Episode 034: Attributes of an Ideal Fleet Manager: Smart (Part 3 of 3)

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.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Fleet Success Show. I am going to be the host today, Jeff Jenkins. Josh is wife is giving birth to their 9th child, so he's not in today. I'm just kidding, by the way. They'd both kill me if they knew that.

Now you got a big rumor going on.

Exactly. No, Josh is out today. He had some other business, so it's going to be me and Steve. Yeah. Welcome. Yeah. Glad to have you here. We're excited to wrap up the final of the 3 attributes that we talked about, and the final one is SMART. I think Josh alluded to that. At the end of the last episode. So smart's kind of a funny one because usually when people think about smart, it's your IQ or you're good at school or maybe you're good on the streets or whatever it may end up being, but that's not at all what we're talking about. We're talking about emotional intelligence.

Well, I don't know if street smart could be part of it a little bit.

I guess at reading people, it could be a part of it. When I think street smarts, I think of like gang members or hustling drugs or something like that.

Okay. Well, that's— no, that's not what I meant.

No, it's not. Uh, but it's like being able to read people. It's being intelligent enough that you can read a room, that you understand how the people are in there with you, or, you know, being able to modify, I guess, what you say or how you act based on that information. Um, I can tell you I've got probably close to a million stories that I could tell you about how I was not very smart in this context or emotionally intelligent in the things that I've said. It's one of those things that actually takes work and it takes practice.

And I have a lot of experience reading people, so I could tell you the other side of that.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, well, I think that in this line of work, obviously you deal with a lot of people. So it's one of those things that you're able to practice, I guess, is lack of a better term.

Well, like, for example, I was thinking when you said that you bring someone in and you start to have that talk, you know, you got to come in to see the boss. You see red welts coming up on their neck, you know there's a problem already, right?

Yes, absolutely.

Somehow you're putting stress on that person. So you need to be able to be smart enough to say, okay, we gotta tone this down a little. We gotta bring the conversation a little bit more in line with what I really wanted to say. 'Cause most people, if you think about it, if they ever have to go see the boss or see a customer or see someone, they're always gonna be stressed about it. Yeah, because they have no idea what's going on there.

No, and very nervous. And it's funny because you can tell usually when someone is nervous. And I, I can't tell you how many times, at least on like interviews, right, because that's where I get it the most, people that are very, you know, you can tell that they're, they're a little stressed out and shaky and nervous about it. I always say, are you nervous? And they're always, they usually, it's like, yeah, I'm pretty nervous. It's okay, we're just two people having a conversation. You don't have to be nervous.

Your first sign is if you're Well, maybe pre-COVID, you shake their hand and it's a little bit clammy. Clammy. You know they're really nervous, right? Oh, yeah. So that's a telltale sign.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I still shake hands. I don't even know what COVID is. So, yeah. So we want to talk about really that emotionally intelligent part of being smart because it's very crucial in business. Obviously, you're working with a whole lot of people. Different people, and everybody acts different. They learn different, you know, they have different backgrounds and experiences. And so being empathetic to those different situations is very crucial, or you're going to have nothing but a bunch of animosity among your workforce. So I can think of a time when I had someone that came to work late, always late, habitual. Right? And back in that time, I guess I was a little bit more stringent on, this is what the job is, you have to work from 7 to 5, I need you here at 7. If you're not in at 7, then, you know, maybe a couple minutes leeway, but you need to be before then. Anyway, this person was, was gone all the time, and it was just irking me, right? And I would, rather than talk to him about it, I would make sarcastic comments because sarcasm is what I do. And finally I just got fed up with it at one point, so I called him in and I'm sitting here, I'm gonna write him up. So I bring him in and I kind of just give him some shit about being late all the time. I don't know what his problem is. Everybody else can make it on time, why can't he, right? Well, he starts crying. There's nothing worse than when someone starts crying.

That is the worst.

It's the absolute worst. Like, it's even worse when it's a guy crying to me than a girl, right? Because you— it's that whole manly thing. Anyway, so starts crying, and I find out, um, he's only got one car now because his car broke. He lives with his parents. His mother, right, is constrained to a wheelchair. The reason he's been late is because the nurse they had on staff quit and they hadn't found a new nurse to help his mother out. So he was late because he's rushing through the day that morning trying to take care of his mother and get her prepped for everything that she may need for that day. Until someone else could check in with her around lunchtime, right? So he's scrambling and so he's just like, man, he's like, I just can't get it all done. It seems like something else always comes up.

So after he makes you feel about 2 inches tall, but you have to ask yourself though, there's two sides of being smart here. I mean, he could have offered that before, right?

