Episode 046: How To Reignite the Fire In Your Team

Hey there, Steve from the Fleet Success Show. Wanted to take a second and invite you to attend the Fleet Success Summit, a one-of-a-kind, two-day event designed specifically to arm today's fleets with what they need to succeed. We're bringing some of the best speakers from business, technology, leadership, and organization culture to the stage to share with you information that we believe has been withheld from fleet far too long. If you enjoy this podcast, you're sure to enjoy the Fleet Success Summit. Head to fleetsuccesssummit.com to view our speaker lineup and grab your tickets today. All right, back to the show. 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 back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. Joining me today Jeff Jenkins.

Hey, how's it going? Good, good, good.

And I'm your host, Josh Turley. Uh, excuse Steve today as he's out dealing with a family issue, uh, but wish him and his loved ones all the best. We'll see him next week, hopefully. So today's episode is all about reigniting the fire, finding the passion again. And no, this is not the episode about your marriage. We're not marriage counselors, and so we don't have any advice to give you there.

No, trust me, you do not want advice from me at all.

Go talk to a marriage counselor if you want to rediscover the passion in your relationship. There's lots of books on that subject too. Although some of these, I guess, could apply to it, but we'll let you be the judge of that.

They could. And can I just say, I just got back from Fiji. And if you want to reignite a fire, go to Fiji because it was fantastic. I didn't really take a very long vacation last year.

Right.

And I hadn't been like, you know, that whole self-care thing. And I felt very rejuvenated coming back. So that's my plug. Take a vacation.

Take a vacation sometime. You just need to unplug. Don't check your email. Don't do anything. Just unplug.

Yeah, that part's a little hard, but it is really hard.

Because you're always wanting— like, you got FOMO, you got, you know, like, you know you left all your problems behind and they'd be right there waiting for you when you come back. That happens too. But there's something to be said about making sure you're doing self-care, taking the vacation, you know, and making sure that you're taking enough time off through the year, through the entire year.

Yep. That is not what this episode's about.

Not at all, actually, but it could be.

I really just wanted to brag.

All right.

Hey, I went to Fiji.

La la la la. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, so this episode is also not— one of our two of our favorite quotes are when we talk about re-motivating people, right? So when we're talking about reigniting the fire, we're talking about re-motivating people, finding, helping people get motivated. We're talking specifically though about people who were motivated and have kind of lost their passion. We are not talking about motivating people who were never motivated. Right? And our quote there is that we hire motivated people. We don't motivate the people we hire. Um, you know, cause it's very difficult to light a wet rag, right? Is another way to say it. Uh, Dave Ramsey has a quote, you can't be burned out. You were never on fire.

Oh my gosh. Listen, so I heard that before we started this, when you brought it up before we started recording, and I immediately thought of like 6 different people. Because I can just remember in my past how people are like, oh, I'm just so burned out, I'm so burned out. And you sit there and thinking, burned out of what? You don't do shit all day long. What are you burned out from?

Right? And that's just one of my favorite, burned out. You can't be burned out. You were never on fire.

I love it. I wish I had known that back then, right?

So we're sharing some wisdom with you, right? But this is not about those people.

No.

You know, and we know that you've met those people and you have some of them on your team. Hopefully not as many as some of the cases we've seen. "But it isn't about hiring or motivating unmotivated people." Because that's something we believe, you know, with Hunger, it's just something you have and you have to develop it yourself.

Yeah, no one's going to give you the drive. When I'm typically interviewing people, I talk about desire. Do you have the desire to do more? Do you have the desire to be more? Because when you talk about our industry, not a lot of people are in it. So you typically don't interview people that have a lot of experience when it comes to fleet, or maintenance or that side of the coin. So that's always a question I got. Why? I don't have any experience. Is that going to affect my options for this job? And the answer is like, no, I just want you to have that motivation or have that desire. I can teach you what you need to know about fleet. What I can't teach you is that desire.

