Episode 041: What's So Hard About Soft Skills

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All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley. Nice to have you here with us again today. I've got Joining me, Steve Salzgeber. How you doing?

I'm doing great.

Yeah, another week out here in paradise, you know.

Absolutely. Spent last week in 30, 40-degree weather. It's 70 out there today, so I'm happy.

Oh no, thank you. There's a reason why I live in Arizona. I've never lived anywhere else. Yeah, you know, maybe I'm a little bit biased, but there's just something about 70-degree weather, and I can't shovel sunshine.

You know, I was going to take a big picture. We have like a 7-foot tall snow, snow hump in front of our house. I was going to send you a picture. This is something. Or lead it out and say, this is what you don't ever see in Arizona.

Nope.

You know, nope.

Snowplows, salted roads, not a problem I'd ever have to deal with. I keep seeing these, you know, uh, videos on, uh, on Instagram or whatever where the trucks are sliding down the driveway. Yeah, like, no, why would anybody ever choose to be in an environment like that? I don't understand.

I have a slight incline in my Salt Lake home. I came out one morning, my truck had actually slid to the street.

Yep. No thank you. No, thank you.

It was in park.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

Crazy.

Ice doesn't care about friction.

Yeah.

All right, uh, so today's topic is a little fun one. What's so hard about soft skills? What is it that just makes Soft skills and interpersonal skills difficult compared to the technical side. So I think kind of the first thing is define what are soft skills. When we talk about soft skills, we're talking about emotional, behavioral, interpersonal skills, you know, where you can communicate with one another, read the room. You know, we talked about attributes of a great fleet manager. Smart, people smart being one of those. It's one of the things we hire for here. But those soft skills, those being able to manage emotions and feelings, that is what soft skills are versus hard skills, which end up being more measurable. They're more finite, concrete.

Yep.

That's more about the education, the training, the skill level. That way they're more technical. It's more about how to do your job and how to carry out the actual functions of your job. Versus how to do your job when it relates to other people.

Yeah, the soft skills are much harder to define, evaluate. So I mean, that's something you really need to think about. It's kind of a precursor to hiring somebody and bringing them on board. Hopefully you can discern that while you're going through the interview process. It's also something you may need to deal with once you got someone on board that's having some struggles. How do you educate them, train them, help them improve those soft skills?

Yeah, I think the thing that ends up getting in the way is a lot of times we have our own personal biases. This is what makes soft skills so hard, is that we have these personal biases and we don't necessarily want to get into things like feelings. You know, feelings. Can we just have this be cut and dry and emotionless and logic all the time? We all wish we lived with, you know, Mr. Spock, right? Like, just keep it all on the level. We don't need emotion. We don't need all that stuff. Like, that just clouds judgment. It makes everything, you know, yuck. And that's, I think, the bias that we have against soft skills and why people don't like, you know, dealing with soft skills or getting coached on soft skills, because it just feels too fluffy. It feels too touchy-feely. It's not how, you know, especially prior generations, it's not how they were raised. And how do we deal with an environment that's increasingly dependent on mastering soft skills when we're not willing to kind of embrace them and improve that skill set?

It can be tough. I mean, I'm already thinking right now about, oh, this is a conversation I've had with my wife.

I don't want to have that conversation again.

Yeah, about, please express more emotion, you know, or But it's obviously necessary. I mean, for people to communicate together and there's body language, there's other things that go part of that conversation. And so I personally have had to work on my soft skills because that's not something that comes easy to me.

Yeah. Well, and I think there's a natural tendency like, well, you're either going to be very blunt and you just say what you want to say, or you might end up being really timid and you don't say what you need to say. Because you don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. And so like there is an element of soft skills and no matter what end of the spectrum you're on that you do have to work on typically. One of the things that we think is really critical for fleet managers is understanding how important soft skills are in your job. You know, we talked a little bit about this. I know when you and Jeff did the SMART, you know, the People Smart core value culture or whatever you want to call it that. Virtue. That's the word I was looking for. But it is, if you're a fleet manager, you have to work with everybody. And that's why soft skills are so important for you to master as a fleet manager, is that you have to lead up. You have to manage your boss in that relationship. You have to go and find out what's important to them and how are you doing with them. You have to build a relationship with them. 'Cause sometimes all that stands between, you know, you and the next fleet manager coming in to take your job is that relationship you have.

Yep.

You know, and understanding what keeps them up at night and how you can help solve some of that problem. You know, a lot of people, I don't think, appreciate sometimes how much they need to manage up and have those conversations and take accountability and be vulnerable with their managers. To try to establish that connection and that relationship.

Well, on the other side of that too is managing down.

Yep.

