Audree Grubesic. Jul 20. 8 min read.
Julie Riga is a leadership coach, business coach, podcaster, keynote speaker, and former corporate professional with more than 25 years of experience. She spoke with Offsite Dirt Network about purpose, servant leadership, personal growth, trust, and how stronger leaders create stronger teams in construction and beyond.
Leadership starts within. Personal growth comes before leading others.
Julie Riga said a two-day course on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People helped shape her purpose. The exercise asked participants to imagine their 80th birthday and think about what they wanted people to say about their life.
From that reflection, she developed a personal mission statement. Her purpose became helping other people discover their purpose and stay on course with it.
Julie said a leader’s responsibility is to grow the capabilities of the team and remove obstacles that prevent people from succeeding.
The goal is to prepare the next generation of leaders. Effective leadership leaves a team, department, or organization better than it was found.
Servant leadership means serving the people who report to you. The leader asks, “What does my team need from me to succeed?”
Julie said, “You’re there to make them famous. Not you famous.”
Construction depends on collaboration across many roles and stages, including pre-construction, design, manufacturing, transportation, installation, and project completion.
Julie said trust is the foundation of collaboration. Leaders must go first by creating psychological safety so people can speak up, ask questions, share ideas, and make mistakes.
She also said teams should be allowed to have fun. When failure becomes unacceptable, innovation often disappears.
Effective leadership requires empathy as well as intelligence, strategy, and accountability. Leading from the heart means recognizing the person behind the position.
This matters in organizations facing complex technologies, multigenerational workforces, labor challenges, and changing expectations.
Offsite construction depends on precision, repeatability, communication, technology integration, quality control, and alignment across teams.
Strong leadership helps establish trust, develop people, navigate challenges, and create cultures where different voices can contribute.
Julie’s career began in communications, including work as a college radio DJ. She later worked in communications roles in the pharmaceutical industry.
She later moved into learning, leadership development, and training before launching her own business.
Julie said leadership development is not only about becoming better at the current role. It is about becoming ready for what comes next.
She encouraged leaders to ask questions about purpose, values, pressure, conflict, psychological safety, and whether they are developing others or only directing them.
Julie Riga will serve as a keynote speaker at the Becoming Human Again event on October 16 in Savannah, Georgia.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who is Julie Riga? | She is a leadership expert, business coach, podcaster, keynote speaker, and former corporate professional with more than 25 years of experience. |
| What is servant leadership? | It is a leadership philosophy centered on serving and supporting the people you lead. |
| Why is personal growth important for leaders? | It helps leaders develop the self-awareness, resilience, communication skills, and presence needed to handle pressure, uncertainty, and conflict. |
| How does trust improve team performance? | Trust helps people feel safe sharing ideas, asking questions, taking accountability, and learning from mistakes. |
| Why is leadership especially important in offsite construction? | Offsite construction relies on teamwork, coordination, precision, communication, and integrated systems. |
| What does “leadership is an inside job” mean? | It means effective leadership begins with personal development and understanding one’s own values, purpose, communication style, and response to challenges. |