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Welcome everybody out to podcast number 1050. We have Leandris with us, so I'm going to call him a lean expert. He probably won't like that, but with us today, talking about leadership and personal development and personal growth.

And so we're excited to have everybody on. Stay with us. This is the Elevate Construction Podcast, delivering remarkable content for workers, leaders, and companies in construction, wanting to take their next step, get ready to step out of your comfort zone with Jason Schroeder as he encourages you to do better, live a remarkable life and expect more.

Let's go. Welcome everyone. I hope you're doing well, Leandris, it's so happy to have you on the podcast today.

I was wondering, would you give everybody an introduction, any length that you want so that we can start to connect with you? Absolutely. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Jason. My name is Leandris Weeden.

Some people call me LR, kind of go by both. That's my first two initials, but we're going to go with Leandris because it has lean in it. I am a native of St. Louis, Missouri, grew up there, born and raised, graduated from high school and went to college in Illinois, graduated from SIU Edwardsville back in 2005 and have been in the design and construction industry ever since worked mostly for commercial general contractors, currently working for a contractor out in Nashville, Tennessee over in the healthcare business group.

A lot of what I've been doing is healthcare work, renovations, additions, expansions, and along those lines. So I'm glad to be here, especially talking about lean. Jason said I was an expert.

I'm more of a practitioner. I don't believe in becoming an expert because once you get to expert, you got to go back to infancy stage and start all over again on that learning curve. I think you're probably, you're not probably right.

You're definitely right. But nobody who implements lean wants to be called an expert. I think I've just had to get out of my system, so we're good.

Lean practitioner. I love it. Well, real quick, that leads me into a question.

Where were you first exposed to the lean world or information? Okay. Easy question. 2014 was about the first time I was exposed to the lean world.

I was working in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is actually, ironically enough, just across the river from Erlang or Kentucky, there's a Toyota manufacturing plant over there, and Toyota used to have an office building there before they moved out to Plano. But I got to this job site down in Cincinnati Children's Hospital, second or third largest children's hospital in the country. They were ranked like two or three when I was there, but they do a lot of projects on their campus to the tune of like 200, 300 million a year, various different small projects.

So when I arrived there in 2014, they had what they were doing, some Toyota stuff, you know, so we were doing these reverse phase pool plans, we were doing these daily huddles. We call them pod meeting plan of the days. We had weekly work plans.

I don't know where any of this stuff came from. I just like, they was like, hey, this stuff is like related to Toyota, this is some stuff they did there. I was like, all right, cool.

That's what we do. No problem. A few years later, I found out about last planner system and I started looking at it.

And I was like, this is like some of the stuff we was doing back then at Cincinnati Children's Hospital when I was working there. So I started digging into what last planner system was and kind of the whole thing. I was like, man, this is actually a system.

So this is something that, you know, maybe I should get involved with and learn more about. So that's kind of how I kind of started going down that rabbit hole of lane construction and things that we can do to make the work that we do better. I like that.

And the your presence at LCI on social media with the certification and in different areas is has been pretty pronounced lately, which I'm really excited about. I love your voice. What would you say is your main message, the main thing that you're attempting to get across or communicate or teach or set an example for? I would say the main thing, one of the main things is don't be afraid to fail.

You know, to me, failure that acronym I learned some time ago for fails first attempt at learning. You know, a lot of times we grow up in school and sometimes failure is something that's looked at is not acceptable. So we're afraid to fail a lot of times in construction.

But doing something new, if you want to grow, you got to be able to fail and learn from that. Like they say, if you're going to fail, fail iteratively and learn from those things. So that's one of the biggest things is don't be afraid to fail.

I think kind of along that same lines, you know, leadership to me is a missing piece, especially in our industry and probably in a lot of industries. You know, you know, the old saying goes, if you can't lead yourself, you can't lead others. So that's been a big focus.

And I think something that should be talked about more in the construction industry. I like that. Well, that takes us into our first topic, leadership.

So when you when you say that you're well, so leadership has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people, I would like. Oh, that's it. I'd like to know what is leadership to you.

OK. And I know I'm batching here. So this isn't really good, but I'll tell you what I'm going to ask.

Then I'll stay on track. So what does it mean to you? What do you see missing? And what would you recommend? So if you're OK with those questions, I'd like to ask what does it mean to you? Yeah. OK.

