Susan Kramer-Pope, transformational coach & project facilitator » Custom Building

Conflict Prevention…Not Resolution

skp57 — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 06:52:56 +0000

In any prolonged customer engagement, as in the custom home building industry, rarely found are preemptive practices for customer conflict prevention. If you are a professional in residential custom building, either in the design or construction side, have you had more customer ‘headaches’ than you’d care to think about? If you are a homeowner who has built a custom home or done a major remodel, did you have more frustration, stress and anger involving misunderstandings than you’d care to remember?

Conflict resolution, mediation or arbitration are the instruments most commonly used in our culture to resolve conflict civilly. Don’t get me wrong, these are useful and potentially transformative tools. However, these are all used after the damage has been done. What about preventing the damage in the first place? Imagine how much money, time and heartache would be spared if we focused on conflict prevention practices to create mutual understanding up-front, rather than mucking through the emotionally and costly post-conflict swamp. Routine and reliable practices that document the exchange of information and decisions while tracking accountability of promised actions are invaluable and often missing in the business models of small general contracting and custom building companies.

The first question that usually arises when considering this new practice is one of cost, given the narrow profit margins in this industry, especially in an uncertain and sluggish custom home construction market. But consider this: How many times have you left money on the table or discounted your fees in compensation for errors due to misunderstandings or wrong assumptions? How many unnecessary phone calls have you received because your business practices don’t effectively deal with your client’s uncertainty about some aspect of the project or your understanding of their needs?

How much time, aggravation and stress could you save yourself and your customer by preparing them each week for what lies ahead? How many delays could you prevent by providing a reliable way for them to make timely product decisions so you have what you need when you need it? The time and money saved from everyone understanding and getting it right the first time will preserve your profit margin, enhance your reputation, reduce your stress and leave you wondering why you didn’t have these types of communication practices in place sooner!

Keep in mind that we remember experiences because they involve our emotions. It’s the emotion that sticks. Make sure your business practices are creating an experience that will serve your success and long-standing reputation. Creating and implementing communication practices for mutual understanding and stress reduction are not only invaluable conflict prevention measures but best practices that will distinguish you in your market. Profit margin protection, reputation enhancement and customer satisfaction versus conflict resolution. You choose!

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Be an Educator Too! Custom building, client relations and communication

skp57 — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:47:16 +0000

We each have a reaction to uncertainty. Some find it exhilarating. Some find it terrifying. In all cases there is an element of stress. If you are a custom builder, you are intimately involved with managing stress-your own as well as the effects of your customer’s stress upon you.

As the builder you come to the table with years of experience in a field your client usually knows little or nothing about. Without addressing this disparity in the way you communicate, you are setting yourself up for almost certain misunderstandings throughout the life of the project.

Consider wearing the hat of an “educator” when interacting with your customer. Educate them about how you do business. When it comes to the contract, create a summary sheet with bullet-points of the most critical pieces that you need to stress, and make sure to use stories from your experience as examples.

Educate them about why you prefer the subcontractors that you use. Educate them on the implications of delayed decision making on the project time-line, their budget and your business, especially if you have other jobs in the pipeline ready to start.

Continue to be an educator to minimize misunderstanding all the way through the project. The worst thing you can do is assume the customer knows your business! If you are stumped as to what topics to cover in this education effort, look no further than the communication breakdowns in your past and ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from that situation that will make a difference for me and this new client?”

This stance may seem elementary to some or bothersome to others. But the question remains the same. What are you doing to create mutual understanding and reduce uncertainty throughout your projects? Your reputation depends on it.

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Identify sustainable properties of building products

skp57 — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:13:58 +0000

Check this out. Green Format is a new resource to assist in specifying ‘green’ building products.

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Accountability in action…the way of personal effectiveness

skp57 — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:41:06 +0000

Admitting our mistakes can be a bitter pill. It takes courage and fortitude to own our errors and then do what it takes to make good on our promises…again and again. Doing the ‘right’ thing is not usually expedient or convenient, but it sets one apart from the crowd, builds personal integrity and self-respect. The inner rewards are proportional to the difficulty of the practice. Being willing to practice accountability also means being willing to make peace with our anger, embarrassment or shame rather than continue to be consumed by it with our relationships, both personal & professional in tatters. It takes courage…moving forward in the face of all kinds of fear, especially of ‘loosing face’ and feeling shame.

Consider that if communication breakdowns happen frequently in our life, at home or on the job, the common thread is us. These situations are messengers trying to get our attention to look within, not blame other people or circumstances. There are untold gifts from each and every opportunity taken to practice accountability. However, these gifts of self-respect, integrity and truly loving relationships will forever elude us until accountability becomes a practice.

Where in your life are you stuck in unsatisfactory patterns, feeling ineffective and no longer willing to endure the consequences? If you’re at a crossroads and want to shift your ability to move your life forward dramatically in a short period of time, check out Landmark Education. It’s some of the most effective personal development training on the planet.

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Are you frustrated, resentful or angry with your client in any way?

skp57 — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:28:00 +0000

Although we are not responsible for what others think of us or what they do, we are responsible for how WE feel and what WE do. If something someone is doing causes us to have an uncomfortable emotional reaction, since it is our emotional reaction in our body & mind, it requires us to ask ourselves this: “What am I doing/not doing, saying/not saying, expecting/not expecting that is causing me to want to blame or be resentful?” Until we ask this very important question, the emotion will not resolve itself. It will continue to color our behavior with others.

As professional service providers, we occasionally forget our depth of knowledge and experience. We unconsciously assume our clients know more than they do about our realm. For example, many consumers today are becoming more savvy and informed prior to engaging in the custom home building process, but it does not mean they understand the process from the business side of things.

For example, what is the impact on your business operation if a client’s indecision and personal schedule causes significant delays in the contracted project time-line? Sure, at first you can absorb a small bit of delay, but then what? Do you find yourself getting frustrated, resentful, blaming, angry, taking things personally? Are you hoping their behavior will change so you won’t have to communicate the ‘uncomfortable’? By avoiding the ‘uncomfortable’ you are placing the responsibility for your success and satisfaction in the hands of others.

It’s important to step back a moment and recognize that the client is operating inside his own world and his action/inaction is not about us! It’s not personal. However, if we are having an emotional response we are taking it personally. It will serve us well to ask ourselves these questions: “Have I educated him enough about the consequences of delays on the project and on my ability to serve him successfully? Being the professional who knows my business, and the process inside and out, have I made assumptions about my client’s understanding of how to best work with my company to accomplish our mutual goals successfully?”

Can we risk the assumption that the client is well informed about the consequences of his inaction on the project, and on our business, if we have not educated them about this in advance? Can we rely on his having heard about the consequences of delays only once, when repetition is how we learn best? We can not. We can only point the finger at ourselves and realize that we have assumed, and acknowledge our error in thinking. In doing so, we recognize that our assumption is our contribution to our own upset. Further, we stand before a great opportunity to better educate our clients, going forward, as a way to be responsible to ourselves and our satisfaction. copyright 2010 Susan Kramer-Pope. All rights reserved.

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