Yep. We look for attitude and aptitude. You know, do you have the ability to learn and the desire to learn? Those are the two most important things. Um, so let's talk about what this episode is though, which is helping somebody find their passion again. You know, if you've got somebody that just feels stressed, they're burned out, they're overworked, you know, there could be a number of things, but they just aren't excited anymore by the work. Um, one of the things that we see often is like when people start losing their way, it's usually because they've lost their why, you know, which is they've lost their like, why did they do the thing we do? Uh, we talk about at RTA, like the culture for us, it doesn't start with core values. It doesn't start with a mission. It starts with why. It starts with our purpose, you know, which is to help fleets succeed. Everything else we do pivots off of that. Now, the core values might move from one company to another, but it's those things in tandem, right? The purpose kind of feeds everything else. When somebody loses their purpose, when they lose sight of what they're doing, it's very difficult to stay motivated when you don't know why you're doing it anymore. You know, look at Tom Brady. Tom Brady just stepped away from football. Why? He just didn't have the desire. Larry Fitzgerald, same thing.

Yeah, seriously.

Had the ability, had the skill set, still could have very easily played for another couple years, but at some point you just kind of lose the passion, lose the fire, and you just say, you know, I'm kind of ready to move on to the next thing. That's why people job switch so often, is they're, they're looking for that stimulus, that excitement.

Well, and it's funny that you say that because the stimulus and excitement doesn't necessarily always come from the next place.

Well, and it doesn't last.

No. And that's why they job search so much. Like, oh, well, this job's going to give me my purpose and I'm going to be so much better here. And then you leave and you have the exact same problems because it's an internal issue as opposed to an external issue in most cases.

Yep. Well, I mean, and that's, you talk about this isn't about marriage, but that's one of the big things why people why marriages fail so often is because somebody is looking for that next thing, and they get that jolt of excitement, but then it fades, and they realize, oh, you know, it's like money can't buy you happiness. It's that same principle, you know, that somewhere you have to find your own internal motivation. And so as a manager, how do you help find somebody who's lost that internal motivation? How do you help somebody rediscover that? I know for me, like, I go back to Lencioni, and he has this really cool model about the 3 signs of job misery, you know, or he calls it— the book is called The Truth About Employee Engagement because people didn't like the title. 3 Signs of Job Misery, I guess, is a book they didn't want their boss seeing on their bookshelf. But he talked about these 3 things, and these 3 things I think key in on when we have an employee who is demotivated, you know, or like maybe this is like running a D rate, right? Like when you've got a DPF and you've got to regen. Run a D-rated. There's 3 things that kind of lead to that. One is, are they anonymous? Do they feel unseen? Do they feel like nobody cares about them? Do they feel like they could leave and nobody would know the difference?

Well, and that's not just even like a big organization versus a small organization thing. Yeah. When you think about it, like—

That's any organization. Yeah.

I mean, you could have 4 employees and there's people you may talk to business-wise, but they really just feel anonymous. They don't feel like they're seen at all. Reflecting on the big companies I've worked at versus the small companies I've worked at, there's a lot of people who just kind of put their head down and they just do go through the motions every single day. And most places you work are a very— they're just not— you don't get a lot of recognition, right? People say, oh, I just want to be recognized. I want people to thank me. And business is thankless in a lot of cases. And I think that that's when that anonymity comes in is because they're not being recognized. I mean, hell, nowadays a lot of people don't even show up to work.

Just stop. Yep.

They just stop coming. And it could be because they feel anonymous, but my point is that a hello goes a long way, or thank you for doing that. I always try when I ask someone to do something, I mean, part of being a leader is delegating, ask people to do, like I always try to remember to say thank you. Thank you for doing that, or give some sort of—

Recognition.

—little recognition, even if it's just some words. So that they don't feel anonymous, that they feel like what they do matters. Even the janitor matters because no one wants to come to a dirty office, right?

And I think the other side of this, we do this in our one-on-ones, but one of the things I always like doing is a personal update. Tell me what's going on at home. Tell me what's, you know, how are you? And like, how are you, the real you, not the just the job work you, right? Like, how are you really doing? And, you know, tell me what's going on in life, because that's honestly what matters most to you. That's why a lot of us go to work is to support something else outside of work. And so the more that you help know what it is that's important to that person, that you understand what their biggest fears and dreams are, that helps them feel more seen. And so if somebody's struggling with anhedonia, you know, as you talk to them, you'll realize Do I know about them? Do I know about what's going on in their personal lives? Do they want to go back to school? Do they want to go travel Europe? Maybe not Ukraine, but other parts like that. What are their dreams? What are they hoping to go out and do? And do they feel like they matter to somebody? Do they feel like their own person matters to somebody else? Not the work they're doing, but do they feel like somebody cares about them?

