Leading From the Trenches

Shawn Abeling joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a ground-level view of leadership most conversations miss.

Drawing on years as a contractor, union worker, and lead installer, Shawn explains what bad leadership looks like from the bottom up, why leading by example is the real test, and how the best leaders get in the trenches with their people.

Shawn Abeling has worked as a contractor, union worker, and lead installer, seeing leadership from both sides. He speaks from direct experience about what makes people want to work and what makes them check out.

For more conversations like this one, see the Leaders Hub.

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Full transcript of the interview follows.

Richard: Hello. This is Richard Lowe. And this is the leaders and their stories. Podcast I’m the writing king and ghostwriting, Guru. And I’m here with Sean, who’s going to talk to us about what leadership looks like from the employee or contractor level, and especially the negative side of leadership. And what could be done instead of that. So, Sean, can you introduce yourself

Good and Bad Leadership From Both Sides

Shawn Abeling: Yes, my name is Shawn Abling, and I have had many experiences with both good and bad leadership on both sides of the aisle. Actually, I was contractor, union worker, lead installer. I did pretty much all of that

Richard: Sounds very interesting. I know I’ve had my share of bad leaders. In fact, I have difficulty thinking of a good one. But you know. So what would you say is the sign of a bad leader? What do you? What? What is a red flag

The Red Flag: Not Leading by Example

Shawn: A red flag for me is one that really doesn’t lead by example. When I when I’m working for someone, I want someone that leads by example, if they’re if they’re going to. If they want me working hard, I would like to be seeing them working hard as well. I understand that’s not always possible, but that that’s a biggie for me.

Richard: I see. So give me an example of somebody leading by example

The Minions Do All the Work

Shawn: So we’re leading by example. is someone like. Whenever I was a installer for lucent, we had some in some in charges that would sit there hand out job assignments, and then they really wouldn’t do much else other than that they expected. The other people, the minions. the people making the lowest amount of money possible.

and do all the work. I understand that. When you gain seniority you earn that right, but it’s not always good to have people making 3 to 4 times less than you. You’re making 3 to 4 times more than them. and They see you sitting around, not really doing much at all. It doesn’t really do well with morale, and it really doesn’t make them want to work.

One Bad Apple Spoils the Barrel

Richard: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. When employees see if you have, say, a bunch of employees who are doing well, and then you they you hire somebody even. Let’s just say you hire somebody that’s their peer, and that peer is a bad apple and doesn’t, doesn’t do? Well, the quote leader quote who lets them get away with it.

which is a form of bad leadership, then lets everybody else know that they can get away with it, and that tends to produce a whole barrel full of rotten apples.

Richard: And that’s I’ve seen that many, many times, and the current thing where it’s hard to fire people or let them go, or whatever makes us even worse, because then these rotten apples stay around. Now, I’m not in favor of firing people for little reason. Obviously, reasons are needed and good justifications, but when somebody’s not doing their job they should probably be retrained, transferred.

fired whatever’s appropriate, rather than keeping them in the same barrel, and let all the other apples rot. You need to show the troops that you don’t put up with crap

The Union Problem

Shawn: Exactly, and with the in charge being a Union member also, they really can’t fire or anything else. All they can do is just call up their supervisor and say, Hey, we don’t really need this guy here anymore. We don’t have enough work for him. So then they transfer him over to back to.

They usually did back to the tool room, and then from the tool room they would go out to other job sites, and and if they got passed around enough times, then the supervisors realize that he’s a bad apple, and then they try to get rid of them. But being a union. It’s really hard for the company to fire someone

Shawn: And it was really bad with this, because we worked all over all over the area. We didn’t have just one location that everybody worked in, so one supervisor would have anywhere between 3 to 8 different job sites. and he can’t be at all of them at all times.

and he’s supposed to spend certain amount of time at the home base as well his office to get paperwork and stuff done. So it it really got bad with having a lot of bad apples, because, I mean, there’s I worked alongside a lot of people that did maybe 15 min worth of work and a total of. and 12 h shift

Richard: I’ve seen that it’s con. It can be common even in non-union shops. People find out how to how to get away with not doing work or or do make work, make it look like they’re busy when they’re really not. Now, one thing I like to think about is what is the definition of a leader to me.

You see all these definitions. You know, servant leader, this kind of leader, that kind of leader. But a lever leader is really simple. The definition is simple. It’s in the name person who leads somebody who takes to the group and moves them in the direction that the business or organization wants them to go.

How that gets done is the type of leadership. So servant leadership, you know different kinds of things. That’s a that’s a type of leadership. A lot of people mistake that as leadership leadership is simply getting people to go in the right direction.

Richard: That’s that’s basically what it is. And then there’s techniques for doing it. And lots of things work like servant leadership might not work as well in, say, a battle like you know, and fighting in the Ukraine. I doubt if you got servant leaders, or you got leaders who are like. Do this, because that’s what’s necessary. Perhaps I’m I’m hypothesizing. There, that’s a great word hypothesizing

Moving the Group Forward

Richard: So what you want is a leader who move the group forward towards the goals of the business. Yeah, and factoring in the goals of the individuals, I would say also, and that are part of the group, and the group, and so forth. So he’s he’s got a wide variety of jobs.

Now, if that entails the leader sitting on a butt. or if the leader’s doing the work. the key is is that leader causing the group to move in a direction at the appropriate speed in the appropriate direction, and getting the appropriate products

Richard: The answer is, yes doesn’t matter if the leader is not doing anything. The answer is, no, it matters to me. That’s that’s the way I look at it now

The In-Charge Who Never Delivered

Shawn: Good. Yeah. I was just gonna mention that there’s like, like I was saying, some of the in charges. There’s 1 in charge I worked for he had not gotten a job turned in on time. 15 years that my buddies worked there. Everyone turned it on time, and they weren’t able to do anything about the like.