So that for that first question to me, I'm going to go with Maxwell's definition of leadership. You know, leadership is influenced, nothing more, nothing less. It's pretty simple, you know, to me, that's what leadership is about.

But but how you influence, how you gain that influence, the how part is is probably the biggest thing, you know. So that's what I'm going to say. Leadership is is influenced, nothing more, nothing less.

I like that. So when it comes to, by the way, I love that. Are you talking about John C. Maxwell or? Yes.

Well, I don't know if it's John C. Because there may be two Maxwell, but if we're talking about the same Maxwell, it's John C. So he I think it's the I don't know if it's 21 irrefutable laws, but one of the Maxwell books comes out and it says that leadership is influenced. Nothing more, nothing less. Yeah. 

And then he has like the law of the lid. And yeah, yeah. So those are those are it's so funny that you mentioned those.

Those are some of the first leadership books I ever listened to on audio. I really like him. He's yes. 

Yeah, he's also a religious leader and had built a church, I think, in Southern California. Yeah, I really like him. Yeah.

All right. So when you so it's influence. All right. 

So this is I'm dying to ask you. So, oh, by the way, let me I forgot to say this. I'm really excited to learn from you today.

So I want you to know that, like, as I do this interview, like, I'm I'm really loving the fact that I get something out of this and it can learn from you. So I really appreciate you being here. So when you talk about influence, what do you see that's missing? You know, specifically, and it's not critical.

It's just it's just like, where are there gaps, right? The ability to influence. I see two different terms here. You you have authentic and you have artificial.

So people that try to influence by artificial, they do that by the title that they have, you know, their job description, the authority that they may have versus, you know, real influence. They have and say this is authentic. You know what I mean? I influence people because of who I am, not what my title is.

So I see a lot of especially, you know, coming up when we first got into the industry, when I came in in 2005, there are a lot of people who who kind of rule job sites by the iron fist method. You know, you do as I say, we're the general contractor with a controlling contractor. People will not follow those individuals outside of what their title is.

You know what I mean? So everybody's watching. They're paying attention to what we do. Even when we first get to a job site, when you're in those leadership roles, people are trying to figure out, are they going to allow them self to follow you? Most people, if you if you lead in a certain way and you don't have that true influence, they don't want to follow you.

They only choose to follow you because they have to because they're there. So I want to be on the other side of that and figure out how to lead authentically versus artificial. So that ties right into the influence part, right? So by the way, if you ever see me looking left, I'm taking notes.

So authentic, real influence, which then leads me. And you said this is who I am. And it also it also makes me feel like you're talking about connection.

Like real, really. OK. And then the artificial title, do what I say.

The old command and control of people method, which doesn't work. OK, I like that. So that kind of leads us into what would you recommend? But oh, let me get let me frame it in a different way.

So how do you when I know you do a good job of this, how do you lead authentically and connect and come across in a way that people want to follow? Because I feel like somebody can write. I know I'm talking too much. I'm sorry, but somebody right now could say, all right.

Connection, who I am, influence. OK, now what do I do? So let's see what you do. For me, it's it's really getting to know people.

You know, we had this golden rule growing up, you know, treat people the way that you want to be treated. I think now we have a platinum room, treat people the way they want to be treated. But you can't do any of that unless you get to know the people, the men and the women that are out here on the front lines doing the work.

So that's the biggest thing for me, is really getting to know people for who they are outside of work, you know, what they like to do, kind of like the base and building blocks of life. Do you have children? Do you go to church? Are you spiritual? You know, things that you can have different connections with individuals and try to break down that psychological safety bear, because if people don't trust you, they don't want to follow you. And typically, if you're trying to get them to do something, you're going to have resistance.

So in order to get that buy in, you got to go in with trust on the bottom level. It's like, you know, the five dysfunctions of a team. Trust is at the bottom of that pyramid.

If you don't have trust, you're never going to get anything else of a team. You know, we say we're project teams a lot of times, but a lot of times when you look at the dynamics of things, nobody establishes that baseline of trust. So that's to me the number one thing you need to start developing and leading people authentically is their trust.

I like that you could even put on the triangle that you just mentioned, which, by the way, everybody, what Landris is mentioning is trust, healthy conflict, setting goals and standards together, holding each other accountable, performing. You could put your sixth one, get to know each other right under that trust that leads to building that trust. That's awesome.