Yeah, because when you think about one-on-ones, a lot of times you're just like, okay, what's your workload? What are you doing? And then you're trying to coach, give guidance, maybe discipline. But if you're job-focused— yeah, it's so job-focused that it doesn't make anybody feel like you care about them, right? And what's funny is that— and I think everyone can attest to this— is that when you actually start with asking for a personal update, how are you doing, right? Most people go right into work anyway, right? Because that's where you're at. It's work. And like, okay, That's good, but how are you doing? How's your wife? How's your kids? How's X going? And if you're doing this, you better understand them as a person and what they've got going on so you can remember to ask, hey, I know your wife was sick last week. How's she feeling? And that little comment, it pays huge dividends.

Yeah. Now, sometimes you might have an employee though that isn't anonymous. They feel like, I know my boss cares about me. I know that my boss knows who I am. They know where I'm going. They know what I'm doing. The next sign that Lencioni points out is called immeasurement. Now, this is a word he made up, and I'll say that again. It's immeasurement, as in their job is immeasurable. They don't know how to keep score on whether or not they're doing a good job. There's something to be said for at the end of the day, can you look back and say, you know, did I do good work today?

I can't think of a single job I've had that there wasn't something measured, measurable.

There wasn't a score. I can tell you in our team who struggles the most with this. Is developers. How do they keep score? Yeah, they work on code all day. Is it by lines of code? Is it the number of commits they made? I mean, you know, we're going to get techie real quick, but it's difficult for them to keep score. Now, I'll tell you, our customer support team, they know the score. Our sales team, they know the score. Technicians should be able to know the score, right? How do they do on productivity? How many jobs do they get done? Right. You know, what, how do they do on Oh shoot, you know, maybe how many jobs did they do, right?

Right, their efficiency level, right?

I mean, we talk about doing the CSAT scores for your technicians, which is something we use in our customer service department, you know, as a way for them to keep score. And, you know, did I make a difference for somebody? Did I do a good job, right? Does somebody else know the job I'm doing? And that's a measurement, you know, do they know how to keep track of their job? So at the end of the day, there's just something really rewarding about looking up at the scoreboard and saying, okay, I know how I did, and did I do better than I did the day before? Am I seeing improvement? Am I maintaining a standard? You know, being able to look at the scoreboard and feel that and know that my bosses can see that and I can see that and my peers can see that, there's something really powerful about having a measurement.

Yeah, because you want to feel a sense of accomplishment. I mean, you're going to work for a purpose outside of getting paid. But you want to feel that. If I was in one of those positions, talk about the coders or whatever else, I would have to set daily goals. Hey, I want to accomplish X today and get to that point just so that I could have that measurement in place knowing that I did good today and I accomplished something.

If nothing else, it was I checked a box on a to-do list and I got 3 of my 7 to-do items done, you know, and yesterday I only got 1 done. So 3, that's an improvement. I feel good about what I just delivered. So if you've got your team, make sure that they understand a score. Do they have a way to rate themselves? Do they have a way at the end of the day to say, "Yeah, I did a good job today and everything went well." The last one that I think is probably the one that usually drives a burnout, drives somebody who just feels like, "Yeah, I just don't care anymore," is irrelevance. And that's when they get to a point where they don't think about what impact their job has on other people, or when they forget the type of, you know, what their work is doing for the greater good. This could be, you know, for us in support, we talk about going out and doing client visits. You know, if you don't know the impact you're having, go out and see a client. If you're an internal, like maybe you're a technician, your client is the drivers, it's the operators. It's the people who depend on the vehicle to work. Go out and spend some time with them. You know, we talk about going out and seeing, you know, if you're a school bus mechanic, well, I'll tell you, you may not have a choice in this matter. You've probably already having to drive the school buses. And so you understand is what happens when there's a— when a bus breaks down and you've got a bus full of kids, right? Like, there's nothing that helps you understand relevance more than putting yourself in in the shoes of your clients and in your customers and your end users.

Yeah, so I just, I just had, uh, I've got someone that works for me that's kind of lost some of that passion, right? And I think part of that is feeling the irrelevance, right? Not, not understanding or not, not remembering the difference that what we do can make to people and how the efficiencies can improve their lives. And so my direction to him was, let's get out and meet some people. Let's go face to face. It's very hard when you're doing nothing but Zoom and over the phone. I mean, everyone's got the, you know, the pandemic burnout to where they're sick and tired of not having any human interaction outside of maybe what's in their direct purview. So my advice was just, let's get out and let's go to some different events or functions to where you can meet with people face to face and you can get that passion back. Because once you start talking to people and you start having the conversations about how they can be improved by what you're doing, you're going to start to get some of that passion back. And you're going to realize that, hey, what we do is relevant in other people's lives. Yeah.