I said the supervisors weren’t able to do anything about it because he’s union. He’s got a bunch of seniority because he’s been there 30 plus years. and I mean it’s that’s 1 of the places they send people to try to fire him is they put him. They put him on his job sites, and they show up regularly on those job sites, and they catch them when they’re supposed to be working. took a long time for them to do any of that

Shawn: That’s actually how that’s actually how I got pushed into being an in charge was I had a bunch in charges taking credit for my work. So I got put with this guy. and he actually got his job done on time for the 1st time ever

Shawn: Because I went in there, and I did all the work I gave him 15 min worth of stuff to do. He couldn’t get 15 min of stuff done. and that was just because I wanted to do something on his own job.

Shawn: And yeah, that guy was that guy was a big time character which we won’t really get into. But

Richard: More on a general level. Yeah, I mean, so that to me, that’s that’s what leadership is. It’s being able to lead a group to where you want to go. I look at the old leaders from the past, Julius Caesar. He was right at the head of the troops.

He was right there in the middle, so he’d be out in the charge. Alexander the Great, Patten. These are all leaders who were in basically along with the troops doing doing the job with them. They weren’t afraid to do the job. Then you have the leaders that failed.

Most of them aren’t remembered anymore because they weren’t at the front. You’ve got the whole Vietnam fiasco within America and Vietnam. The leaders were actually back here in the States. They weren’t even in Vietnam. So of course it failed. They they didn’t even know what was going on. Many reasons

Leading From the Front

Shawn: Yeah. By the time they knew it was going on it was already too late to do anything about it. Yeah. And and my understanding time difference

Richard: My understanding, speaking to some veterans from that era is, they had so many rules of engagement and things that were so weird that there was no way to win. They they, you know, you can only fight under these conditions. You can only blah blah. And it was like you’re either in a war or you’re not.

And if you’re not in a war, then what are you doing here? Yeah, you know, is it a shooting war, isn’t it. Oh, yeah. And Ukraine, of course they have no back off on. hey? You show your head. You did

Richard: Either side either side. So interest. I find that interesting that a leader also is a good leader is also not afraid to be embedded with the people he, he or she leads

Working Alongside Your Crew

Shawn: Yep. that’s when I got to being in charge I end up getting all. I was one of the best in charges I got laid off because I didn’t have the seniority. But I mean those same guys that were doing 15 to 20 min worth of work in a 12 h shift were working their butts off to be on my crew.

and they’re working right alongside me, hustling everything. And that was because I was right there working with them. I did the job right alongside them. cause I mean being in a union. You’re all you’re all at the same level. Basically, you’re all supposed to be in there doing that job.

You’re hired to do a job. You’re supposed to be doing that job. and because I didn’t sit down and just hand out job assignments. The people actually worked with me and they got the stuff done. And they I didn’t have a problem getting them to work

Shawn: And then, whereas the other guys that were sitting around doing nothing they had like, oh, that guy’s worthless. That guy’s worthless. You don’t want him on your crew. You worked fine for me.

The Quality of the Leader

Richard: Yeah. Well, it depends on the quality of the leader. A bad leader does not. does not cause the troop. The people who work for that person to want to do something. They don’t want to do it, because the leader’s not good. That’s often because the leader’s not embedded with them.

He’s not he or she is not doing the appropriate is not willing to do the work along with the people there. Yeah. A lead. A good leader in my mind should not be afraid to go pick up the tools and start, you know, throwing a semi line and start screwing screwing screws and put the tires on every once in a while.

You know somebody needs help. Come, come out there and show them how to do it personally to me. That’s that’s what a good leader does. Bad leader is. Just gonna let it let it slide, or let somebody else handle it, or. you know, not take care of it, basically not take care of it.

What Real Leadership Is

Richard: So leadership is very interesting. It’s there’s a lot of books on leadership. I’ve written a few myself. I’ve ghostwritten a few. Oh, yeah, it’s very interesting, the way that they that leaders need to work. And the very the views on leadership are as diverse as there are people on the planet there.

There’s everybody has a different idea of leadership and a lot of them align in certain categories. There’s there’s this kind of leadership, that kind leadership that kind of leadership. I’m sure the Union shops had leadership types enforced from above. The leader, the Union said, you’re going to work this way. You tell me

Shawn: I as an in charge. I never really got that. They had. They had it in the contract. What was expected, and you could do the bare minimum which is just hand out job assignments and make sure the work was done right Or you could go all the way to like I did.

I went in there. I worked right alongside everybody. I actually most of the time I actually gave myself the hardest spot or hardest thing to do, and led that way. And like I said, I had people that had no problem working for me. They actually enjoyed it. They probably they preferred to be in on my job

Richard: People want to work. They want to do a good job generally. So if you let them do a good job and give them the tools that they need. They’re going to do a good job

When the Problem Is Higher Up

Richard: What I? What always affected me often was not the immediate manager or leader, but one several up the rungs up the ladder where it have these weird rules and weird goals and stuff that had no bearing in reality, and then have to deal with it. I’m sure you ran into that

Shawn: Oh, yeah, my wife is kind of going through that went through that recently. She’s an X-ray tech or Ct tech now, and her supervisor, her not supervisor, but manager, decided that she wanted everybody to

Richard: You froze well, looks like you froze. So I’m gonna just finish it up. This is the leaders in their stories. Podcast I’ve been speaking with Sean Aveling, and we’ve been talking about leadership. so thank you for coming, Sean. I don’t know if you can hear me or not, and I appreciate your viewpoints on leadership. And it’s been a fun. Podcast thank you.

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