Yes. All that ties together. And at Cree, when you get to know somebody, you automatically connect.

And then you're able to find out what's important, like you're talking about an influence of I love it. Um, that's actionable. So get to know people.

And you're probably talking about in the field and huddles just anywhere on the job site, right? Anywhere on the job site, you know what I mean? And then, you know, it's even like when I was in Miami, I'll give an example. I worked in Miami, did a cruise terminal for the region, cruise terminal B right at the port of Miami. I went there, never worked in Miami before.

Didn't know anybody there. I show up one August. It's hotter outside. 

It's humid. We work with a lot of Cuban influence there in Miami. So I learned how to make Cuban coffee.

I got so good at it to where I would make it three times a day and people would come to the office and they would gather around for the little shots of the culada. You know, when I didn't make it, they were like, hey, what are you doing? Why didn't you make the coffee? So, you know, even something as little as that is, you know, making learning how to make the culture's coffee there allowed me to have a better relationship with the individuals and men and women that were working on that job site. And they they knew that I appreciated them because I would make their coffee for them and I'd invite them in and I'd serve them coffee. 

You know what I mean? So to me, something as simple as that is is how you create real life buy-in on a construction job site. Yeah. And you know, you know, I've never heard the coffee example.

That's awesome. I've heard of making pancakes, cooking eggs, buying swag. What I'm hearing is that whatever how whatever way you love or care.

And I know you mentioned that how you want to be treated, how they want to be treated. But what anybody can take from this podcast is what in what way can you go serve and connect and get to know your people? And I like the coffee example because it's outside of the box. You know, it's not the typical.

It's not the typical swagger donuts type thing. That's kind of fun. I'm going to I'm going to use that.

Do you mind if I repeat that story and trainings? No, no, you can use it and it's coffee. The Colada, you know, I got so good, they called me the Cubano Negro. That's that's awesome.

I think that's awesome. I hope it is. I still talk to a lot of those guys that work there, the tradesmen and women.

So that's awesome. OK, well, so when you so that's leadership, when you talk about personal growth, personal development, what's on your mind with that? What's on my mind with that is really character. OK.

I use three words and I stole these three words from a book that Tim Spiker wrote called The Only Leaders Worth Following, But Who Not What? And when I say who not what, I mean who you are matters more so than what you do. You know, if you look at it, the statistics say something like three quarters of the effectiveness of a leader is defined by who they are, not what they do. And you can find this to be true.

If you ask people in conversation, you know, tell me about the best leader you ever followed and why. Everything that they describe about that best leader they've ever followed is going to be who that person was, not what that person did. So who we are is very important.

And that's what I mean by growing ourselves is really growing our character and developing who we are through a series of, you know, intentional growth, reading, learning from the books and the knowledge that are out there, taking that back to the job site, taking that back to our households, our friendships, our relationships with others and seeing how we can apply those things that we read and grow ourselves. Because eventually you want to go from, you know, being a successful person to having significance and influencing other people's lives in a positive way. And to me, that's what it's all about is growing from success to significance.

But you can't really do that unless who you are as a person is really growing and developing intentionally. So there's a lot a lot to it. It's just like, you know, technically, when we hire people in the industry and probably most industries, we hire them based off what they've done and, you know, kind of what they know, their technical competency.

Typically, when you fire people, they usually get released because of their character and who they are, whether they show up for work late on time or they have a substance abuse issue going on, or it could be any of those things. But those are character issues that we're dealing with and things that need to be developed and grown intentionally. So I don't think there's enough emphasis on who we hire and who we are as people and growing that intentionally.

Yeah. So if if I'm hearing you right, when we're well, so one message could possibly you said that we hire for technical skills. We typically let people go for character.

So it sounds like the recommendation is look at if there's this person in alignment, is this person a core value fit? Is this person does this person as far as we can tell the good character in addition to the skills, right? Yes, absolutely. I like that. So if somebody was listening to this podcast and listening, well, hopefully thousands of people are, but yeah, but if somebody is listening to this podcast and they're like, OK, well, what do you want me to do, Landris? Like what how do I improve my character? What what I know I'm putting on the spot, but what would you say? Yep.

