Soften your senses.
Ways to become a better speaker, listener, and follower.
This episode brought to you by Coscia Communications, the forefront provider of customer service training.
Learn more at Coscia.com.
Hello everyone, thank you for joining us once again on Did You Know the ESCO HVAC Podcast.
So today we're spending some time with Steve Coscia. How are you sir?
Terrific, nice to be here with you Clifton.
Yeah, this is a really good opportunity to start working with our educators on a common problem that many of us are facing.
And that is building culture in the classroom and preparing our students for cultures that they might enter once they get out into the field.
And many times we don't think about culture in the classroom, but we really do.
We have a culture in the classroom. Many times it's established within our department.
A lot of times we don't focus on how important that culture can be to our students.
Once they leave our program and they go to work for a contractor, if we can help them be prepared for that environment, I think we're really doing a good service to them.
We provide them with technical skills, but are we preparing them at all for the life that they're going to have as a technician and the people that they interact with?
Well, that's a worthwhile concern to have. So let's start there. Let's start with culture.
So you know that I speak at numerous colleges every year.
Yes. Hundreds of students are in my classes. And one of the disciplines I establish with the students are that their most important customer, when they're fortunate enough to get hired, will be their coworker.
Yeah. So true.
That if you are lucky enough to get hired, you want to be a good team member. And serving your coworkers well means being prompt about following up, about answering questions, about getting back to people, about completing a paperwork, about being on time.
All of these things matter when you're working as part of a team.
And the best companies out there who hire from trade schools have usually established a decent culture for themselves as a result of the person who started that particular company.
So it might have been a company owner who started with one truck or one van, and maybe his wife did the bookkeeping, and then he hired another person, and then they got the uncle involved and the brother-in-law involved, and then the company grew, and now they have 30 employees.
And by the time you get to 30 employees, we hope that company would have established a culture, which is derived from the person who started the company.
And yeah, that's the way business cultures usually begin. In a classroom, culture is similar in that the instructor at the beginning of a course establishes the parameters with which everyone is going to learn and serve each other in a mutually beneficial manner.
And that's what the culture ought to be.
So in a classroom, there's going to be parameters, there's going to be worksheets, there's going to be homework, there's going to be deadlines, all of these things matter.
And when it comes to the difference between what culture is and what some of the processes are in a classroom, what the instructor manages in terms of their curriculum and their syllabus and all that, the biggest difference between culture and a process is that same difference between a leader and a manager.
So one of the old management gurus, so I'm an older guy, so I read this guy's books 40 and 50 years ago.
And so one of the things I learned from Peter Drucker is that a manager focuses on doing things right. A leader focuses on doing the right things.
That's very subtle.
Yeah.
A manager focuses on doing things right. A leader focuses on doing the right things. So what does a manager do that ought to be right?
Well, a manager, you know, has to work within a budget. You've got to work within deadlines, within parameters, standard operating procedures, you've got to train, you've got to motivate, you've got to take corrective action, you have all these things you work with.
So managers are working with processes, specifications, paperwork, scheduling, and these things must be done right. They have to be done correctly.
Wait a minute. Did I sign up for all that when I became a teacher?
Yes, you did.
We get those questions. A lot of people don't realize when we took upon that role, we weren't just coming in to teach the things that we know, we are actually assuming new responsibilities that many times we're not prepared for.
And so you are.
And then there's changes.
Like right now I just did a tour of some colleges where the instructors were taught, they were told, figure out a way to teach a 12 week program in eight weeks. And you've got to change.
And so, you know, those things happen out there. And the same way business forces change, the same thing happens in the educational environment.
So as I was saying, a manager focuses on doing things right. Processes, specifications, paperwork, scheduling, that type of thing.
A leader focuses on doing the right things. So let's discern the difference right there.
If a leader focuses on doing the right things, the instructor as a leader would invest a little more time understanding where a student might be coming from.
Which means the instructor puts themselves in the role of listener.
Because not all students behave the same way. They're not all square pegs, right? Not all square holes.
All communicate differently.
So you have some differences. They come from different neighborhoods, from different backgrounds.
So one of the things that an instructor can do that's the right thing is understand that while you've been doing this for 10, 20, 30 years, there's always something new to learn.
And the easiest way to learn is to listen. Let the other person talk.
So a leader, by focusing on doing the right things, invests a little more time understanding and more than understanding what a leader has to do to build this culture is to make the person with whom you are speaking feel understood.
Now what I just said sounds easy. And it is the most challenging part of every relationship is not just listening, not just having a conversation, but how can I make this person feel understood?
