006: Leaders are Readers

Welcome to the Fleet Success Show, a podcast dedicated to talking about the fundamentals, standards, and best practices that empower today's fleets to achieve fleet success. Let's get into the show.

All right. Welcome to episode number 6 of the Fleet Success Show. Glad to have you with us. Joining me again, co-host Jeff Jenkins. How you doing?

Doing good. Glad to be here. Yeah.

Hey, Steve's out again this week, but he'll be back next week. Today's episode, we're talking about how leaders are readers, right? And the whole idea is about self-betterment. Like, what are you doing as a leader and as a fleet success practitioner to make yourself better, right? To help sharpen your own axe, right? And there's this analogy that I've always loved, and it's this idea that you have to sharpen the axe sometimes. Occasionally, you know, if you've ever gone out and chopped down wood, you know that those first few swings you're making a lot of headway, right? Like, you're doing really great. You could probably get through a whole tree, and then you start working on the next one, and then the next one, and after a little while, the blade gets dull. And if you've ever tried to cut down a tree with a dull blade, Jeff, it's terrible.

You don't make any progress. And then at that point, you're like, bring out the chainsaw, right?

Like, the blade's just bouncing off, right? Or, you know, then you're just your arms are hurting, right? And then you bring out the chainsaw and you do the same thing. You get through a few and then all of a sudden you got to replace the chain, right? Because it just dulls out, right? And so as leaders, that same thing happens to us where we just get stuck, we get in a rut and our blade gets dull, right? We're not doing things to keep ourselves sharp. We're not doing things to keep ourselves motivated. Getting fed with new ideas and, you know, we end up bouncing the blade off the tree, right? We wonder, man, what's happening? Why isn't this working anymore? Oftentimes it's because you forgot to sharpen your own axe, right? So this episode, we wanted to talk about some of the things that we do to sharpen our axe and some of the things that you guys do. Obviously, you listen to this podcast. That's a great way to sharpen the axe, right? I love listening. There's several podcasts I listen to. Just as a way to remind you about things that you already know and maybe sometimes hear something you didn't know yet. I think I've heard it said, you know, people don't need instruction as much as they just need reminding. I think that's true for most of us.

It's extremely true. I say that I was in this funk for a period of time where I didn't want to read any books because every time I did, I just felt like I was reading some regurgitated information. Yep. But different authors have different ways of relating material to where someone may have say something that totally sticks to you and someone else says something that won't stick to you. So it's always good to get these different perspectives, viewpoints, and even the stories they tell are just very different. And, you know, different people relate to different stories and different, uh, they hear things differently. Yeah.

Speaking of that, so thinking about things you've read, things you've done, what are some of the things, you know, you got through that funk, or even before the funk, you started getting back into it? What's something that really had an influence on you?

All right, so I'm gonna start off the story. I'm not gonna tell right away what, what the book is, right, that had the biggest influence. So starting off as a fresh dispatcher, I'd probably been dispatching trucks for, oh, 6 months at most. And one day I wanted to get outta the office. I was done. I was just ready to go. Well, my stuff wasn't done. Like I had probably 3 or 4 trucks that, that weren't set up for me to be able to leave. And really what our goal was is they had to be dispatched on a load. Every one of the trucks on your board, and I think I had about 40 trucks at the time, every truck had to be dispatched on a load for that day. And then they needed to be pre-planned or have another load on them for after that load for the next day. 'Cause we were running regional so that they usually did one or more than one load a day. So I had to have a dispatch load and a pre-plan, what we called it, on that truck. Well, I had all my trucks dispatched, but I didn't have 'em all pre-planned for the next day. So I'm getting ready and I'm just done. I want to go for the day, right? So I stand up, start to walk off, and my boss at the time says, hey Jeff, is your stuff done? Yep, it's all done for the day. He's like, well, come over here, let's go over your board together. He'd never done that. He'd never checked my stuff before I walked out. So I'm like, in my mind I'm like, damn it, caught, busted, right? The one time I do it, caught. So I walk over, he's like, okay, what's this guy doing? What's this guy doing? What's this guy doing? I didn't have an answer. I just said, well, you know, I didn't, I just didn't have time. I didn't get to it. He says, well then you're not going home. And I think I had something to do. So I was really eager just to get out of there. And I was like, Aaron, I gotta, I gotta go. He's like, you're not gonna go until your job's done. Sit back down and do it. End of the day, things are balls to the wall, so I had to call the load planner, wait on hold, take care of these trucks until I got the 3 loads that for the next day assigned to these guys, right? So I probably had to stay at the office for 30 minutes longer than I wanted to do to finish that up. But you want to know something? Do you think that I ever walked out again without having those done, knowing that if, if I got caught, I was going to get called back again? Again.

