How Do You Motivate Your Team? An Interview with Kevin Nolan

Explor­ing the Ideas of Account­abil­i­ty, Reward, and Response

We as human beings respond to things. I know. That sounds like an incred­i­bly sim­plis­tic state­ment, but when you slow down and think about it, it’s also incred­i­bly pow­er­ful. As busi­ness own­ers and man­agers, you have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to draw spe­cif­ic respons­es from your team by the way you lead, man­age, del­e­gate, and encour­age. As mar­keters (and we are all mar­keters in a way!), we strive to elic­it a cer­tain response from those who read our mate­ri­als, find our web­sites, or explore our rep­u­ta­tions. The trick is to find just the right key to unlock the response you’re look­ing for.

Lead in a Way that Calls for a Cer­tain Response

When you think of ​“incen­tives” and ​“moti­va­tion”, one of the go-to strate­gies is to involve some sort of raise in pay, or bonus. That cer­tain­ly has its place, but let’s dig a lit­tle deep­er. The response of increased involve­ment, moti­va­tion, and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is not inex­tri­ca­bly tan­gled up in your pay scale alone, but also comes as a direct result of your lead­er­ship and man­age­ment style. Do not be afraid to ask for more, and to let your team take own­er­ship of their own work. And, most impor­tant­ly, pro­vide encour­age­ment, focus, goals, vision, and follow-through. A well-known say­ing tells us: ​“You get what you inspect, not what you expect.” Set­ting up a sys­tem of account­abil­i­ty and encour­age­ment will go a long way to draw a pos­i­tive response.

How Kevin Nolan Built a Cus­tom Home in Few­er than 5 Months

Last month, I had the chance to spend a day with Kevin Nolan, own­er of one of the largest and most high­ly-respect­ed res­i­den­tial paint com­pa­nies in the U.S. A cou­ple of years ago, I heard he bought a piece of prop­er­ty and was going to build a cus­tom wood home in record time. If there is any­one who jumps to mind when it comes to meet­ing goals, it is Kevin. Because of this I knew it could be done, but I won­dered how he would accom­plish such a daunt­ing task. He was kind enough to talk with me about how he did what was said to be impos­si­ble: build­ing his dream home from start to fin­ish in just under 5 months! It’s a study of not just con­struc­tion, but of how to grab a process by the horns and draw the response he need­ed from every­one involved. By the way, I final­ly got to vis­it the fin­ished (and beau­ti­ful) home and have includ­ed a few of the before, dur­ing and after pho­tos in this post below.

Kevin: I decid­ed to be my own gen­er­al con­trac­tor (GC) so I could have con­trol over how quick­ly I could build my house. I did hire a GC to act as a con­sul­tant. We met once a week and we decid­ed what had to hap­pen next. I used some of his con­trac­tors to per­form some func­tions and some of my own con­trac­tors to per­form oth­ers. Nat­u­ral­ly it took a lot of plan­ning.We had to order mate­ri­als in a time­ly man­ner and make quick deci­sions on things. David: How long did it take to build your home? Kevin: Tech­ni­cal­ly 4 months, 3 weeks from ground­break­ing to move in. David: How did you come up with that time­frame and why did you think it could be done? Kevin: We were in a race to get in before the hol­i­days. We had our two sons com­ing home from col­lege and no place for them to stay. We were liv­ing in a dilap­i­dat­ed old house on the prop­er­ty that had no heat and no water. Lat­er we demol­ished the old house. David: How did you get the trades to work for you and get the job done on time? How did you moti­vate them? Kevin: I told them upfront that I would pay them imme­di­ate­ly after they gave me an invoice. I also made deci­sions fast. I offered them bonus­es for meet­ing or beat­ing the sched­ule. They all took advan­tage of it. My gen­er­al con­trac­tor friend said I could nev­er build it in 5 months, but we beat that by a week. Late nights and week­ends allowed the project to move dou­ble-time. David: In your opin­ion, how can a paint­ing com­pa­ny or builder moti­vate his/​her employ­ees to hit or exceed goals? You had men­tioned to me about your son and how pro­duc­tive he has been work­ing at Nolan Paint­ing. Kevin: I am a big believ­er in lay­ing out clear goals and time­lines and offer­ing bonus­es to peo­ple to hit them. We call it Pay For Per­for­mance (PFP). As long as a goal is rea­son­able and there is an incen­tive to hit the goal on time or ear­ly, most peo­ple will put in the extra effort. It is in everybody’s best inter­est to hit the goal. We PFP for our man­age­ment team, office staff and field super­nal. It dri­ves a cul­ture of account­abil­i­ty and reward.

By the way, I will men­tion that not only did Kevin build his home in 4 months and 3 weeks, but he also still man­aged the affairs at Nolan Paint­ing on a dai­ly basis with­out miss­ing a beat. It is tru­ly amaz­ing to walk through Nolan’s office and observe his hard­work­ing staff.

Tak­ing a Gen­uine Inter­est in Your Team Builds a Cul­ture of Success

I hope the brief inter­view above has stirred up a few ideas about how you can encour­age and moti­vate your team in 2015. I sure was inspired this fall by my vis­it to Nolan Paint­ing. Kevin is tru­ly a remark­able busi­ness­man who gets things done. Yet there was one key take­away I learned this time around after my dis­cus­sion about his home and the crews work­ing for him: he is gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in their suc­cess. Kevin moti­vates, push­es hard, and sets high expec­ta­tions because he believes that he has great peo­ple work­ing for him that can meet and exceed those expec­ta­tions. I can tell he tru­ly has a heart and pas­sion for peo­ple and wants to see Nolan Paint­ing suc­ceed with­out his ongo­ing involve­ment. Kevin, thank you again for allow­ing me to write this blog and spend­ing a bit of your busy Wednes­day with me. Since I first met you almost 15 years ago, I have always come away learn­ing some­thing new that chal­lenges me! ]