Because if they feel like I understand them, we will build rapport. Now we've got something that's mutual. We go back and forth.
So this has nothing to do with specifications, paperwork, scheduling processes, right?
This has everything to do with listening, empathy, humility, you know, all of those other skills is what a leader focuses on.
And it is those leader skills about doing the right things that builds the culture.
Students get to see it in real time. They get to see one of their counterparts in the classroom who might be a little problematic and they get to see the instructor handling that in an interesting way.
The instructor isn't reprimanding right away. They may ask a question like, help me understand why this is happening.
You just ask an open-ended question and then you wait. And the key thing about asking a question is you have to be courageous enough to wait for the answer.
Because what many people do is they ask a question and then there is that awkward pause.
After three, four, five seconds, no one's spoken yet. So the person who asked the question, what does he do? He talks again.
And you blow the opportunity to listen. And this is what a leader does. This is doing the right things.
And again, it's easy for me to say. It sounds like it ought to be easy to do. Clifton, it is serious work. It takes some serious discipline.
And that wasn't on my job description. I don't remember seeing that anywhere on my interview that not only do I have to teach the technical skills that I know,
but I have to listen. I have to manage my classroom. And on top of that, I now have to become a leader, a leader of young minds.
And many of us, we don't capture that until you realize that you are becoming a leader and that you are becoming a mentor to these young minds.
And then once you get that spark, boy, it just elevates the role to an entirely new level.
Because many of us as technicians, when we come into these positions, because a common evolution in the educational realm is that a good technician ends up becoming an educator
and maybe eventually becomes a director of a department. But we sometimes forget that role of leadership.
We don't necessarily look at ourselves as leaders. We know that as we have students and as we have faculty we're going to work with,
we have to become somewhat of a manager. And we may have never learned those skills when we were in the field.
We managed ourselves fairly well. We may have managed our client relatively well. But managing a group of people, that's a different story.
And then applying the tools necessary to become a good leader. Well, that is a whole other realm that doesn't always get talked about.
And I highly encourage us to take a minute and start thinking about these concepts and understanding that, yes, indeed, we are managers.
That are becoming leaders and a good educator is also a great leader. That's a whole different skill set.
Yeah, they are. The culture is established and driven by the leader, not by the manager.
So it's the leader. And here's what a leader is. In the simplest terms, a leader is a person who demonstrates to others what they are about and where they are going.
Every day they demonstrate what they're about and where they are going. And then the people who look at that leader say to themselves,
I like the way this guy carries himself and I think he's going to a place better than the place I'm going to. So you know what? I'm going to get behind him.
Isn't that great? And that's how a leader establishes followers. You demonstrate every day your willingness and your ability to rise above the fray,
to be grace under pressure, to invest more time making people feel like they are important, making them feel understood.
And you're able to convey that right now what we're going through might be challenging. What we're studying right now in this curriculum, it's challenging.
I know it is. But hang in there with me. I'm going to bring you someplace good. When we come out of the other side of this, you're going to feel so good about yourself.
And those people get behind the leader. Absolutely. So many times I have conversations with other educators that feel like they get in a rut.
And we all tend to get in these ruts in life. But as an educator, I do often wonder, is it really just a rut or have we plateaued as a manager
and not picked up those additional tools that we need to become a leader because there's so much gratification in becoming a leader? More pressure, yes. More responsibility.
But if you as an educator have plateaued as a manager, maybe all that you need to get you to that next place in your career is those tools to become an effective leader,
establishing in a culture within your own classroom. And we essentially become the leader of our own little organization.
Absolutely. Peter Drucker was very, very succinct. And one of his famous quotes is, culture eats strategy for breakfast.
I love that. Right between the eyes. Not that strategy isn't important, because it is. But if you don't have the right culture, it doesn't matter.
And that's what he was trying to get across there in that.
When I think about some of the strategies of war, there have been many strategies utilized in wars in history, but it's the leaders that can execute that leadership of their troops
with the right strategy that becomes successful. And it just it relates so much into life and into our roles as managers and leaders. So I do.
I believe it's very important that we can establish a culture within our own classroom. And hopefully it mimics some of the culture of our customers,
our contractors that we are preparing these students for once they leave our program. Right. We've talked about how some of the demographics of our classrooms have changed.
And maybe a culture that worked 20 years ago in a classroom may not be as effective as it is today.
What kind of culture shifts and demographic shifts have you seen in, say, the last five, 10, 15, 20 years?
OK, interesting. I'm glad you asked.
