Mentorship, Mistakes, and Better Leaders with Buddy Henley

Christina May sits down with Buddy Henley of Henley Construction for a conversation about leadership, mentorship, and building a culture where people aren't afraid to learn. Together, they discuss why mistakes are an inevitable part of growth, how "taking micro-risks" helps develop confident leaders, and why honest communication can strengthen trust with both your team and your customers. Whether you're growing a business or growing the people around you, this episode offers practical reminders that leadership isn't about getting everything right. It's about creating an environment where people can keep moving forward.

Christina May: Welcome to The Breakout Moment. I am so happy and excited to have you on the episode today. We have just been chatting about all the mistakes that we have made and all the things that we have learned from those mistakes. I kind of want to start there because many people who come on the show, we talk about lots of breakout moments. It wasn't just one breakout moment. I think the mistakes we make along the way are what lead to a lot of breakout moments. I thought I would kind of kick you off with that and kind of continue the conversation there.

Buddy Henley: Well, first off, thank you for having me here, Christina. It's truly an honor to be here. So, yeah, we do make a lot of mistakes, and I've made a lot of them myself. As we were talking about earlier, one of the first mistakes I made, I was a young superintendent very early in my career, and I was very concerned about making a mistake. I thought it'd end my career right there. I had one job in particular in which the layout was complicated, trying to get this right. I was paired up with the seasoned superintendent at the job, and he was pushing me. He said, "Why don't you go out there and secure funding for the media center?" And I'm like, “Cause I'm scared to make a mistake, Pete, I can't figure this out.” And he is a German guy, very heavy German accent. He started chuckling, and he said, just go out there and do it. And he said, “If you never screw anything up in life, you've never done anything.” But then he had a very serious face. He says, “But if you screw it up, you gotta be able to fix it.” So I was like, “That's so true.” So I did go out there and do it. Then that's really been my motto ever since. If you don't take a risk in life that you're never gonna get anywhere, you have to make mistakes. And as long as they're not huge. But yeah, trial and error and push things a little bit. That's really how you're going to move forward in life.

CM: I agree 100%. Everything that I feel like the big lessons I've learned didn't really necessarily sometimes come out of a book. It was more so; I didn't quite do that right. I have to go back, retrace my steps, redo it. I find when I do that, I learn so much more and consequently usually don't make the mistake again. But how do you take that idea as a leader and make a space for people to feel safe within your company to make mistakes? Because I know that is something you felt as a young superintendent, now that you have superintendents and people who work for you, how do you reassure them that it's going to be okay if you make a mistake?

BH: So, I really try to reinforce to them what the end project needs to look like. I said, when we finish, it needs to look like this. I said, here's how I would do it. But if you have another way we can try, or another idea, I'm not the only one with good ideas. So they might come up with something, and we try it, and I don't let them fail. I’ll go around and say, "Looks like you're having trouble or something." But really support them along the way because it gives them some better job satisfaction too if they can take ownership of something and know that their way got us there. Sometimes it does happen where they make a mistake. We had an incident probably 20 years ago where one of the young superintendents I told them how to get there, and he totally deviated.

CM: See, we almost made a mistake.

BH: Yeah, I almost did, absolutely, and we saved it. So he deviated from what I told him, and then he called me that evening, very upset, and he goes, "You know what?, I screwed up royally.” He goes, "I didn't hit the mark you said to hit. I'll bring back the truck. I'll turn my tools in.” He thought he was fired. I was like, “Did you learn anything from this?” He goes, “Oh, absolutely.” I said, “So you would never do that again, right?” He goes, “No, I won't.” Now he's one of our senior superintendents 20 years later, and he reinforces the same thing to the young people he's mentoring. So really try to be supportive of it. It has people develop. We want people to grow with us and learn our culture. And we provide mentoring and coaching. We put people with people. I was with a senior superintendent. It was actually his first superintend. My father ever hired me, started the business. So he knew how we did things. I was very fortunate to learn from Pete about all that. Actually, several people in our company have learned from Pete as well. So he was a good mentor to many of us.

CM: Well, you're able to bring those stories of, look, I did this, it's okay if you do this, too. I'm going to be here to help you when that happens. I think that's really important for any organization. You were mentioning that you really loved bringing, I think all of us do, seeing people grow through the company. Providing opportunities as the company grows, they grow too. I was mentioning I noticed that you have a vice president who started out as an intern at your company, and just that, that long tenure and what it takes to kind of foster something like that. Can you talk a little bit more about how you mentored people? Bring them up and through the different seasons of the career because it truly is seasons. It's not just rungs of the ladder; it's also seasons of life.