I mean, I don't know how many times where being in fleet, there was really never any goals or objectives per se at the executive level that were articulated towards fleet. So I always had to create those. Yeah. Those values, those interpersonal skills, those goals and objectives downward so that people could understand them. Because generally when you get really strategic, A lot of people on the floor don't understand any of that stuff.

You have to connect the dots.

Yeah, so you have to really connect the dots and make that something that people can understand and live with. And so you have to have good communication skills. You gotta be emotionally intelligent to make sure that they are meaningful, you know? And that they're, you know, so, you know, and as you hire people, they have to have these skills. This is, The difference between, you know, working as a mechanic your whole life or becoming a fleet manager is the soft skills. That's where that really comes into play, is when you start really becoming someone that has the ability to manage up and down and understand emotional intelligence. And that's part of management, essentially.

Yeah. So I always think of— there's a scene, and I think it's either in Civil War and Winter Soldier, Captain America, where he's got the helicopter on one arm and the building in the other. And I feel like that's where fleet managers end up, right? They've got like their managers are like pulling on one side and they have to kind of pull along this immovable force, this building, you know, and I'm just like, yep, there's our guy right there. That's our hero. Is, you know, between those two and try to make the connection and trying to help both sides, you know, get what they need out of the equation. That stress, you know, that's where fleet managers— and that's all soft skills. That's all, you know, trying to figure out how do we help them feel? How do we help our people feel like they have a voice in the process, that they matter? And that, again, it just all comes back to those personal relationships. It's one of the reasons why we recommend doing one-on-ones, right? You know, find out what's going on in their lives, find out how they're feeling about their jobs, make sure they understand where they're doing well, where they're not doing well. But it all comes back to that relationship and being able to care about the people that are serving underneath you, but be able to be candid with them too. You having that care and candor, that is a soft skill that you just have to kind of work on. And everybody is going to be a little bit different. I think this is the fun thing about soft skills is when you have to learn the process of adjusting your communication style based off of the person you're communicating to. Not necessarily what you're communicating, but just how you're communicating it. Some people might appreciate a very direct, blunt approach. Others are going to need a little bit more warm-up. You know, they're going to need some—

Some of that's different too, geographically.

Yeah.

You know, culturally.

Yeah. In the Northeast versus Southeast.

Yeah.

Two polar opposites as far as culture goes.

But I mean, that's— and it's important. And we talk about stakeholder satisfaction. It's important to have soft skills, take care of your stakeholders.

Critical. It's critical to have soft skills to do it well.

Absolutely.

One of the other areas that I think we talk about, you know, managing up, managing down, is managing across. You know, you do not work in a vacuum. You have colleagues that you work with. You know, maybe if you're a city fleet, you know, you've got to work with the chief of police, you've got to work with the city manager, you've got to work with public works. You know, you have to work with different department heads that don't report to you that you know, don't necessarily, you know, they might report to your manager, they might report to your manager's colleague, you know, kind of cousins in the organization, if you call it that. But the idea is that you still have to work with a team of people and being able to manage their needs and their expectations. It's a critical skill to learn how to interpret people's feelings, how to validate them, how to still have your own opinions, but communicate them in a way that gets results.

Right.

That's really what soft skills are all about, is it's not about going by yourself and just doing the job. It's about helping other people get united and aligned behind a single purpose so that you get the results you need as a team, and not just your own personal results and personal ambitions, but as a team, you guys move the ball forward.

Right.

And that's really what it's about, is it's about connecting and building those personal relationships across the board. Up and down the board and making yourself kind of that critical linchpin in the whole process that holds and helps everybody make sure that, yep, this is how we're going to do things. We're going to talk to each other and that it all works.

We talk about soft skills just in our own core values where you always want to assume positive intent, right? That's a soft skill. If someone's coming after you in a negative way in an email or they say something off the cuff that may seem offensive to you, You know, your role and your soft skills is to say, okay, I don't think he means that. At least I hope not. I mean, obviously it could sometimes, but we need to be able to have that, you know, that ability to discern that.

Yes.

Give them the benefit of the doubt.

Yep. Well, and then, and to approach it in the right way if it's— you're having a hard time with that benefit of the doubt, right? Or like, wow, like that really came off the wrong way. I don't think you meant it that way.

Yeah.

But being able to manage back through that channel and and kind of just expose where maybe there's a lack of self-awareness there. We used to have a guy that worked for us that had a total lack of self-awareness when it came to emails. Yeah, you know, it was just— he would fire off an email and it was just, you know, he would do it because he was in a hurry and he didn't want to take away from the job he was doing. But whenever you would do it, it always sounded like he was upset or, you know, he was annoyed that he had to take his time out of his busy day to answer your stupid question. You know, it just— and it always felt condescending whenever you'd read his tone. And we'd have to work with him. And I'm like, okay, let's think about how could we embellish on the email, maybe take an extra 2 minutes and have somebody else read it really quick. You know, I've even done this with my wife is like, hey, when— before you send that email, let me read it over.

