As an electrical contracting company that has been in the industry for over 30 years now, we’ve had our fair share of seeing disagreements and knowing the difficulty of what conflicting personalities on your team can mean for productivity.
“Every day you have to deal with varying personalities, and the truth is, not everyone gets along. At times, management has to play “the parent” and stop people from arguing and sometimes even stop people from fighting. You have to learn how to deal with everyone in a professional manner, and the key is to put people on the best task that suits them specifically.”
- Daniel Stall, Project Manager
As Daniel mentioned, the key is to put people on the tasks that best suits them. When you bring people together onto a team with a common goal, in our case it’s getting an electrical contracting job completed according to our company’s values (on-time, on-budget, and on-schedule!), you have to really assess what peole are truly good at. Someone may be better at more detailed pieces of the job, while another may be better at seeing the bigger picture and laying the groundwork, as examples. Regardless of what someone is best at, it’s up to management to get a clear picture as to who fits where and put those puzzle pieces together in a positive formation.
So, if you’ve been having issues on your team and it’s hurting the productivity on your jobs, it could be a great time to assess if everyone is doing the best tasks and making sure that everyone is in alignment with what they’re really good at.
What we’ve seen is that often when people feel challenged with doing certain tasks they’re not extremely comfortable with, or there are too many “cooks in the kitchen” so to speak, that could be the root cause of any disagreements, fights, etc. that cause issues. An electrician isn’t just an electrician, as always, each person has their unique value and it’s really important to understand what’s best for the whole as well as the individual.