5 Leadership Lessons for Tradies from Builders Business Blackbelt’s Mick Hawes

Guest: Mick Hawes

Episode: Season 1, Episode 16

Listen here

Mick Hawes has spent decades coaching builders to turn stressful, time-poor operations into businesses that actually work, with self-leadership at the centre of everything he teaches.

Here’s what he’s learned about leadership through his own career.

Lesson 1: Creating a Leadership Environment in Construction

Mick has watched plenty of leadership modelled over the years as simply someone telling other people what to do, and pushes back hard on that definition. He argues the most effective leaders he's encountered are the ones willing to admit that several people on their team can do certain things better than they can.

"Effective leaders understand there's probably a bunch of people in their team that can do most things better than I can," he says. "They're happy to put ego aside."

In practice, that means putting people in roles that suit their strengths, rather than shaping the whole team around the leader's own way of doing things.

Lesson 2: Why Self-Leadership Comes First

Mick's own leadership journey started in a role that had nothing to do with construction: selling life insurance in the early 1990s, which became his unlikely introduction to personal development through mentors like Stephen Covey, Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar.

That period convinced him of something he still believes today.

"It's really difficult, or impossible, to lead others until and unless you can lead yourself," he says, and he's candid that it's a skill he considers himself still actively working on, decades later, rather than something he ever fully mastered.

Lesson 3: Work-Life Harmony vs Work-Life Balance

Mick used to teach work-life balance back when mobile phones were the size of a walkie-talkie and switching off on weekends was genuinely possible. He no longer believes in that model.

"I don't believe in work-life balance. I believe in work-life harmony," he says. "The key is to learn how to enjoy everything you're doing, no matter when you're doing it."

In practice, that means he'll take a call from a struggling coaching member at 8pm on a Sunday because he genuinely enjoys the people he coaches, but he's equally deliberate about carving out purely personal time midweek without any guilt attached.

Lesson 4: Emotional Regulation for Trade Leaders

Mick calls this "emotional fitness": measured by how quickly you can return to a level head after something sets you off, the same way physical fitness is measured by how fast your heart rate recovers.

He points out that humans are the only mammals with a genuine pause between a triggering event and how they respond to it, and that deliberately practising that pause shrinks its effects over time.

"The more you expand that pause before you decide on your response, the better you get at it," he says.

He uses the example of walking into a toolbox meeting straight after a heated phone call. Without that pause, the whole team absorbs an energy that had nothing to do with them.

Lesson 5: Why Empathetic Listening Matters in the Trades

Mick sees this constantly across the builders he coaches, and doesn't consider it their fault. Genuine listening simply isn't something the school system or most workplaces ever teach.

"We don't learn what I call level 5 listening, or empathetic listening," he says. "Good communication is having somebody want to listen to you because they feel listened to and understood."

He borrows an analogy from an old book on the subject, describing everyone as sitting inside their own metaphorical cage, built from their beliefs and past experiences, and argues that truly understanding someone else means being willing to leave your own cage and step into theirs, even though it feels genuinely risky.

Mick’s Advice on Everyday Leadership

"Build yourself a personal success ritual every day. I absolutely am convinced that the number one tool that creates the most effective leadership is example.”

Catch the full conversation with Mick Hawes on Tradies Who Lead for more leadership lessons for tradies, out now wherever you listen to podcasts.