All right, right.

So I didn't, right? That taught me a very valuable lesson. It taught me the lesson of owning and having ownership of that fleet and knowing that if I didn't take care of it, right, no one else was going to do it, but that I had to actually treat that as if, you know, hey, this is mine, I've got to do it. So Extreme Ownership by Jocko is the book that I read that probably related the most to me because I read it— it was a few years after that experience had happened but I read it and it just related to me so much because of the fact that I had to learn that lesson the hard way. Talking about how as a leader, and I led a board of trucks, but as a leader you have to take complete accountability and ownership of your team and those that are under you because if they fail, really you're the failure as well. I know that you like Jocko as well, right? You like that book, but it just resonated with me because I'd had that real-life experience And as I'm reading this book, that's really what came back to my mind was, man, you learned this lesson the hard way.

Yeah.

And as I've gone throughout my career, I've tried to make it a point that if someone on my team fails, it's me that fails as a leader because I didn't do something that could have helped them succeed.

For me, reading that book, same kind of thing. I got that message loud and clear, whereas before, you know, it was very much the blame and shame game. It was, hey, look, this wasn't my fault, man. Don't blame me. This is 100% on you. Get with it. Right? And I had no problem. Some of this was my own insecurity, but I had no problem putting that on other people. A lot of people ask me, well, you know, it seemed like you really shifted, like something changed in you. You know, a few years ago, probably about 4 or 5 years ago, like you became a different leader. And this book was one of those books that did it for me. And that lesson was the thing. It's not his fault. It's my fault for letting him do that. It's not about what you preach, it's about what you tolerate. And for me, that was a huge, huge lesson from that book. He has a ton of great lessons in there. You know, the one where it says there's no bad teams, just bad leaders. Man, that hit home like a ton of bricks too. And I realized, you know why we're not doing well? It's because of me. It's because I'm making excuses or I'm holding the team back or I'm not holding them accountable. And that was a huge lesson I got out of that book as well.

What happens now when you see the finger-pointing?

Immediately I'm like, okay, here's the deal, guys, right? And I bring up and I teach them, if they haven't figured it out already, I teach them the concept of extreme ownership, right? I had somebody the other day, it's like, well, you know, so-and-so wasn't helping me with my goals. I'm like, okay, well, I totally agree we need to create an environment where you do that, right? But at the same time, I want you to take ownership and be the master of your fate. Right? Take ownership and say, what do I need to control in my environment, my purview of responsibility? And I'm not waiting on anybody. It's one of our core values, right? You don't wait on somebody to give you anything, right? We're entitlement-free. We want something, we leave the cave, we kill it, we drag it back, right? We don't wait for other people to do stuff for us. We go out and we impose our will on the universe. And that's ownership. That's extreme ownership, right?

But the default for everybody, right, is I want to look good.

Yeah, I don't want to look bad.

I don't want to make the same things as my fault. I don't want to think everyone, hey, we're failing because of me. So the default is always just pointing the finger.

Yeah.