He could have.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. And I don't know why he didn't. I've heard that I'm intimidating at times and maybe a little unapproachable. Maybe that's what it was. He didn't want to go through and do that. But that's like a very valid and concerning— I mean, I would have been like, okay, well, hey, take a little extra time.

Exactly.

Come in at 7:30, just make it by 7:30, or something to kind of help that person out.

I think most people would be willing to do that if you knew the circumstances.

They would. Yeah, they would. But I displayed that non-smartness.

Yeah.

By just, boom, being a sarcastic guy and then bringing them in, gonna write them up, and never once talk, actually have a sit-down and a serious conversation. And that's part of what I think everybody needs to be understand when it comes to your emotional intelligence. It's let's find out what the reasoning is before we jump to conclusions. Yep. Right. So today I was at the gym and, uh, here's a totally another one. And this girl walked in that I see all the time, never spoken to her, never said a word, nothing. Right. She, uh, anyway, she comes in today, she's got these huge dark bags under her eyes. Right? And she's got like tears, like, and she's kind of like my bags. Yeah, a little bit like that. And she's, and she's, and she's slowly wiping them, and obviously something's wrong, right? Well, she recently, I think a week or two ago, changed her hair color, right? Looks the same to me. I don't notice. Whatever, who cares. But I tell her, just because I can see she's having a rough time, I said, hey, I love what you've done to your hair. It's a great change. You look good, right? Boom, her attitude just changed 180 degrees. Perked up. Oh my gosh, thank you, honest-blouse, blah blah blah, you know. And I walk away, and I doubt I'll ever talk to her again, I don't know. But I saw something, right? And so I decided, hey, let me see if I can do something to kind of pep her up a little bit. Yeah, to make it so that she's having a better day. And that comes to it as well, you know.

And as a supervisor, that's where SMART comes in all the time. People work harder, longer, better if they get— if they're appreciated. Yes, it's a very simple thing. All you have to do is say thank you once in a while.

It's a very— I always said trucking was a very unthankful business, and I know a lot of fleet is the same way because, you know, we don't expect to get praised for doing our job all the time, but occasionally, hey, a thank you, I appreciate what you do, something along those lines goes a long way.

I always remember a guy described fleet to me early in my career. He said, you're like a copy machine. Everything's great until it gets jammed, then we kick it. Yeah, you know, let's go. Okay, well, thank you for that analogy, but no, but it's very true. Yeah, exactly.

You know, you can have one bad day out of 40 and you're going to learn here about that one bad day.

Yep.

And that's just the way it goes in this industry, unfortunately.

Even nature is that way. We always seem to drill in on the negative.

Yep.

And not the positive.

Yep, absolutely, absolutely agree. Let's switch and let's talk about speaking the kind truth, because this is one I think a lot of people struggle with, like very, very handedly struggle with it. I know I still sometimes have trepidation about doing it, but speaking of the kind truth is really confronting something head on. So if you've got somebody who they're not doing the job that they need to do, are you addressing that head on? Or are you beating around the bush? If you have one of your peers that does something that may be inappropriate or not what they should be doing, are you addressing it with that person? So it's, it's actually not necessarily being confrontational, but it's confronting someone about something that needs to be addressed. And the reason why this is so important is when you let things go on, that is what your culture ends up being, right?

Right.

What you tolerate is what you become. So if you tolerate people that don't get their work done or come in late or take excessive time off or sexually harass or verbally abuse or whatever the case may be, other people see that. And that's kind of what happens to the environment around you, is it is that cancer trickles out to everybody else. And so by speaking that kind truth, we're working on eliminating that.

Well, I think it's nice upfront in our culture, for example, that we, that's an expectation. And I've had the kind truth spoken to me several times by Josh, you know, but I don't take offense because I know the kind truth is meant to help improve me and not berate me. Uh-huh. So I think that, you know, and that's, yeah, if you're gonna have a culture, you better get those expectations upfront quickly because Some people just get paranoid. Some people are just going to take offense to all that.

They will. And you have to do it in a respectful manner.

Right.

And that's part of it. You don't have someone come in to talk about something and be like, listen, dumbass. You know, it's asking questions always helps. So can you help me understand why this? You know, can you help me understand why you chose to go that direction? Or, you know, you do it in a place where it's an open conversation where they understand. Because you know what most people also hate? Is when they hear something along the lines of, "Hey Steve, this is going to be a really hard conversation." Yes.

That's the worst.

It is the worst because you're like, "Oh great." But you can address this without actually having to say something which gives someone a bunch of dread and trepidation. Did you see that video this weekend of the Better.com CEO?