I would say design something that is personal for you to where like me myself, I'll give you an example. I made a commitment to read a book for a minimum of 30 minutes. First thing in the morning, like from 615 to say, say 645.

Without fail, that's like a time that I have allocated to myself, like this is something I want to do. I want to read something that's going to help me become a better version of who I was yesterday. You know, if you have in mind that you want to be a better version of who you was yesterday and you keep striving for that being better and better.

It's like having this what I call the difference between the gap and the game mindset. So if you have the game mindset, you're only comparing yourself to who you were a year ago, a month ago, yesterday. And you're infinitely going to keep growing long as you keep moving forward.

You know, if you have a gap mindset, you compare yourself maybe to an image or to some idea of what you thought you might be, you know, five years ago right now. And that to me is like trying to chase the sunset. You know, you'll never catch it.

I don't know any man or any woman who's ever caught the sunset. People get close to when you get close to sunset goes down. Yeah. 

So try to have more of that, you know, that game mindset to where it's always a win-win and you're intentionally trying to be a better version of who you was the day before. Yeah, I like that. You know, have you ever have you ever heard of Eric Thomas? Oh, I think so.

The motivational speaker. Yeah, he's amazing. The words, the words that you say sound a lot like things that he said.

He gets me fired up. And I love when he talks about personal growth and personal development. It's like I'm listening to Eric Thomas right now.

He is. I play his videos on boot camps, actually. Yeah. 

OK. And he talks about you. He's like, you got to put yourself on punishment.

You owe you an apology if you didn't do it. I mean, that's not the style that you're coming at me with. But I like that.

If you want to improve your character, you've got to have intentional time and you've got to own it, right? I like that. You have to. Yeah. 

So 30 minutes a day. If you do 30 minutes a day of reading a book, you're probably going to hit at least a book every two weeks minimum. That's the goal is to hit a book every two weeks.

And sometimes now that it's not football season, I can get started on the weekends and even advance that goal. You know, I can finish by like a Wednesday and start another book. You know, that's awesome.

I've been, I mean, literally, I would say that reading books is something that can separate the average person from everybody else because nobody reads anymore. I mean, you can you can tell there's not a lot of people that read. If you if you just take a poll of maybe, you know, 25, 50 people you meet in the next month, ask them what's the last three books they read or that they have read, you would probably get a lot of, you know, blank thoughts like, you know what, I can't name the last three books I read.

But I guarantee if you ask people what's the last three social media sites you've been on, they can rattle off probably six of them. You know, everybody is so enamored with instant things, you know, because of the Internet and the cell phones we have. Nobody really takes the time to really take intentional steps to grow who they are, you know, because I can do the same thing.

I could probably scroll for, you know, two or three hours on a social media site, but I could also take that same time and use that to grow myself. You know, I'm under the ad is that you should spend as much time developing yourself as you do working a job for someone else because you do work a job. We need to get paid.

But if you're growing yourself, you're really making deposits to you and you're making yourself a better person, which is going to benefit not only the organizations you work for, but your friends and family as well. I love that. I love that.

Real quick, something that just came to my mind. By the way, that's that's implementable for anybody. And the other thing that I was thinking about.

So we have a number of books that are on Amazon and Audible just contacted me the other day and said AI voice narration was available. And so all of our text books are now they all have audio. So to your point with and I'm not talking about ours, I'm just saying now I know that Audible is going to take.

Let's say it was 10 percent, I think, is what they said of all the books on that you can buy online or on Audible. That's going to balloon to 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 percent pretty fast. So if somebody if somebody was like, I don't like sitting down and reading most of these books because of whether you like AI or not, most of these books are going to be available on audio in the next couple of months anyway, because technology is gone, right? Somebody somebody told me, I let my feelings get her a little bit, which is really silly. 

It's emotionally immature me. But they were like, Jason, letting your books be put out on audio, AI reeks of laziness. And I'm like, if you knew if you knew how hard it was to record that and how many months it takes to record on audio, you wouldn't say that.

Yeah, I'm thankful for that service quite frankly. So absolutely. Yeah.

So I'm proud of you. That's awesome. You're you're you're definitely setting a good example there.

Dang, and I had I forgot what I was going to say because I was listening to you. Oh, so this is this something I really want to know. What is your next goal? Like, where are you headed? Like what? Like if we said, hey, Leandris, like what? What's your next step? Where do you want to end up? What would that can you describe that for me? Next step, I kind of look at that a little differently now, Jason.

