It takes a team working together to make an HVAC business a success. And it requires top performance from the technicians who deliver stellar service through to middle management and the CEO. To maintain peak performance, each person involved in the process must embrace good practices and mindsets that support their own mental health and that of the team. Let’s explore what it takes to stay positive, focused and give your company rocket fuel, allowing it to exceed your dreams.

Balance Starts at the Top

The leadership of your organization, by definition, leads the way for everyone else. Working non-stop without making space in your head and heart for anything else makes it impossible to succeed in business or in any relationship. You have to put in the work to achieve mental and emotional fitness to effectively lead your company and be the best partner/parent/friend outside of work, too. And achieving a healthy work-life balance is an important step. Being emotionally and mentally prepared to handle amazing growth is essential for your success. Skilled leaders set an example for their teams by showing them how to plan, delegate and preserve space in their lives for both business and home life. If both your business and home life are rockin’, there is no stopping you!

The Forgotten Middle: Listen Up!

A lot of attention in the HVAC industry is paid to the owners running their companies from the top and the technicians actually providing the services to customers. But there is a whole set of team members running call centers, managing field technicians, making sales calls and keeping the entire team working in tandem to fill every call in a timely manner and provide excellent customer service. These employees often report job dissatisfaction and are prone to resigning, citing long hours, a lack of opportunity and little support or acknowledgement. As the business owner, it’s your responsibility to make space for these employees, as they do the important work that props up the rest of the team. Giving them the opportunity to learn and grow, as well as being receptive to ideas by creating an ongoing dialog, is critical to improve their attitude and the overall work environment. Teaching the team most likely to be a customer’s first contact with your company how to use those interactions to thrive will improve your company. As they work to arrange appointments and make sales, they will face a lot of rejection and frustration. What if they could use the endorphins caused by these difficulties to propel them forward into success? Successful managers use the pain to come back faster and harder, utilizing lessons learned in rejection and harnessing the once-negative energy as rocket fuel to power a comeback.

Technicians: More Than Boots on the Ground

Building a team of high-performing field technicians should be a high priority for any HVAC business owner. However, you should be careful of the pitfalls that high performers might encounter. Go-getters on any level have a hard time leaving work. With management offering more and more overtime and commission, many marriages – or home lives in general – get left in the wake of a technician’s drive to make more money. From techs on up, you must ensure your team makes time for themselves and their families. Working 80 hours a week may result in higher paychecks, but the price they pay for it may be greater still. Be careful of throwing money at your best techs to encourage working more hours, while sabotaging their personal lives. You can’t guarantee high-quality customer service with technicians who aren’t mentally and emotionally fit. Managers should provide their talented technicians with the skills and the time to stay in top shape, so they’re unflappable in the face of difficult problems or customers.

Building a Better Team

Helping to improve the mental health of your organization may start with yourself, but it doesn’t end there. Teaching everyone from techs to management the skills they need to not only bounce back from challenges, but to use the endorphins produced by adversity to power the business forward. Instilling in your team the idea that there is always a silver lining helps deal with difficult situations and keep the business moving. With the ambitious pros you’re putting on the team, you may feel them breathing down your neck a bit. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Beefing up leadership at the same time that you’re team building with middle management and techs will keep their growth curve ahead of the rest of the business. And once you have CSR and sales reps cranking out bookings and technicians fulfilling tons of calls, it’s up to owners and leadership to keep up and support overall business growth. Buckle up! It’s going to be quite the ride!