BH: Yeah. So, many people we have there we’ve had that intern with us and then continue after the internship because we really do try to coach people, mentor them, give them opportunities to grow. We sit down and talk with them and say, where do you wanna go with your career? What do you like? We try to get them on a career path that gives them job satisfaction, because it's also a personal satisfaction or work-life balance type thing. So, like in Matt's case, he's now a vice president, and he's been there quite a while. It's funny because the pictures, you'll see him on the website, he still looks like middle school pictures, which is so funny. But now he's got gray hair and whatnot, but he’s not that old. But he started out really well, took to what we're doing, and really grasped it. He has mentored several people now. So, it's gone well, the whole coaching, mentoring, and something we've done more recently, as we found, we asked people, what do you like to do in your spare time? Because if you find out somebody likes to play in parties or something, I was like, well, you can help plan the company party. It gives them more job satisfaction because, wow, this is what I really enjoy doing. I get to go to work and do what I love.

CM: I agree with that. I have never prescribed the idea that the person who walks through the door is supposed to leave all the rest of themselves outside the door, and only be the work version of themselves when they walk in. Obviously, there has to be some sort of boundaries around that. But you don't leave more than half of who you are in your car waiting for you when you get off work. You bring your whole self to work. So the ability for you to tap into those interests keeps people engaged and brings more of that. It adds more cohesiveness. I know when I was an employee and not an employer, that's something that I appreciated in the work environments that I was in, where someone would notice a talent or something that I enjoy doing. A lot of times, it means you end up with a little extra few things, but they're satisfying. They're just so satisfying for sure. So, speaking of mentorship, you have a history with ABC, the organization, which has a very strong advocacy towards apprenticeships, mentoring the next generation. Can you talk to me a little bit about that and how you also bring that into the company?

BH: Yeah. So in 2024, I was primarily the national chairman for Associated Builders and Contractors. I was involved in local chapters. I'm still involved because once you get involved, they don't let you become uninvolved.

CM: No, they don't.

BH: But it's truly a passion of mine because they do so much good, like workforce development, providing people the opportunity to get into the construction industry because the construction industry is such a great industry and there are so many points of entry. I think ABC tracked 325 points of entry where you could come and get into the construction industry. Once you're in, you can go anywhere you want to go with this. You can end up owning your own business eventually. You don't have to have a college degree to own your own business in construction; you can get in and work hard. You can start your own HVAC company; you can do whatever you want to do. There was a survey done that construction people, construction workers, who have 255 industries, the construction industry was ranked number one for job satisfaction and happiness because it is something that once you train people and they get to be part of a big project, you can drive a building for 30 years and say, I had a part of that. I got to do the masonry, put in the windows, do the HVAC, or whatever it may be. So it's just job satisfaction. You get to drive by and show your family, your kids. ABC does so much with training and getting people involved. It's really satisfying to be involved with that.

CM: When did you first become involved with the organization?

BH: My father was a member back in probably 1970. I got involved around 1998. I started going to events and stuff like that. I think it's 2010. I got involved in the local chapter on the board. Prior to that, I was on some committees, so I started out slow. Then once you're involved in the chapter, you become regional vice chair international, and it is so great on that level because as the national chair, I get to travel around the country and meet other ABC members at other chapters, and it's all like family. We all have shared values. I'm going to so many things. I went to Houston, and they had a career event, and high school kids, they trucked in from all over Houston. I think it's about 3 or 400 high school kids. It had a different work environment set up, running a little mini excavator or climbing a scaffolding to get the tie off and learn the proper safety techniques. It was so good to see that they were getting young people involved in the industry,

CM: Absolutely. Well, I know that nationally, even locally here in Maryland, apprenticeships, there’s such a big push for that right now. There's such a value. I'm actively involved with the local community college here in kind of bridging the gap between what we're training and providing roads to internships and jobs moving forward and kind of getting a closer-knit conversation, so that graduates, people who are going to technical school, understand that there are multiple roads available to you. I really appreciate that kind of giving back. But also seeing those people get in, grow, and flourish, especially right now when things are just changing, they're always changing quickly. But they just, I don't know. They feel like they're speeding up even more so now than they were before.

BH: So things like AI, you’re talking about how fast something changes?

CM: We talk about it all the time. I hate to say the word AI anymore. It should be a drinking game.

BH: But what does that bring to the construction industry?

CM: Yes, it is. There's no industry it's not going to touch. There really isn't an industry it’s not going to touch. So it's very interesting to see. What are you guys doing with AI?

BH: One of the things that we're just starting to integrate is contract reviews and stuff like that, document review. We have agents set up if you want to search for, I don't know who's going to do a certain task. You can enter it in, and it'll search in the specs, the plans, and the contract, and it tells you. It saves a lot of time for the project managers and superintendents. Instead of being like, who did we contract this to? And it can just like that.

CM: It really is, for those types of things. I think it's really, really interesting. I've seen some really interesting use cases for it.

BH: And do some preliminary estimates with it too. I mean, it does take off. It's just amazing how quickly it can happen. So we deal with monthly training in-house. We have one person on staff who is passionate about it. Again, we talked about someone’s passion, found someone who is passionate about it, and she leads training for the whole team.

