When we think of leadership, we often picture the teams we manage or the goals we set—but sometimes, we need to look a little closer. True leadership starts with self-awareness: it starts with me. In this episode of Pave It Black, executive coach and leadership expert, Wally Adamchik, shares how he has helped leaders grow by embracing grace and humility. With decades of experience coaching executives in the construction industry, Wally breaks down what it means to develop values and why your mission matters more than you think. Listen to uncover the leadership lessons that bring real value to the asphalt pavement industry.
Released May 20, 2025
Wally can you just tell us a little bit about yourself to get things started?
Well, I am stoked to be here. The short answer is that I speak and consult on leadership and construction so, I guess I'm in the right place.
Could you walk us through your experience as a leader?
My 60-second resume is, I grew up on Long Island. My brother and dad were construction guys in New York City and I was a helper on jobs when I was 13 years old. You know, probably breaking every labor law there was, but we didn't worry about those things back then. I was fortunate enough to attend the University of Notre Dame on a Marine scholarship. So when I was commissioned in the Marine Corps, I was an Armor Officer for five years. So being around all those big yellow and green pieces of iron, I felt really comfortable when out on job sites right now. I flew Cobra Helicopters for five years, so that was just a blast. I learnt a lot about aviation, but more importantly, more about maintenance and that aspect has helped me so much when I come into the business world.
When I got out of the Marines, I was actually a Regional Manager for Arby's restaurants. It was quite a proud moment for my mom when her MBA honor grad, flight school son said, ‘would you like curly fries or regular?’ But I learned business. I was a history major. I didn't know anything about business. So here I was, I had my own P&L running a bunch of restaurants. Again, that helps from a consulting perspective. I got my MBA from the University of North Carolina which set me up to come into the consulting world. That's what I've been doing since the turn of the century.
What's the most unexpected lesson that you've learned on your leadership journey?
Just hit me with a fastball bean ball right out of the block. Oh my gosh. You know, I think the lesson is, it's all about me, or the leader, right? We think that leadership is about that other person, the person we're trying to influence, but it starts with you. If you don't have that self-awareness, if you don't know what ticks you off, who ticks you off, if you don't have that humility and patience, those kinds of things. I don't think you can lead as successfully as you might. I think the epiphany is it really starts with you and not with them.
Could you provide the listeners with some tips from your book thatare critical for leaders?
Well, it's all about application.
We can read all day long and I can stand in front of a group of construction foreman all day long, but you have to take it to the field, so to speak. As an officer of Marines, I was in that leadership laboratory. You have to put it into practice. I mean, we have a lot of people listening to this podcast, but do they put it into practice? And when I say that, I'll say that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, meaning there's a learning curve. You have to give grace to yourself that as you try to learn, as you try to apply these things, you're going to screw it up.
I would say the other thing I learned in the Marine Corps is that you need a good, Gunnery Sergeant. That good gnarly guy who's been around forever in our world, we might call him a General Superintendent or something like that. Someone who has been there, done that, and will make you look really good or really bad, depending on the level of leadership. I'll use the word grace again, that you extend to them.
What are some of the key philosophies related to leadership you've developed?
I think it would come down to my mission statement. So I'm a living, loving, learning child of God who strives for excellence in all things. Now what's a mission statement? That's my anchor. That's my foundation. When we do executive coaching, we like people to come up with a mission statement. Living means I've got to be taking care of my body. I've got to be in shape. Leadership is an endurance contest, right? So if we're not taking care of ourselves physically, that means nutrition, sleep, et cetera, none of those which come readily in the construction industry, it's going to be tougher to lead. Learning that the world we live in today is not the world we lived in last week, last year, 20 years ago. That's not a political statement, that's just the dynamics of the economy, of climate, of governmental expectations, dare I say carbon, and, again, demographics. So it's about learning and loving. It's about relationships. If we're going to lead, we have to have relationships and how do we do that in a positive way?
We strive for excellence. I don't believe that we're put on the face of the earth to do mediocre things. I don't think leaders want their organizations to do mediocre things. So we strive for excellence in all things, and all means; as a parent, as a spouse, as a vice president of manufacturing, or as a project engineer, it says that it implies that there's some level of, dare I use the word balance, in our lives. Because again, an unbalanced person probably is not going to be optimized. Then it just begins to break. And by it, I mean the human being, the organization, et cetera. So recognizing that total person is really important for the leader to be successful. If we look at mental health issues these days in the industry, we recognize that's probably hasn't happened as well as it could have over the last couple of years.
