Effectively Leveraging Trainers, Coaches, and Mentors

Contracting is a high-risk sport and the training of yourself, your managers and your craft labor should be as rigorous as a professional sports team.

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Contractors are facing a massive shortage of critical talent yet most contractors spend very little on talent development. 

Talent Development Tools: Effectively leveraging trainers, coaches and mentors. Quote: I invest a disproportionate amount of my income in paying for an ever-growing collection of trainers and coaches. Graham Duncan.

A valuable quote from Graham Duncan in the book Tribe of Mentors gets to the heart of continuous improvement. Consider that he invests and manages money for a living.  


Question:  What is one of the best or most worthwhile investments you’ve ever made?

“I invest a disproportionate amount of my income in paying for an ever-growing collection of trainers and coaches.”

Graham Duncan; Co-Founder of East Rock Capital

The highest performing companies, teams and individuals heavily leverage these resources.  Truly effective training HURTS and is not fun because it stretches you. This is the same whether you are training for something physical or mental.  If you are taking the time to invest in training make sure you put 100% of your effort into it; and then some.  


Learn more about how we approach talent development




Selling an Efficient Project
Doubling the pretax net margin for contractors requires both effective selling AND operational excellence. The majority of of people in construction contracting businesses are operationally focused on building the work.
End of Easy
Don’t give up just when the going gets tough, that should be your starting point. Know that most others have given up at this same point, so success and competitive advantage is probably just around the corner from when things begin to get tough.
Degree of Discretionary Time with Growth in Role Levels and Business Size
The degree of discretionary time that someone has in doing their job grows with their role level - for example from crafts person to VP of Operations. For similar roles, that time decreases with company growth as the job roles become more tightly defined.