CM: That's a lot of fun. I'm so glad to hear that you're doing that because there are so many times in this industry, particularly in the built environment, when it’s kind of slow to come to the new stuff. It just has always been a little bit that way. Not always bleeding edge on everything. So it's good. It's really good to see some of those things being taken care of. So, you mentioned the concept of family. Obviously, you and your dad, as you're looking forward into the future, not only how do you continue those values now, but how do you bring those values kind of into the wider family that you have, in the company. If you were talking to somebody who was going through something similar, let's say, in the next 5 to 10 years, what would you tell them?

BH: Well, we talked about making mistakes. So you really got to mentor people, let them make mistakes, figure things out, but really get people engaged early. Some people always say that today's youth want things right now, like instant satisfaction and gratification, but it really takes a little bit of time to get the experience on things. So really get them engaged as soon as you can so that they can have that experience over time. So give them the opportunity to make their own decisions with the company, but not if it involves safety, as we talked about earlier. I mean, that's a hard line; you can't do that. That's not safe. But other things, let them try it, let them explore it. Let's see how it goes for the company. They may have great ideas. They may be your future leader who's going to pop out. You know, a light bulb comes on, they get engaged, and they're like, yes, I love this. I can do this. And they take a project and run with it. That's what you're looking for. Somebody who can be a true leader.

CM: How do you foster that kind of innovation, mistakes, things like that? I noticed a lot of the projects that you do are strict bid projects. They're schools. So you're looking at something that's very, shall we say, rigid. How do you bridge the gap between those two worlds of something that's when you have to perform a contract. It's very clearly defined. Allowing people to almost, you know, play jazz, so to speak.

BH: What we find is that so many of our projects finished early because of that. That really helps foster. I know if the owner is on board with that, they're getting their project on time, they're not fighting a contractor trying to get something opened, and things are opening early. They're a lot more open to working with you.

CM: Taking micro risks.

BH: Yes, basically. You have to communicate with them and clearly show them upfront what you're going to do instead of presenting schedules that show with frag nets and delayed claims and whatnot. I'd say, "Hey, this is a delay, but here's how we mitigated it, here's what we're going to do, and here's where you're going to get your project." So that usually goes over really well.

CM: Yeah.

BH: Open, honest communication.

CM: I think that too, and I think that's a lesson for anyone in business. It's not just from a construction perspective. Proactive communication and transparency go such a long way. You can actually create an environment where the customer is okay with you making mistakes because you have been upfront, you haven't made the mistake and you're coming back behind with like, oh, we tried to hide this, etc., etc. and I think that's something that's not easy to mentor and teach that it is okay to admit to the customer there's something that has happened.

BH: Yeah, just be honest upfront and say, hey, we screwed up here, but here's what we're going to do to fix it. Then they're totally happy.

CM: They are.

BH: Yeah, they trust. It's like Stephen Covey's, Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey's book.

CM: Yes, great book.

BH: If people trust each other, they can work together so much more efficiently. That's really what we try to build.

CM: Yes, I think that's what we all try to build is that trust in that safe space to make mistakes so that we can deliver ahead of schedule.

BH: Yes. I had one subcontractor. She's actually out of Frederick. She would call me up ahead of time and say, "My guys aren't going to be there in the morning because they have to go and load a truck. They'll be there by 11.” That's so much better than getting there and wondering where they are, and you're calling their office, and you're not going to answer till eight or whatever. She was very proactive all the time and open and honest, and it made things go so much smoother.

CM: It really does. When we work with other customers and subcontractors, we look for those tight-knit values. We have the same value set. So for us, even when we onboard a new customer, we're very transparent with what our values are and that it's just as much, you know, yes, you're a customer, but this is a partnership. We look for trust, transparency, and accountability. We'll hold ourselves to that. We also want you to hold us to it. But you also need to bring that to the table as well. That, I think, is what makes a lot of our projects very successful, because we define that upfront.

BM: Absolutely. As you said, open, honest communication and setting expectations. It really works out well because, in our thing, the construction stuff and a lot of it is phased-occupied renovation, a lot of give and take. If we take this room early, we'll give you back these three rooms, and there's always that kind of trade-off going on. We always say it's a three-legged stool: the architect, the owner, and the contractor.

CM: Life is a three-legged stool. Anything can fit that metaphor, by the way.

BM: That’s a little thing about quality time, price and all that; that's what you want. So, it really is about communication and people working together. And again, you try something new. That's what we talked about: let people make a mistake. If somebody's got an idea that they can rephrase something and take one extra room, but give them three earlier, I think that works out great for everybody.

CM: I think we all win. We need to learn something, or we end up with a more positive outcome, regardless of the origin or the event. You can even reframe it; it doesn't necessarily mean it's a mistake. It was just a challenge and a learning opportunity.

BH: It's an opportunity to learn.

CM: That’s right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing the story and making us all feel safe to take little micro risks every day.

BH: Well, thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure.

CM: Thanks so much.