The Real Reason Your Team Won’t Level Up
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
If you're trying to develop leaders inside your business, but you're not seeing people step up the way you'd hoped, this conversation is for you.
What challenge is April Gray facing after stepping into company leadership?
April Gray took over as company president after the loss of her husband, who founded the business more than 20 years ago. Now she's trying to grow the business while preserving the culture that made it successful in the first place. April thinks her biggest challenge is turning skilled technicians into strong people leaders. But in this conversation, head coach John Falcons helps her identify the one thing that has to be in place before her team can lead the way she needs them to. Let's get to it.
Well, April, thanks for hanging out with us today and coming to visit.
Thank you.
I'd love to know a little bit about your business.
Yes, thank you. We are Atlas Surveying. We're in the Southeast. We have four offices.
How did Atlas Surveying grow from a small team to multiple offices?
Our home office is in Bluffton, South Carolina. And then we have Charleston, South Carolina, Greenville, South Carolina, and Charlotte, North Carolina. We are 22 years strong.
Fantastic.
Yes. I come into this position of being president of the company after the loss of my husband, who is the founder. But because of our amazing leadership, we really didn't skip a beat. I took over about two years ago, And we're in a position now where we're looking to, you know, what's next and how do we grow and how do we train up? It's been a huge learning curve, but I have a great team.
I really respect the fact that you stepped into it and took the reins and continued to move it forward. Why did you decide to do that? I mean, you had a lot of options at that point.
I did have options, but my husband's oldest son, my stepson, had been working for the company for a few years out of college. And he's a fantastic brain and support. And he has the charisma his father had. And so I knew if I could just buy him a few years, he could really become something in the company as well.
Wow.
What's the biggest challenge you're facing right now? What would you like to talk about?
One of the reasons that I brought some of my leaders with me here today is to try to figure out how to build up leadership or teach leadership in an industry where like most of our supervisors have gotten to where they are because of their technical skills, because they can do the job and not necessarily because they know how to manage people. And so we're trying to to teach people how to manage people when like they never necessarily were even managed themselves because of the way the growth of the company has come about. I mean, you know, we went from five to 150. And so, you know, some of those five are still with us. And so they're in the leadership roles, but they didn't really learn that. So that's one of our biggest.
The word that we use is leading people. We talk about managing things or managing processes, but leading people. And one of the hardest things to ask people to do is to give to others what they were never given, to be able to demonstrate for their team what wasn't demonstrated for them. And so you said you have five people that kind of come from the previous era of the company. So you've got a small core of people that kind of are from that previous generation or era. Do you feel like they embody the heart and the spirit of what you want to see across the whole company?
Yes, I mean, that's another answer to the question before, why did I do this? And I think my husband had built such a great culture that I wanted that culture to be continued. And I was afraid if I brought someone else in that didn't know it, that it would change. So the culture that they bring is part of why they are where they are.
Yeah, for sure. Have you ever written down what it is about what they bring or what the pillars are of the culture?
Well, we've done maybe some outlines, but that's a good idea to help organize it a little better. But we know what we're going for and we've written down goals for how to keep moving it in the direction that we've been going or want to keep going.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:05–0:14
2
What challenge is April Gray facing after stepping into company leadership?
0:14–0:57
3
How did Atlas Surveying grow from a small team to multiple offices?
0:57–10:40
4
Why is turning skilled technicians into people leaders a core problem for Atlas?
10:40–15:59
5
How can a founder's culture be preserved after a leadership transition?
15:59–17:00
6
What practical steps should a leader take to document and communicate company culture?
17:00–17:25