And you're never going to get anywhere pointing the finger. I, I could give so many examples of, you know, a driver didn't deliver their load on time and they told their dispatcher and their dispatcher didn't tell customer service, so the customer wasn't told. So the driver arrived and then they got rejected because, you know, someone didn't call. And customer service says, well, you didn't tell me soon enough. Driver manager says, well, I told you when I found out. Driver says 'Well, I told you when I knew it was gonna be.' I mean, it's just everybody's pointing fingers. And in reality, if someone just actually taken ownership of that situation and said, 'Hey, we gotta reschedule this. Let's make sure it's rescheduled,' then follow up on that reschedule— I mean, the whole thing could be done differently. But the default is always just to blame somebody else because you want to feel better about yourself.

Yeah. How many times— I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit— how many times have you read that book?

Oh, um, 3 or 4. I don't know, it's either 3 or 4 times. And it's The original copy highlighted, marked, written in.

Yeah, you know, I love this quote from John Maxwell. He talks about, you know, the first time I read a book, I mark the book. The second time I read a book, the book marks me, right? And he's got a process where he goes through— this is a leadership author, if you haven't read any of his stuff, he's got some great stuff— but he goes through and he does the highlights, and then the second time he reads it, he skips over everything else unless he's highlighted it, right? So he goes through quicker, but it meant something to him, right? And so he just pulls out everything that really resonated with him. But yeah, the first time I mark the book, the second time the book marks me. I'm like, that's a really smart quote. We could probably do an entire episode. In fact, we probably will on Extreme Ownership because Jeff is huge on Extreme Ownership. I love that book. I could tell you, like, I live that book. It made me who I am today. We probably will do a whole episode just on that because there are so many great leadership lessons from this, you know, these two former Navy SEALs.

Well, and stories, right? I mean, it's all about accountability, and there's just so many times in life where either you don't take ownership or you do take ownership, and you can just see the trickle-down effect that has. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.

Uh, one of the most influential books that I've probably read, you know, aside from Extreme Ownership, because you took that one— thank you. You're welcome.

That's what I'm here for.

You know, it's got to be Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Right now, I read The Advantage first. And I thought it was a terrific book. But the one that really struck home for me about, hey, there's things that you need to fix in your team was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And it laid it out so clearly. And I know we're going to do an episode on this one because I am so passionate about this one. This one means so much to me. But he just laid out, well, the whole reason you don't get the results you want is because you have a dysfunctional team. And he laid out this platform, this pillar, and he just says, look, first thing you got to work on is trust in the team, right? You have to have vulnerability. You got to be able to talk to each other. You got to be real, because if you don't have that, you're just going to have artificial harmony. You're never going to have conflict. Everybody wants accountability in the team, but they don't want to put in the work to get to an accountable team. And so he lays out these 5 dysfunctions of a team and how they all build on one another. And it gave me a roadmap as a young leader. All right, this is how I have to build my team. You know, if I want to get to the point that they're taking extreme ownership and they feel safe doing that, then I've got to work on trust. And then I've got to work on encouraging conflict. And, you know, as a leader, like, I have to be the first one in and I've got to enter that danger myself first.

Right.

And show everybody it's okay. The water's fine. You're not going to die. Right. You know, show them that's safe. Like, you're not going to get fired for admitting that you didn't do your job. Right? You know, we're going to come to it, we're going to talk through it, we're going to work through that together, right? That was huge. It was huge for me. And I love to, you know, the format of Lencioni's books because he tells you a story like it's a fictitious book. I have no problem reading fiction, you know, jumping into nonfiction for me, that was tough. You know, every time I crack open a book, oh man, this feels like I'm back in college again. You know, I'm like, it's another textbook. But his books really taught me to love reading leadership books and sharpening my own axe.

Well, he's definitely got a talent for creating a story that teaches a lesson. Right. So, you know, great parables. It's just fantastic. And I was first introduced to that book by you. Yeah, I had no clue who he was. I had no clue about the books. And when I was talking to you about coming to work at RTA here, What you said to me was, here's some books, read these, and if you can't get on board with this culture, this is not the company for you.

