“Then the question hit me. How do barbers learn? How do they become experts at what they do anyway?…”
Several weeks ago, I walked into my regular barber’s shop. It’s a little hole in the wall, about 100 sq. ft. in a ratty corner of downtown Toronto. Don’t ask why I go there, that is a different story for another time.
I dropped into the seat inside the door to wait my turn. It wasn’t unusual to wait for a few minutes while a guy or two ahead of me got a cut. In the other chair sat a guy nonchalantly finishing his chicken and rice out of a cardboard to-go container. He was chatting a whirlwind with the barber, in I can only suppose, some Pakistani dialect.
This wasn’t unusual either. But what happened next… was unusual.
My barber smiled and motioned me to the other empty barber chair, while the rice-and- chicken eating youth reached for the clippers.
“Wait, I thought, this guy is going to cut my hair? “
I wasn’t sure whether to protest or leave or just shut up and trust the guy. I decided on the latter, and figured the worst thing that can happen is I’d get a bad haircut and it would eventually grow back again. It’s not that I was heading for a date or anything, I’m happily married, and a bad haircut would give my children something to laugh at. So, in any event, not everything would be lost.
It wasn’t amazing but didn’t end up being a write-off. He labored at it a bit clumsily, and occasionally my pro-barber reached over from his side and touched it up here and there.
Then the question hit me. How do barbers learn? How do they become experts at what they do anyway? Do they have magic mannequins that have perpetually growing hair? Or maybe they do it on a simulator, and when they make a bad move there’s a big explosion on the screen and the guy disappears into red smoke.
I remember my barber telling me has a bunch of brothers. Half of them were barbers and the other half doctors. Maybe that’s the secret. Maybe all barbers have a bunch of brothers. They practice on each other until they become an expert barber or conversely a doctor. That would make sense, I guess.
I don’t know, but I suppose they need to practice somewhere, and sometimes on clients, even if that client is me.
Here’s the thing. This isn’t about barbers. It’s about you. The expert concrete guy.
You are the owner or the foreman or the lead hand. You are the chief concrete raker, chief hand floater, chief finisher, and the guy that knows how to figure out the concrete balance, plus the guy that always needs to answer the phone and send text messages.
You have 3 great guys with you, they just don’t know anything. Sure, they can wheelbarrow concrete and block up mesh, lean on rakes and such like.
But you don’t want to risk them doing anything significant. Or not on this job, it’s a tricky job and concrete only gives you one shot. It must be perfect, and besides this is a very particular customer. You know…much like the last seven jobs.
But here’s the thing. We have two options. We can either train and delegate, or we can do everything ourselves for the rest of our lives.
It’s easier to do it all ourselves until it becomes impossible. And by then we risk our enterprise becoming a self-imposed fatality.
It’s tempting to take personal control of the power trowel, the rake or the remote, instead of coaching and trusting. But it’s imperative.
Here is a quick list of ideas when teaching the trade to others.
#1. Tell them.
#2. Show them.
#3. Explain why.
#4. Let them do it.
#5. Coach.
Tell them what to do. Show them how it’s done. Explain why. Give them an intrinsic understanding of the process, not just technique. Let them do it, and coach them along the way. When you consistently and kindly package your training this way, good things can happen.
It’s risky with concrete. It’s risky with customers. I can only imagine how hard it was for my barber to watch his nephew mess with my hair. Every expert was once an amateur. Probably every concrete guy did work in his early days that he was proud of then, but would be embarrassed by now.
It took hours of actual doing for you to become an expert. Thousands of hours. it will take the same for your team.
The customer is always a part of that process. There’s no way around it.