And like, if I didn't do this job, there would be a gap. There would be a hole in somebody else's life, right? Somebody else couldn't do this job as well as I'm doing it. Or like, I would have a gap in my life because I wouldn't have these great relationships. I think that's one of the things I love about this industry in particular. Is the relationships, because this is a very down-to-earth industry compared to other industries that are out there, right? Like, I wouldn't— I would not want to work in another industry besides fleet.

It's very blue collar and you can definitely tell the difference you make. One thing that really energizes me, what I loved about last year, was going to a bunch of different trade shows for all these different industries and meeting and talking to people. And when you're having a conversation and I ask, hey, you know, Do you use a software? How do you track your maintenance? And I hear something like, well, we use Excel. And then I get really excited and giddy talking to them about how their life can be improved by, you know, using a software that's going to be able to enable them to save time, to save money, to be able to help people, their stakeholders improve, you know, their efficiencies as well by them being more efficient on their fleets.

I think the more you connect it to, you know, like you can imagine what that person's about to go through. Yes. We've gone so far as to, you know, as we maybe go out and collect client testimonials, you know, go talk to your end users and say, hey, what's something that you really appreciate about the fleet department and share that with your team? We've done that here where we've gone out to our clients and asked them for testimonials or things that we've done, you know, And it's more not about us, but it's more about like, tell us about the impact we've had. And we've had people that have sent it in unsolicited, which are my favorite. Uh, and they send in these really heartfelt, touching, you know, their emails or videos, whatever, um, about the impact that we've had. You know, I had one really good friend last year who retired, was having some health challenges, and he sent this beautiful email. Been a client of ours for probably 20+ years. About the impact that RTA had had on him and how we helped him become a better leader, a better father, and a better husband. And I can tell you is that we never set out to make that kind of an impact. But when you hear that, that you've helped somebody do that unconsciously or subconsciously, it really hits your heart, you know, that you've made an impact. And it just wipes out any kind of feeling of irrelevance. You're like, you know, we made a difference in somebody's life and we didn't even know that we were having that kind of an impact. We've had others, you know, that talk about, oh, we saved this much money. And, you know, we had one guy that was actually at conference and they came up and they spoke about, you know, saving a bunch of money on their tires because of some metrics and reports that they were able to track. And he started crying, you know, and like the impact that this had on him was so more far-reaching than any impact that we could have imagined as a software company. You have that same impact on your own clients, you know, is that there's an impact that's reaching far beyond what you think is just the normal. Helping tap into that and showcase that to your own people helps them understand the why. Like, why do we do what we do and how does their role impact it? I remember I used to have a— there was somebody that worked in QA, right, which is basically software testing. And, you know, we're a fleet management company. So how does somebody in software testing have an impact on, you know, a mechanic or a technician? And they were really struggling with this connection. How do I even— like, I don't know. I, you know, I could not do my job and it still would just keep running. You know, we're like, yeah, but think about it. You know, when you don't do your job, then there's bugs in the code. And if there's bugs in the code, now all of a sudden the people can't rely on the system. And if they can't rely on the system, they're not going to feel very good. You know, they're going to feel anxiety. They're probably going to go to a boss and maybe they have the wrong number in front of them. What if, what if you missing a bug in the code got somebody fired, right? Like, that's the level of relevance that you can have. Now, some people don't deal well with the pressure when you put it like that, but yeah, some of them really respond is like, oh, I never thought about it that way. Like, I could be helping somebody keep their job. Yeah, yeah, you could. You know who else you're helping keep jobs is you're keeping everybody else here employed as well because you're keeping the product reliable. If the product's not reliable, then nobody buys it. And if nobody buys it, then nobody here, you know, nobody here has a job anymore. So same thing as you show your techs, as you show your fleet people, your support operations, parts clerks, help them connect to the customer and what their job does that either frees somebody else up to do something even more impactful or that allows somebody to get home safe. You know, like, you can always connect it back to making a huge positive impact on what they're doing and helping them see that as a big deal. I think some of the other things that I like looking at, you know, so aside from those 3 things, you know, if there's exercises that I would go through as a manager trying to reignite the flame, I'd ask the question, you know, remember the beginning. What was it like in the early days? When you really loved this job, and what's changed? You know, what's— what has changed since then? Are there things that are happening around the office that you just don't like, around the shop, that are really frustrating you? Um, are there things that we could do differently? Uh, is there— is there something that's changed in your personal life? You know, there's some major personal things that can happen that can totally change somebody's outlook. On how they approach their life, their job, all the above. Uh, understanding how to go through that, you know. I know in some cases, you know, maybe you lost a loved one, and how do you figure that out when your whole life was centered around your family? Now your family's, you know, moved on. A lot of empty nesters have this very same problem. You know, they go through life and they're always focused on the kids, and all of a sudden the kids are grown Well, what's changed? Well, it's now we don't have the kids to focus on anymore. Now we have to focus on each other, you know. And well, now what? Uh, you lose a spouse. Well, we were building this dream, we were building towards retirement, and we had all these dreams of travel. Well, now those dreams are gone, you know. And so sometimes you lose a foundational why like that, and it takes a lot of self-discovery and a lot of self-work, you know, like you've talked about, the internal side of things to figure out a new why. Because until you find a new why, you're going to just have problems finding any satisfaction in any job.