Yeah. If these books don't resonate with you, right? Like, because this is how we do it, that's okay, right? Because some people, they read this and they're like, yeah, this is, this is too lovey-dovey or it's too, uh, you know, it's just, yeah, like there's trust and vulnerability. We don't need that here, you know?

Yeah, I want to be a bunch of bovine out in the field, right?

We just need performance. Just hit your goals, right? We just need more metrics and more KPIs, right? And they have this sophistication bias is what he calls it. But for us, it's like, no, you're dealing with humans. There's human emotion. You have to figure out how to manage that and how to work through it. Otherwise, I have the saying that, look, you can have conflict or you can have tension. You just got to pick which one it's going to be. And I hate tension, right? You ever walk in a room and you just feel it and you're like, somebody's not saying something here and I just don't want to step in it, right? I don't want to be that guy. I'd rather just call it out. Let's deal with it. Let's move on.

See, and I would too, but people have such a huge problem with that.

Yeah.

I mean, I've been in— I've been the CEO in leadership meetings and you have two different people that are pointing those fingers at each other. They got this tension, right? And there's never any resolution. And you get that, hey, well, let's take this offline. Let's talk about this later. And the problem is, in most cases, you don't talk about it later.

Right.

So there's never any resolution.

Or you don't talk about the real issue, right? What's really bothering you about this?

Well, exactly right. And when you do it as a team, as a group, instead of just two individuals, yeah, everybody can participate in that bonding and in that experience together. It's not just two individuals on a leadership team, it's six people on a leadership team that now experience growth together.

Yeah. So again, we could talk about this book for another hour. What are things that, you know, that the listeners, we can say, hey, go out and sharpen your axe. Like, what are things they should be looking at? I mean, obviously we like reading. Reading is huge. It's cheap. It's easy. You can get a lot out of books. I'm a big Audible guy. I love listening to books on my commute because I can multitask and I can listen to an audiobook while I'm driving. I can't listen to an audiobook while I'm working. It's just impossible for me. So that's a great way for me to do it. And It's hard to read a book while you're driving, so the Audible really makes that nice.

I had no idea.

Risk management. We talked about that last week. Don't read and drive. That would be bad. But what are some other things that you think have been influential that have helped you sharpen your axe as a dispatcher, fleet operations leader?

Are you talking about outside of reading? Yeah, sure.

Like, you know, reading is a great resource. What else can, you know, can some of the listeners—

Well, I Podcasts, yeah, right, are a fantastic tool. And really, when you pick a topic for this, you think about things that maybe you're deficient in that you want to improve. Yeah, obviously, you know, when you go to school and usually take a subject, either it's because you have to, um, or it's because you want to learn more about a certain topic. And it should be no different in your own personal development. So, you know, reading, um, listening to podcasts. You know what I find interesting too is like there's a lot of really good nuggets on certain things on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

The problem with LinkedIn though is everyone acts like they're an expert. So you have to, you really have to weigh—

present company included, right?

Well, no, no, no. Listen to me. I know exactly what I'm talking about all the time. There's never any bullshit out of my mouth. So, but, but, you know, you can go and do some of those things, obviously. I mean, there's documentaries, there's just all kinds of going to conferences. We just went to a conference last week in Dallas, which was fantastic. 3 days, you know, with some very thought-provoking leaders. That taught us some very good tools that we can take and we can implement into our leadership lives.

Yeah.

So there's a lot of different things people can do.