I did not.

You did not? Our producer James saw it. He's shaking his head. I mean, you want to talk about not very smart. The CEO gets on a Zoom call with 900 employees and he tells them about, you know, hey, this isn't going to be a very fun call. Our numbers weren't that great the last year, so people are changing their buying habits because they're like a mortgage company or something like that. Uh, they're changing their buying habits. So if you're on this call right now, we're letting you go. 900 people via Zoom at the exact same time. Wow, right?

It's like getting the email telling you you're fired.

Pretty much, pretty much. It was, it was just, it was so like, just when you're watching him, you can tell how uncomfortable this guy is. And the worst thing about it all, it's not the first time he's done a mass firing like that. Oh my gosh, he said he'd done it before in the past.

Yeah, well, definitely not smart. And, uh, and people see those Zoom calls And that's a telltale sign. I don't want to work for this guy.

No.

So I'm gonna hop in here real quick. This is James. Another thing that— so after he did that, he locked everyone's computers virtually. After the Zoom call ended, their computers shut down and they didn't have a chance to say goodbye, to get any of their personal files that they might have had on their computer. They were instantly locked out.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow, that's unbelievable.

You know, that's— those are the kind of horror stories that that percolate through the businesses, you know, when you're in management.

And, you know, well, and in today's day and age, it's recorded. Everybody— it was on Fox News, it was on CNN. Like, it is a huge story this morning because of how it circulated online. But just not very smart, right? If you're going to have a hard conversation, at least have the balls to have it face to face.

Yes. I remember on CNN years ago where they had this poll about mean bosses being the most successful and most and the most sought after. And I kept thinking to myself, man, that sucks. I mean, if that's really the criteria, I mean, that's not smart in my mind to get a guy that is just, you know, offensive and rude and treats employees like shit. And I mean, that's terrible.

It is. I've got a, I've got a, like, so I've got a question about kind of along these lines because I agree with you 100%. I've had bosses that have I told the story about the FFF all over the board and would swear at you and curse and belittle you. I mean, I've had that as well and it sucks. But I wonder when they say the meanest bosses, are they really that mean in those cases are the most successful or are they the ones speaking the kind truth?

You don't know because people take it a certain way. They do.

Right. But if you're getting criticism all the time, even if it's coming from a good place, you're probably going to think your boss is a dick because you can't ever do anything right.

Yeah, and I think it depends how they frame it. It does. I mean, I think it goes back to what you said earlier. You don't just sit down and start spewing out the kind truth. You sit down and you get a frame of reference going here, and how are you today? And what's going on in your life before you really get to the why I'm late. Yes. That gives them the opportunity to say, ah, I'm having a rough time. And that allows you to be okay. 'Now this is going to go a different direction than I thought it would go,' right?

Well, you're right. And, you know, I just— it popped in my mind as you were saying that is I didn't give him an opportunity to have those conversations with me because I didn't do one-on-ones with anybody. Yeah, that's another thing, right? I could have hopefully weeded something like that out if we'd had those one-on-ones and we had that type of a relationship, but we didn't. So just lastly, I mean, we talk about mean bosses and Did you watch The Last Dance?

Yes.

Okay, so here's the question, right? The question is, would you be okay with Michael Jordan treating you the way he did his people to get those championships, or not?

You know, if I was really competitive and I knew that the, uh, the championship was with, on, you know, based on that, maybe. But I still thought that was Over the top with him.

He, I think in some cases he was over the top, but from his perspective, he saw the greatness in those people.

He did.

And he worked to pull it out of them.

Yeah.

So now I'm switching this over to business, right? Because I just asked that question. So if you have a boss that recognizes your potential and they're working on pulling it out of you, is that cruel?

Probably not. I mean, everybody— I played on a lot of teams and that's fairly common practice. You know, there's a lot of bantering going back and forth and a lot of, uh, you know, cynical comments and, yep, you know, smartass stuff like you're talking about.

Oh yeah.

And that always motivated me because I always saw the prize at the end. Nobody wants to be on a losing team, right? Right. So no, absolutely.

I don't think people ever translate that to business though. Yeah, it's usually more of a personal sports competition type thing, but when you think about it, right, if you're being pushed to do your best so that the company succeeds, so that you continue to have a job, hopefully if you want, you've got ambition, you get promoted, whatever else. I mean, there's a reason for getting pushed and having that mentality, but there's a lot of people that don't have it. They just, I'm going to want to come in and get my paycheck and move on, and nothing I do is going to help pull that greater performance out of me.