I'm glad you asked because I have seen a demographic shift only in the last two or three years.
And here's what I've here's what I have seen. I have seen that today's 19 and 20 year old is much more. I don't know. It could be the word respectful or it could be the word curious about me.
Yes. You know, so I show up. I got gray hair and people can tell I've been around the block a lot of times. Right. So I'm old enough to be their granddad and they want to hear my stories.
I and that that didn't happen 10 years ago. Oh, really? It didn't happen 10 years ago. Whereas whereas now they want to hear my stories.
They want to know what I was like when I was their age. Yes. And they want to hear both from the from the good things I did to the times when I was a screw up.
You know, and it's all constructive. It really is. And then the other thing I've learned to do as I started to notice this a couple of like three years ago, I started to create case studies of my favorite.
I tease the word favorite, but my case studies of students I've met over the years who got hired and I've seen their careers take off. Yeah. And their employer is one of my clients.
And I get to see them every couple of years. I show up and now they're in their late 20s and then they're there. They're early 30s and I get to see them flourish.
And that's been great. So most recently I show these PowerPoint presentations of a 19 year old and how that person was was like when they were in school.
And then they got hired and where they got hired. And then they're standing alongside their van. Now they're doing residential work and we do that for a few years.
And now they get hired by the local commercial contractor in town. And now they're doing commercial work. And the students in the classroom, the 19 year olds are seeing the evolution.
And then I say to the 19 year olds, I would love to put you in one of these PowerPoint files in a few years. What do you think? Wow. And everybody wants to be in the file.
Yeah, I bet. Everybody wants to. Everyone wants to do better. They all want to do good. Yeah. And so I've had the best time both teaching at the trade schools and colleges and seeing their careers take off when I serve their employers.
And I could I could list a whole bunch of them and some of them call me up and it's it's so much fun. If I'm in my pickup and I'm on on I 70 or I 40, I'll get a phone call and they may call me from their truck saying, man, Mr.
Kosher, I just had a nightmare service call. Tell me about it. Right. Right. And you're telling me about it. You know, and it's just one of those things where they know that they know they can call. Yeah. You know, my phone number is in every textbook that's used at the trade schools and the colleges.
It's in the workbook. So so they have my phone number and they can use it. So I've seen this this younger demographic today being more more curious, more interested. They really aren't afraid to get their hands dirty and do something different.
That's that's one of the things that I've noticed. I agree. I completely believe that Gen Z is the the curiosity generation and the generation alpha is the generation of change.
I think both of them are very interested in understanding how they can change the world. I think both generations realize that the world of today is a little different than the world that's in the from the past.
And they want to know how they got here. They want to know how they can make a difference. They want to be able to use their their abilities, their their skills, their mind, their creativity to do things.
And I myself have been seeing that exact same scenario. And so I think when we're working with our classrooms and we're building our culture, we need as educators to to be aware that times are changing and that we now have a generation or a couple of generations that are very, very interested in learning.
But doing as well. They're very hands on, which I love because, you know, those of us in the skilled trades know that we all got here that same way. We all had an interest.
But maybe in our generation, it it was a different atmosphere than it is today because we we didn't have as much technology in our other generations.
Gen X and beyond. We just didn't have the technology. We had our hands and that kind of got lost for a period of time. And I think that we're starting to regather that I think as part of why the trades are building.
So understanding this evolution is so important in our classrooms as we are moving from managers now into leaders and understanding that you're right that following as a leader, people start following your commands and your decisions.
And if we can step up to that role of leader and help prepare this generation, boy, it's exciting to see.
Yeah, it is. It's it's a boatload of fun. I could go on and on about the about the students because I've got so many great relationships, so many good stories, so many good meals I've had with them.
You know, what you know, Clifton from traveling like myself, you know where the good food is. Yes, you do.
So if I'm in Tulsa or Dallas or Kansas City or it doesn't matter. I know where the good food is. Yes. And meeting a student from a trade school there and say, hey, let's go there. And they know it. I know it.
And just makes for for a great time. It really does. Fantastic stuff. Steve Coscia. Thank you, sir, for joining us so much. How can people connect with Steve Coscia and Coscia Communications Incorporated?
My phone number, I'll say it. It's 610-853-9836.
And I assume my first and last name is going to be somewhere in this in this in this information. So my last name is my website. So when you see my last name, that's the website. It's Coscia.com. You can go there and call me just to say hello. I'd love to hear from you.
Thank you. All right. We appreciate you so much and look forward to our next conversation. Thank you. Take care.