What challenges are leaders facing when wanting to move to the next level as a leader?
Well, we win and get recognition early in our career by being independent. ‘I'm a great foreman. I'm a great project manager. It's me running things’ and then all of a sudden I have people around me. So it becomes an interdependent thing. But you think about how I got there in the first place. Maybe I was a paver operator, whatever. In other words, I was a doer. Maybe I was a project engineer, I was a doer. So I got rewarded for doing things. So now when I get promoted to foreman, superintendent, project manager, whatever. It's just not me doing things. It's me overseeing people doing things. It's that shift from control i.e. get 'er done to influence. People have a really hard time with that because we intrinsically value ourselves by our production to some degree. Like, ‘honey, what'd you do today?’ ‘Man, I paved.’ Right? There's something we can point to. Then as a leader, it's ‘honey, what'd you do today?’ ‘I managed.’ What is that? So it's that move from doer to supervisor, that really trips up a lot of people in the field and in the office. That has time management issues. It has effectiveness issues. So that’s the first hurdle we have to get through, to just recognize that if you're running work and you're hopping on a paver, you're the most overpaid paver operator out there because you're not getting paid to run the paver. You're getting paid for people to run the paver.
When you work with leaders, how do you get them to see the importance of balance?
Let's just be clear that it's a concept of balance. The reality of it is hard and it's maybe even crap. From a tactical perspective, if a leader does a time log and actually sees where they spend their time over the course of a week, because there is where we think we spend our time and where we actually spend our time. The other piece about it is learning to say no. Learning to say no was probably one of the keys to, I'd say my happiness and joy. I remember when I started the business 20 something years ago. I was on the Notre Dame Board, I was on the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. I was on the National Speaker Association Board because that's what business owners do. And oh my gosh, my kids were two and three and four. I had spread way too thin. And I said ‘all right, I can't do this.’ So I learned to say no. Now the challenge in that is we're often in a situation where we're choosing between right and right. We're not choosing between binge watching Succession or Yellowstone and going to the kids' soccer game. We're choosing between I need to finish this bid and go to the kids' soccer game. So here's another kind of mental gymnastics on this concept of saying no when you say yes you say no. So when I say yes to being on this podcast with you at this moment, I've said no to every other possibility in my life. And that's fine, right? But if I keep saying yes to things, then I'm saying no to something else. And usually for business people, it's our bodies and our families that we say no to and that's not sustainable. You could do a time log just to understand where you are, but recognize when you say yes, you're saying no to something else.
Could you share a time where you faced a challenge as a leader?
Geez, which failure do we really want to talk about? I don't know if it's a failure, but I think it's an opportunity. I haven't taken a drink of anything in 20 something years. I'm not saying I was an alcoholic. I certainly enjoyed it from time to time, and I love chocolate chip cookies right now, but that was one of those situations where it wasn't bringing value to my life. It's so easy in what we do with the way we travel, maybe getting upgraded to first class, then go to association meetings. Let's face it, I was out of the Marines, so I had a lot of empirical evidence on drinking, and it just didn't add value to my life. So when I took that out my emotional awareness goes up, my self-awareness goes up. There was just a veil lifted that made me more effective and quite frankly made me a better coach because I was able to tap into empathy and those kinds of things. Now again, I'm not telling people that they have an issue, but for me that was just something that I didn't need in my life. It enabled a higher level of clarity. Probably not the answer you were expecting.
What do you think is the key for developing that kind of self-awareness?
We all have our blind spots by the way. Some, a lot, some not so much. and I'll give you two ways to go at. This finding my blind spots or developing that self-awareness. The first one is people who love us. You know, certainly my wife who was a little bit like ‘Hey, you're probably doing a little too much of that.’ But, that extends to our peer groups, people within industry, business people who know us that see us on a regular basis within our own company. Go ask your people this question: what one thing could I do differently to help you be more effective at work? Or what one thing could I do differently to be a better leader for you? And then shut up and listen. Now if you've got a good relationship and you've got psychological safety in that company and in that relationship, people will tell you and then at that point, all we can do is say thank you and try to do something about it.