I used to think of life as, I guess, almost like a function and a series of destinations. And now think of it as a continuous evolving journey. So as far as my next step, you know, I just want to continue to grow and evolve as a person, as a human being, as an individual and continue to really, you know, help other people see things that I didn't necessarily see when I was younger in my career that are coming along in the design and construction industry.

Here probably in the last year or two, I started reaching out to younger professionals who were graduating from college. A lot of them come from underserved communities and just trying to give them the resources that I never had coming out of college, because when I graduated, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just was fortunate enough to go work for a design bill health care contractor and kind of, you know, it took off from there.

So just being able to give back to others that want to be in this industry is one of the things that I see. Basically put myself in a position to, you know, where I can influence others careers and then help people advance themselves when they continue to grow myself along in my career. Eventually, I'd like to be in operations for design and construction company, maybe even do some consulting work, you know what I mean? And just see them say, hey, I'm going to figure out how to use my unique abilities and my intellectual property to help, whether it's owners or, you know, other GCs grow or even people.

So that's kind of where I see things going to on the journey. Now, you know, of course, it's going to probably change along the way. But, you know, that's why it's called a journey.

Well, I like that. I think that question was came from the universe or God, because that was inspired. I'm glad I asked the question because I got an answer I didn't expect, and it's expanded my perspective.

You don't have to like living a life will live will take you to great things. And you can have goals, but you don't have to just there is it. Oh, my gosh, there's a quote.

I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Lucy with gosh, I don't remember her name. But anyway, it was Morgan Freeman. And he said, there was a quote in the movie that said, people have have focused too much on having versus becoming.

And you hear that in that Morgan Freeman voice, it's beautiful. Yeah, but but yeah, so it sounds like you are focused on becoming. And I like growing, growing to something, not go to something like that.

I've never heard that before. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Well, so for me, we're right at a good spot. Um, this is implementable stuff here. I'm I'm dying to hear what your advice would be as we close.

But before we do that, because I want to give you the last word. I see you, I see on social media, I see around. I want to say that you've always been this is a feedback for you.

Like you've always been a really kind and positive and encouraging influence, even though I don't know you that well. And I can say that when I see your name, I'm like, man, I love him. You know, so your energy, the energy you're putting out there in the world is making a difference and it's felt like at least me.

And I would assume that it's being felt by other people. So keep going. I'd love to keep jamming out with you to do a podcast in the future.

Keep hitting some topics and hopefully be able to do some fun stuff with you. One of these days. Oh, I'd love to get you to a boot camp to one of the super PM boot camps and and get your feedback on it.

One of these days, that'd be awesome. Yes, I think I'm going to need to do that, too. I've heard good things about it from several individuals who've been so.

That's awesome. And we've just updated it. So we've got one coming up here in two and a half weeks.

That's probably too short of notice. But whenever you're ready, let's go. So, OK. 

All right. I'm going to give I'm going to give you the last word here. What advice or would you have for the listeners or closing comment as we close down this podcast? Advice from listeners.

I would say that that keeps striving to go from good to great, you know, it's going to be hard. Success comes with paying trials and tribulation. But at the end of the day, I would say, do you want to be known as the mediocre mini or the fantastic few? And for myself, I want to be among those fantastic few.

Yeah, I like that. You said mediocre many or the fantastic few. I love that.

Yeah. All right. Well, that's it.

We have I think I appreciate you being on the show. Oh, by the way, do you want people to connect with you if they ever have questions or reach out? Is there any place you want people to connect with you out there? Linked in is the best place out in the world. You can find me l.r.weaton on LinkedIn.

If you search my name, then I'm always looking to connect with like minded individuals in the design and construction space and really in the world period. Anybody that's interested in progressive thinking, love to connect with you. I'd love it. 

OK, all right. Well, on the count of three, I'm going to say on we go. If you'd say it with me, that'd be awesome.

One, two, three. On we go. On we go.

I love it. Thank you so much for such an awesome time. This has been great talking to you.

Please join us next time in elevating the entire construction experience for workers, leaders and companies coast to coast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to share with your construction colleagues and help us spread the word by rating, subscribing and leaving a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate it.

We'll catch you next time on the Elevate Construction Podcast.

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