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Mental Toughness: A Lesson From My Father
“Mental toughness means you have an ability to sustain regardless of the circumstances that you are in.” Nick Saban
This quote is similar to some (unsolicited yet extremely valuable) advice I received from my late father related to some problems I was having when I first started managing projects here at Standard over 30 years ago.
About halfway into a four-month new construction job, my relationship with a young project engineer who was working for the job’s general contractor, which had hired Standard, had begun to sour. He called me into a meeting with his boss, and when I walked into the site trailer, the atmosphere was completely hostile. Throughout the meeting, I was berated by the young engineer for not achieving certain project schedule milestones according to the overall timeline the young engineer had initially set for this project. And according to this engineer, Standard was the reason the project was behind.
In actuality, the engineer had failed to account for a reasonable number of bad weather days in the project schedule and had not effectively managed the trades ahead of Standard: plumbing, masonry, electrical, etc. This project was behind because of poor scheduling and project management by the general contractor’s project engineer, but he had decided that this situation was now Standard’s fault.
The facts were that our workmanship was quite good, and even though our start was delayed by two months, we were running according to our project timetable we initially provided. Even though the facts were on my side, I was not prepared for this situation. I should have been armed with those facts in order to respond to these allegations. By not being able to respond and defend Standard’s position, I by default, took responsibility for the delays we did not cause. I could only say, “We would see what we could do to get this project back on schedule.”
A few weeks after this meeting, my father walked in and said, “Pete, I see a lot of letters coming in from the contractor addressed to you (this was way before email). My guess is that they are planning to threaten us with punitive action for these project delays. You need to get used to solving these types of problems. This is a tough business. It has a lot of tough people, and even more people who want to act tough.” At this point, the term “mental toughness” was uttered to me for the first time.
My father said, “Pete, you’re a pretty big guy who can handle himself. However, that’s not the type of toughness I am describing to you. You have to be mentally tough. Don’t let these guys push you around. My advice to you is to respond in writing to every threatening letter you receive. Use facts only, but be firm. Don’t let them intimidate you. If you allow yourself to be bullied, it will keep happening. You must develop mental toughness. And, the only way to develop mental toughness is to go to that site daily, and go to the general contractor’s office trailer first. Show them you are on site, that we are on schedule, and will not be intimidated.” My father then uttered one of his favorite phrases, “Either you run your business, or it runs you. Pete, which will it be?”
For the next 10 years, I worked constantly to build mental toughness. I began to understand that mental toughness is vital to being successful in business. There will be pressure, but you cannot ignore it or walk away from it. You must listen, process every situation, have the clarity to ask appropriate questions, and most importantly, you must stand your ground when confronted with misinformation and refute all misinformation with facts. If you don’t, your business will run you.