence took another dent. On paper, it was a minor delay, but in reality, it revealed a culture that had drifted into passivity.

The owner’s mistake was simple. He believed systems alone could fix behaviour. He rolled out a new programme template and a site-startup checklist, but never followed through on the leadership habits required to make accountability normal.

Once he confronted the culture head-on, everything shifted. He reset expectations, put in short weekly huddles, clarified what good communication looked like and held people to it. Within six months:

The work ethic had not changed: the leadership had. Strong culture is a multiplier. Weak culture is a leak.

In my Develop Mastermind Roadmap, the Scale pillar focuses on leadership because it determines whether your business stays at £1m or grows beyond it. When an SME owner steps into real leadership, three things appear immediately:

If any of these three drop, the culture becomes accidental. And an accidental culture kills performance.

Leadership in construction is not about inspiring speeches. It is the daily behaviours you reinforce on site and in the office. It’s the tone you set in meetings. It is what you call out and what you let slide and how you behave when a client is angry or a supplier is late.

If the team sees you blame, avoid decisions, or rush through problems, they mimic it.

If they see you stay calm, take ownership, and address issues early, they mimic that instead.

Behaviour is contagious. The question is which behaviours your business is catching.

1. Define the behaviours that matter most

A construction business needs more than generic values. You need behaviours that are observable on a live job. Therefore, you must define:

If you can’t see it, measure it or call it out, it is not a behaviour. And if you don’t define behaviour, the loudest personality on the team will.

2. Make accountability routine, not personal

Many SME owners avoid accountability because it feels confrontational. But accountability is not conflict, it is clarity.

A simple weekly rhythm fixes most of this:

Three short touchpoints reduce confusion and force small issues to surface early. Issues that are ignored for 48 hours cost you money; issues ignored for two weeks cost you reputation. Routine beats charisma.

3. Call out drift early

On construction sites, culture drifts in the same way a project does – quietly and gradually.

Drift looks like:

If you tolerate drift, you endorse it. Strong leadership catches drift while it is still small – a two-minute conversation on Tuesday prevents a two-week delay on Thursday.

4. Show the behaviour first

If you want calm communication under pressure, you must model it when a client kicks off. If you want tidy sites, your visits cannot be rushed or chaotic. And if you want punctuality, you have to show it yourself.

Teams copy what leaders do first, not what leaders say.

Your site managers watch how you talk to clients; your quantity surveyor watches how you respond to variations; your operations lead watches how you react to mistakes.

Leadership is surveillance and your team is always taking notes.

5. Remove the wrong behaviours fast

Every SME has at least one person who quietly undermines standards. The talented but toxic senior chippy. The project manager who delivers but leaves a trail of damaged relationships. The estimator who hides mistakes.

Keeping them sends a message to everyone else: results matter more than behaviours, trading short-term output for long-term instability.

Construction teams mirror the energy of the people you tolerate. Removing one behaviour problem can immediately improve morale, communication and pace.

This is where culture becomes a leadership decision, not a team activity.

Some owners worry that focusing on culture sounds soft. It is not – it is commercial. A stronger culture improves:

In the composite project above, stronger leadership behaviours created tangible results:

Culture is not about being nice, it’s about reducing friction. Friction kills profit.

If you want to know whether your culture is working, check these signals:

When leadership is weak, the opposite happens. People hide problems, communication becomes erratic and every project feels heavier than it should.

When leadership is strong, everything feels lighter. Issues still happen, but they are owned and resolved faster.

Culture is the weight that sits on your team’s shoulders. Leadership decides whether that weight is manageable or crushing.

You get the behaviours you enforce, you lose the behaviours you ignore.

Strong culture is built in small moments:

If you want your team to step up, you must step up first.

Accountability is a gift, clarity is a relief. Behaviour is the battleground: lead the culture you want and the results will follow.

2026 might only be another year on the calendar, but it can be a turning point for your business if you decide it will be. 

You do not need perfection, you need intent. Show up with clarity, set the tone early and hold the line even when it is uncomfortable. If you do that consistently, the shifts will come faster than you expect.

Make 2026 the year your team feels your leadership, not just your workload. The year the business runs with more confidence, more discipline and more pride. The year you step fully into the leader your company has needed.

Start now – 2026 is waiting.

Greg Wilkes is founder of Develop Coaching and author of Building Your Future.