And that's why cultures are important, right? Those are the people that you volunteer out or involuntarily out, whatever you want to say. But yeah, you have to be on the same page or you're not going to be successful.

I agree. I agree. And there's been a lot of times where I've spoken the kind truth and I've been very nervous leading up to it, and then it ends up being okay.

I had one of those instances years ago when I was in transit. I had several employees come to me about another employee which I always hate those. We'll talk a little bit about that here in a minute, but at least they came to the person that could do something about it. But this guy, his name was, let's say Joe. Okay. Because that was his real name. But he had a problem where he had a hygiene problem and he would walk around and work and commingle with people and he stunk. I mean, it was bad. And I didn't work as closely with him, of course, as his coworkers did, but the coworkers came to me and said, "Hey, you gotta talk to this guy. He needs to take a shower or use some deodorant," you know? And so I pulled him in and had to have that hard conversation, which, you know, that's a tough conversation to have with somebody.

That's very tough.

You know, especially when it comes to some personal hygiene.

Hey Joe, you stink.

Yeah. But you know, honestly, He took it well. I was surprised. And he said, oh, thank you for telling me. I didn't know I'm— which I kind of doubt that.

Yeah.

But anyway, things improved. But I mean, it was just the nature of this guy. He was just kind of a dirty, ragamuffin kind of guy. You know, he was a mechanic and he wallowed in grease and he didn't care.

Yeah.

And he didn't figure nobody would care either. So I think he wore the same uniform for 2 weeks in a row and So anyway, I mean, you can— and I was fearful of that, but you can be fearful, but you still have to do it.

You do. It's funny you bring that specific incident up. At my last company, I had a guy, he— it was— he didn't always smell, but all of a sudden one week it was just really, really bad, right? So I addressed it. Him and his wife were fighting, so he was sleeping in his car and didn't have anywhere to shower because he didn't want to. He'd sit in his driveway, not going in his house, and sleep in his car at night because his wife wouldn't let him in the house, and he nowhere to shower and he's wearing the same clothes every day.

That's why I always have a gym membership.

So it's funny that you bring that up. Um, but moving on, let's talk about gossip. Gossip inventing.

Yep.

So I heard someone one time, very wise, uh, young lady actually, her name's Tracy, real name. She always told me that you don't vent, right, which is gossip or whatever else, you don't vent down. You go sideways to your peers, or you go up to your superior, which I'd never thought about before, right? Because heck, you're my friend. Yeah, I, I get it that, you know, I, I'm your boss, but you're my friend, so I'm gonna talk about someone else to you. Holy crap, what a mistake. Yep.

I'm not sure about, uh, sideways, but I know in our culture we don't go sideways for the most part. We— I know some people can.

We, we don't typically go sideways, but I— when I talk about sideways, it's— I don't usually would say it for gossiping, maybe more for advice or direction.

Yeah, I think that could be, uh, if you have an employee and you want to get advice from your peer. Yeah, well, I mean, what we say here is, um, You know, why gossip or vent to somebody that can't do anything to solve your problem? Yeah, and that makes total sense to me.

It does make sense. You know, I don't— I guess I don't understand fully gossip to begin with. We were in a— we're in a small Texas town, and I hated the gossip there. Like, everybody knew everything about everybody's business. I mean, it was just rumor mill central, and there was like no privacy. And they just like got off of gossiping amongst themselves. I don't understand why, right? In business, you're working with these people all the time. So if I don't like James and I tell Steve I don't like James and James smells and doesn't dress right, you know, what does that do for Steve, the one I'm telling, right? Obviously I'm disparaging James because James dresses great and he doesn't smell.

Well, the first thing Steve thinks is What does he say about me?

What does he say about me? Right, exactly. What does he say about me when I'm not around? Right. But not only that, now Steve, right, may go and say something to Josh or someone else.

Right.

And then who may they tell? And then who may they tell? Who may they tell? Right. So really it's doing zero good because you're getting all these people involved that have zero reason to be involved with it.

Well, I mean, I would say gossip is probably the most single destructive thing to morale in a company.

It is.

Yeah, I mean, if you have that going on, you won't last very long as an employer or as a boss.

No. And what's funny is a lot of times the person who is the gossip or keeps that going, one, long-term employee. Okay, that's very, very, very common. Two, sometimes not even who you think. Yeah, because they spin it around on other people. So I had this lady, gosh, she was always coming to me, hey, Jeff, I don't want to bother you, but like with problems or things she saw with opportunities, sometimes about other people not working or whatever else they were doing, which I always appreciate, to be honest with you. I mean, how do you help coach and manage people if you don't know what's going on? But we had an issue of gossip, and it turns out that this lady was the problem with the gossip. And I never would have guessed in a million years because she always said the nicest things about everybody. But it was just to me. Throughout the rest of the company, she was the gossip. Once she was gone, that gossip got cut down in half.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's human nature to some degree, gossip. I mean, that's why we have the National Enquirer and the Star and all that stuff. Yeah.