And I think that's actually a good practice, especially if it's a longer email. Yes. To multiple people. You know, you should, you should rewrite it, maybe get some extra eyes on it.

Yep.

It's so easy because that's what they say, written is somewhere around 20% of the inflection. Yeah. Somewhere in that area.

There's only 20%.

You have no body language, you have no voice, you know, so, so easy.

No matter how many emojis you put into that email, right, it's still going to get read a certain way and you lose control on how it's interpreted. And so you have to embellish, you have to make sure your language has flourish in it, is what we call that. Yeah. Where it has extra words and extra verbs, things that soften the tone or harden the tone, because whatever it is, just know if there's a hint of sarcasm, if there's a hint of hardness in the email, it will multiply itself by 10 or 100.

Absolutely.

Because it's just gonna get taken that way.

I remember something as simple as when my mother got into tech and she kept sending me emails that were all in caps. You know, just dumb little things like that. She had no idea about etiquette or any of that kind of stuff. And there is people out there that aren't well-versed in soft skills and knowing how to communicate in a written form or even in a voicemail, for example. I've had bosses leave me a voicemail and I go, "Whoa, am I in trouble?" And fact is, I get in there and they're like, "No, I just want to go to lunch." Like, "Okay, all right." Just came across harsh like that.

Well, and I think as you one of the soft skills to learn is when is the appropriate time for an email versus a face-to-face conversation versus a phone call. Do you let it wait or do you deal with it right now? I mean, you and I had a conversation just this last weekend where, you know, there's a situation at work and we could have let it simmer until the next day.

Yep.

But I was like, nope, I'm calling him right now. Of course, I mean, this is my style too, is I usually just deal with things head-on, but called you as soon as I got in the driveway at home. Like, hey, you know, like, let's— I just really want to reach out and say this. Like, I just need to apologize about this because I don't want you thinking about it the rest of the night.

Well, and I think that's— and that's a good example, you know. And I think we all need to be doing that. I always have people working for me, and they— you ask them, well, how was your communication? Well, I sent them an email, they didn't call me back. Well, did you pick up the phone? Right? You called them? You know, you could only do certain things for so long, and then you've got to go to that next step, right? I mean, if they don't follow up, then you got to call them.

Yeah, sometimes what you think you say is implied, but it's not. Yeah, explicit, you know. And so sometimes having that extra person read the email, like, you might have something that's really confusing, you're like, oh well, they understand that, or, you know, they know what I'm trying to say.

And having somebody else come in, and I think sometimes communication is probably one of the soft skills we've we underestimate. Yes, one of the most. I mean, especially now we're in such a digital age and emails and texts are so easy to do.

Yep.

You know, I mean, I've heard of people you watch on LinkedIn where people quit jobs with a text and silly things like that, or they fire people over Zoom, you know, like just—

yeah, and that's the study in emotional intelligence. I mean, that's really what we're talking about when it's soft skills.

Exactly.

It's just knowing how to communicate, knowing how to have empathy, knowing how to care. Be candid. It's just all about the interpersonal relationships and communication. And that's really all it comes down to.

Right.

The great news is there's tons of resources out there to become a better communicator, to become a more emotionally intelligent leader. So of all the soft skills, like, this is one that everybody has the ability to improve.

And that's one of the things I really love about our own culture is we care about this. We give people the tools to invest in this. I mean, I'm reading a book every week somewhere on something that has something to do with these kinds of things. You know, you just can't help but weigh on your mind when you're actually learning all the time, you know, because it invokes in me things like, oh yeah, I've done that before. You know, I got to watch myself after I've read that paragraph, right? You know, so good opportunity to invest in your people.

Yeah. All right. Well, that'll do it for this week's episode. You want to hear more topics like this? Come to the Fleet Success Summit, April 20th through 21st, out here in Mesa, Arizona. Go to fleetsuccesssummit.com. We've got speakers lined up talking exactly about these types of topics. You know, we've got Mike Pitcher coming in and talking about what, the 7 Elements of Leadership.

Yeah, he's awesome. I've seen him speak before. Well worth it.

Kristin Hadid going to be talking about vulnerability and leading from a place of Caring and Candor. You know, I know we're working on her topic right now, but author Permission to Screw Up. Really a terrific book. If you just go listen to her, she does the Audible.

I just downloaded it. I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, I know several of the team here have done that and they've all had great things to say about that. But just a slew of great speakers talking about things just like this. So I hope to see you there. fleetsuccesssummit.com. As always, tell your friends, tell your coworkers about Fleet Success Show wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time.

Thanks for joining us.

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 @fleetsuccess. See you next time.