If you want to do some heavy lifting on this, pick up a book called the True North Field Guide. The True North Field Guide is a 200-and-something page workbook and it's integrated into all the executive coaching we do. We used to have our own set of questions, and this one's better, so we just go with that. But the way I phrase it is people, a lot of leaders can tell me what their values are, but not why their values are. It's that real deep intro introspection to go 'into your mama's house' as a buddy of mine calls it that. What were those fundamental and formative things as I grew up, it might be all, puppy dogs and rainbows, or it could be serious trauma, but understanding that gives you a solid foundation. From that solid foundation, you're able to take the slings and arrows that come at you as a leader. So like I said, it's 200-something pages. When people page it open ‘oh, this is easy. A lot of white space, this'll be easy.’ Then about two weeks later they call and say ‘this is really hard’ because it forces us to think about our lives and our philosophies in ways we never do. And I'll throw the word intentionality. We have to be intentional about ourselves, just the way we're intentional about a mix design. There's a way all this comes together, and if it comes together correctly, we're going to have success. If it doesn't come together correctly, we're not going to have success. So when we talk about leader development or hot mix, there are processes, proven processes that can be followed. So the self-awareness piece, absolutely you can get a 360 evaluation. But like the best one is, just ask people around you, what could I do different?
If there is one thing you wish you had learned earlier in your career, what would that be?
I think the word is humility. I'm a Marine Corps officer. I’m Billy Badass. All these things and I'm still trying to find my way in the world. Anybody who gets promoted into leadership, there's a little bit of imposter syndrome, trying to find their way in the world. So how do we do that? As males, we posture, we get a little louder. We thrust our chest out just a little bit. We stick our finger in people's chest just a little bit. Now, of course, conceptually, we don't do any of those things anymore, but conceptually you get where I'm going with it. This concept of personal and intellectual humility to say 'I don't have to be the loudest, I can still be excellent, but I can listen more.' And if we look today, humility and honesty and those connections we've got from a place in leadership where it was follow me to let's go together. That's a different mentality. I'm not telling any of our older listeners here that what you did 30 years ago was wrong, but today's dynamic of more participative is one where the humble leader is the one that's going to have the greater success. I ask leaders the question ‘what's going to cause someone to take the bullet for you?’ What does that mean? It means, it's Friday afternoon, there's a tropical storm coming in, but that person is going to go walk the job one more time to make sure the erosion control is in place, right? That kind of little bit of extra effort as opposed to, you know, ‘while he is a jerk, I don't care, I'm just going to go home and whatever happens, happens.’ It's that humility to lean into people that I, I wish I had learned that sooner. Said differently. I wish I was less of a jerk back then.
If you could summarize your leadership journey in one sentence, what would it be?
I don't want to say it's all about me because I said that earlier, meaning it's all about the leader. My journey and advice to others from a journey perspective. Grace. In other words, we are our own hardest critic, but give yourself the grace to make mistakes as you grow and then extend that to others. Again, it's a human connection that leadership is all about. Yes, it's a social process to create a cohesive group with directional alignment and commitment, but that human connection in this AI world. I have a buddy who says it's HI. It's human interaction. Again, you see a theme here, about grace and humility, and heck, let's throw love in there. By the way, I never said lower the standard. We still have to put the work in place: profitably, safely, timely, all of those things. But another way of thinking about it has to do with cooperation. Cooperation is not so much our ability to get along with others. It's our ability to smooth our rough edges so they can get along with us. So it's recognizing what our rough edges are and getting rid of them.
What role does a leader play in shaping culture at an organization?
I guess there's two scenarios. One is we have the existing culture that I move into. Maybe I'm an outsider and I come into it and hopefully I've done my due diligence and research to say, ‘yeah, that's consistent with who I am.’ The other one is I'm sitting out there and I'm running a small paving company, one crew, two crew, and I'm trying to put the foundation in place to make it a bigger, better thing. Then I have the opportunity to codify those values. But with either one of those scenarios, it comes back to what Richard said earlier, about accountability. How do we hold people accountable to the standard? The values then become the standard. If we talk about some level of execution at the field level, and I'm not just going to use integrity or quality, but, okay, well that's now our standard. So it becomes an upward spiral where the leader elevates the company and the company elevates the leader. Now we all have that same quote language or standard to adhere to. So the punchline on that, Brett, is we got to be talking about it. I was giving a presentation the other day and we asked how many of you have values in your organization? You know about half the room, the hands go up. It was a public seminar and then how many of your team knows the values and a lot of the hands come down. So the values aren't just for marketing, the values aren't just for the executive team. So do we start a daily huddle with them or do we start our safety meetings with them? Or do we have an email or a social media post from time to time that talk about 'em? Because if you don't talk about the values as the leader, nobody else is going to talk about 'em, and they're certainly going to forget about them. So we just have to maintain them and keep them top of mind as the values have to have value. If they do have value, we'll talk about them. That will give them value.