You just have to pick what works for you and the topic that you need to get better at, right? Like, hey, this is something I want to learn more. Maybe you're a shop technician, right? Then you go out and you find what are— who's teaching about technician skills, right? Like where— who's a good resource on YouTube? Where's a good resource on LinkedIn, right? LinkedIn Learning has a subscription if you're a premium member. LinkedIn Learning has a ton of online resources. Uh, Udemy. I remember we put some of our guys on Udemy courses. You know, it's just an online learning platform that you can go out and you subscribe to, you pay for the courses, it's like $10, and they have a full-blown, you know, online course that you can take, right? Uh, just little things that help you sharpen the axe.

Um, I mean, it's really about self-improvement when you talk about life, right? Life, it's about progression, it's about getting better, um, it's about being better, and you can't do that unless you spend time sharpening that axe, as Josh has said. You can't do that. You're never going to progress unless you put some effort into it. A lot of people write in journals.

Yeah.

Right. And they write in journals so they can see that progress. They can get their thoughts on, and then later on they can come back and be like, oh, okay, well, look at the perspective that I've gained since then. Exactly.

And then it helps give them perspective. They're in a moment, they're like, you know what? I remember how things used to be, and I'm glad to be where I'm at. Right. Or maybe I've made— I've backtracked a little bit. I got to get back to where I was, right? Because that— I liked that version of me, right?

You know, that's kind of the reason why I write in books when I'm reading them, is because if I go back and read that book again, I like to know what my thought process was back when I first originally read it. Yeah, because my perspective most likely has changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. And it really helps level set back to that point.

So what would you say to, you know, you've got leaders out there that are saying, man, I don't have time to read. I'll be honest, I read a lot of books. It's probably a little bit obsessive. Not as many as Bill Gates.

A little bit.

You can go to my bookshelf though. You come into my office and I've got a bookshelf and it's full. It's not a lightly covered bookshelf. I've read almost every one of those books. Guys like Bill Gates, I know he takes a week-long sabbatical and he goes and he has 7 or 8 books that he's reading all the time. Then he'll take 7 or 8 more and he just reads them the entire week. And he calls it his think week, right? What would you say to leaders that are like, I just don't have time, I've got to manage this fleet, I'm barely keeping my hands out of the fire as it is?

Well, I would say that you don't have a time problem, you've got a priority problem.

Yeah.

You will make priority whatever you think is important, whether it's self-improvement like we're talking about with books, whether it's your family, whether it's your health, whatever the case may be. If you think something is really important, you'll make time for it regardless.

You'll make the time, right? Uh, there's— everybody's limited by the same amount of time, but it really is— it's— there's something else that's more of a priority. And so when you say you don't have time for something, you really just— it's not a priority yet, right?

You just would rather be doing something else. You don't think that your own self-improvement is important. You'd rather go home and you'd rather watch Netflix, or you'd rather play video games, or you'd rather just do something else as opposed to, you know, that self-improvement that we're talking about.

And that kind of goes to, you know, for all the leaders that are listening to this, you know, and anybody is a leader in their life, right? So if you're the shop technician on the floor, guess what? You're a leader, right? You might be a leader just among your peers. You might not have the position, but leadership is influence, right? So you might have the influence. You're gonna have the influence at home with friends and family. John Maxwell's got a great quote and he says, look, not all readers are leaders, right? Like, people read all the time doesn't make them a leader. But I will tell you is that all leaders are readers, right? If you're going to be a leader, you got to read, you got to do things to sharpen that axe, right? And so I think that's kind of the big takeaway from this.

Your brain's a muscle.

Yeah, you got to work it out.

Like anything else, you got to work it out. It's a muscle. If you don't work it out, it's never going to expand and grow.

Yep. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us this week. Again, make sure that you tell your friends and family and everybody else you care about in your life about the Fleet Success Show, because it's clearly the best thing on earth. But subscribe to us, go tag us out on social media @fleet_success. And until next time, we'll see you later.

Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining us on this episode of the Fleet Success Show. If you liked our show, we'd appreciate your 5-star review. Be sure to subscribe anywhere you listen to podcasts and come hang out with us anywhere on social media @fleet_success. See you next time.