What ELSE it Takes to be a Tradesman

In my last column I wrote about how we in the trades comprehend, use and otherwise work with mathematics, and how we use math more often and are better at it than just about anyone else, save a few professionals like architects and engineers.

That conversation is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the trades and working in them. I read a column in last month’s CONTRACTOR Magazine that extolled the virtues of training your service people how to “properly” sell, or up-sell, your customers. In plain English, the idea seemed to me to be a bit overplayed. Taking your trade people (as hard as it is to find good new hires!) and make them salesmen as well as plumbers, HVAC guys or electricians, etc., is a terrible waste of limited resources. The time spent training your prospective journeymen should not, in my opinion, be adulterated with subject matter not germane to the trade. Certainly not in a structured training setting. 

Don’t get me wrong; I think having young (or old) craftsmen learn how to interact with your customer base in a more socially professional manner is a great idea. Where I diverge from that guest columnist is how much emphasis is placed on the sales training and integration. At what cost? Granted, the up-and-coming young people who enter the trades today are a different breed than those who did so thirty or forty years ago. Many have been hobbled by the “participation trophy” mentality and still many others have rarely if ever been made to work to achieve a gratifying outcome for their efforts.

I don’t say all young people suffer from these issues, but a vast majority of them do. Remember, these are the people into whose hands we are leaving the trades. So, at the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, is “sales” training of new hires worth the time and effort if the object is to train a new journeyman in four or five years? As an adjunct to learning the trade, I could see it, but only as an ancillary thought.

Picking Your Battles

In previous columns, yours truly has made much of the fact that a trade career is a super concentrated training ground that takes years to learn correctly. The desired end result is a journeyman who has more than a passing familiarity, and skill level, with most aspects of the trade to which he has apprenticed.

I have had readers correspond with me who took exception to my characterization of a true trade education. They claimed—unfairly, I thought—that anyone who enters the trades is asking for a life of hard work and social stigma (?), and that is just the nicer letters. I believe that we are still a few years away from the catastrophe awaiting the trades when the majority of the seasoned journeymen retire. It doesn’t take PhD to read the writing on the wall, or am I missing something?

Where to From Here?

Yes, I believe that training curricula and methods must adapt to the new reality of the people coming into the trades. I also believe that, moving forward, the basics still need to be taught and that reliability, timeliness, manual skill and a good “head on one’s shoulders” is essential to a successful trade career.

While the above criteria are not mutually exclusive, adhering to them as much as possible, hopefully, will result in a favorable outcome for the apprentice and the shop for which he works.

So, in addition to using mathematics, as stated in my previous column, prospective apprentices need a few other attributes that today’s labor pool is sorely lacking. Today’s apprentice, first and foremost, must have the desire to learn. He also must have the ability to apply that education in real, practical situations for a relatively long time (four or five years) but even more, today’s new hire must understand, or be made to understand, that the job he now holds has a light at the end of the tunnel... and it is not a train! Pride in self, ability and skill with the craft is not an abstract today. It is a prerequisite to success. 

The Downside? 

Thus far I’ve emphasized the mental luggage that a prospective apprentice needs to carry to achieve journeyman status. The physicality of the trades is legendary as well. There may be trades where physical effort is not a prerequisite for learning the trade, but I can’t come up with one right off the top of my head. I’m sure that if pressed, we could all come up with a job in the construction industry that is not physically taxing to one degree or another, but truthfully, almost every one takes its toll on your body. 

At some point in just about every trade, you need to put out huge amounts of physical effort to get the job done. Whether is it carrying heavy material, unloading a large truck or train car, or doing one of the myriad things your trade requires of you to get the job done, at some point you will be sacrificing your physical body to the trade.

This, too, needs to be emphasized to our new hires. The fact that physical effort is part and parcel of the trades. Understanding that should be a no brainer, but it’s not.

So to put it into simple words, what it takes for someone to become a true tradesman is smarts, ability, physical stamina, and the desire to become a part of a community that traces its roots back to the dawn of recorded history. Nothing more, nothing less.