Tabloids.

Tabloids. So, I mean, people love that. But ultimately, it is something you have to be cognizant of in your organization and put it— kind of nip it in the bud.

Well, you do, because once you cut out that cancer, it's just a weight lifted off so many different people.

Yep.

And you typically know who the people are that you have in your office that would gossip, right? Because they always have people at their desk or whatever else the case may be. So we've made a very hard stance here on no gossip, like very, very serious. You'll get written up if you're caught gossiping. Because we've seen the power of what it can do to an organization and what it's done to other organizations as well. Like, I think this is probably one of Josh's number one—

it is—

no-no things as far as what's happening in the company, because he sees that destruction. So, and, you know, finally, understanding the power and the impact of words and what words not necessarily like people interpret things different ways, but how that's going to be taken by people, right? Words matter. It's funny, you know, sticks and stones may break my bones.

Yep.

But words will never hurt me. Words can't hurt.

Yep.

I mean, there's certain people who really, really internalize things that are said and take things very literally. So Watching that and understanding what those words can do to people, it's so important.

It's especially important when you're having those speak the kind truth conversations.

Well, it is.

So, I mean, you need to make sure that you really measure the words that you're speaking and not say anything offensive, not say anything that you certainly can get written up for nowadays in this day and age. But, you know, I'm a word guy. I like to look for words all the time. That's what I do for a living half the time. But so I have a pretty good vocabulary. But even then, you need to be able to understand the person you're talking to. You know, if they're a 5th grade level, you do speak to them differently than if they've got an MBA, you know. So you really— there's a real power there to figure out what your audience is or who they are. Because, you know, you couldn't talk to those two different extremes the same way.

No, you couldn't. And all that person is going to feel is like you're talking down to them.

Yeah, exactly.

And how much does everyone hate being talked down to?

We all do.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So yeah, I mean, it's extremely important. And, you know, and that goes for when you're talking about other people too, right? It doesn't cost anything to be kind. You know, making sure that we are being positive, right? Because negativity is also like a cancer, right? You know, so understanding that when you're negative, those around you, they feel and they have that negativity as well. And then that all— that can also spread. But being positive, you know, I would come in the office at several companies and I usually would just walk straight to my office, my desk, whatever it was. I rarely say good morning. When I see people, which is funny because when you do it after a period of time, you can actually see the positive impact that has.

I'm actually just the opposite of that, but maybe I learned that the hard way. First person I talk to when I walk in this company right here are the two front ladies every day. How are you guys doing today? I love your smile. I mean, I don't know why I do that, but I think along the way I probably didn't do it. And learned the hard way. And I talk to my team right away before I get to my desk. And I think it helps me as well to have kind of a positive attitude.

Yeah, I mean, get the day started the right way. Yeah, that's great.

The other thing too to think about, the impact of your words. I mean, I always talk about pronoun disease. You know, they, them. You know, you really have to understand when to use those words, when to use us or our or, me or I, or, you know, I see so many people using those things in the wrong context or using like, I did this, when you're like the supervisor of a team. You didn't do anything. Your team did that. So you gotta give them the credit, right?

Absolutely.

So that's powerful and people pick up on that.

Well, of course. If you're taking all the credit for everyone's work, why wouldn't they?

It always bothers me about CEOs and politicians are the worst at that.

Yeah, you know, I did this.

Yeah, I hate that.

Yeah, no, I hate it too. And it's a very, very good point, um, because I think a lot of people, they use some of the pronouns to deflect off them more often than take credit. And that's also, yep, you know, especially disheartening for people around. Um, so being aware of that, whether you're taking credit or giving credit, just, yeah, you're 100% right, recognizing what those pronouns are. All right. Well, anything else on SMART?

I think we pretty, pretty much beat this one up. All right.

Good. Well, hopefully you can take some of the things we've said and apply them into your daily lives. We appreciate you listening. Please follow us on social networks, The Fleet Success Show. Do not forget that coming April 20th through 21st in Mesa, Arizona, we are going to have the first annual Fleet Success Summit. It's going to be a lot of fun with a lot of good speakers engaging. A lot of truth bombs will be dropped. So that'll be exciting. And, you know, tune in for next episode. We're glad that you're a listener. So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Toodaloo!

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