You will. And as a leader, right, it's incumbent on you to help that person, right, find the why and to make that difference. And sometimes all it is is just giving an ear and listening. And better understanding, letting them know you're there to help them and support them. If it's you that's lost your why, maybe go to your leader, talk about, hey, I've kind of lost my passion, and go through those motions. The hardest thing about this is a lot of people don't want to be embarrassed by what's going on, and they don't want to have those conversations because they don't want to open up.

Well, it's because it's totally vulnerable. It's like, hey, I'm not enjoying my job anymore. You know, and if you take that the wrong way, either as the manager or the employee, you know, if you're insecure as a manager and you hear that, your first thought is, "I need to protect myself and I need to fire this individual." Right? Like, how do I, how do I keep the company safe and on all that instead of looking at it as, "Wow, I really need to help this person," and offering that hand up instead of the, you know, the palm up, like I'm gonna push you away to try to protect myself and protect our my feelings about this whole thing. I think helping find that, like what inspires them today, you know, as you're the manager listening to them and having that conversation, go back to helping them discover what it is that inspires them. You know, what do they, what still does matter to them? And helping them feel safe to dream. We've recently been reading a book called The Dream Manager, which we have no time for that. Entire book. We'll probably do a whole podcast episode on that book. But the premise is that you as a manager should understand why people are doing what they're doing and what's beyond the paycheck. What's the reason? You know, we call it means to an end. What is the end? What are the things that they're working for? What do they hope? And giving them that courage and that space to dream and dream big and think about, well, you know, Maybe one day I would love to go travel Europe, or maybe one day I'd love to have a cabin in the woods that I could just go spend time in. Helping them feel the safety and feel the courage to dream big is a huge deal. And sometimes when somebody gets burnt out, it's not that they're burnt out from the job, it's just that they've forgotten how to dream. You know, 'cause they've gotten so beaten down by negativity and not knowing how to aspire for something bigger. That they just kind of, they lose hope. They lose hope for something better than what they're in today, and they just think that nothing will ever be better than it is today, and today sucks. So like, that's like, that leads to burnout.

Yeah, and help them find that dream. Not everyone knows what they want as far as an end goal, but when we have something to work towards, we tend to do a much better and efficient job. Because we have that end goal. If my end goal is, hey, I want to one day buy a sailboat and I want to just sail around the Caribbean, well, how am I going to get there? Right? Obviously, I've got to have to work. I'm going to have to save money. I mean, there's— I'm going to have to learn how to sail. I mean, there's things that I've got to do. And if I want to achieve that, guess what? I need my job. I need to do well at my job. So let me put a lot of passion back into my work so that down the road, that dream is going to be achievable for me.

Yeah. All right, well, I think that's going to wrap it up for us today. There's just one more thing that we have to do, and if you're a manager and somebody comes in and they tell you that they're burnt out, right, you just, you just have to kind of step back. And I think there's nothing that a little bit of Righteous Brothers can't stop. I would agree, right? And you just got to go Top Gun on it and just, you know, there's no tenderness anymore in your fingertips. You don't close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips. You're trying hard not to show it, baby. But baby, baby, baby, I know it. You've lost that lovin' feelin'. Whoa, that lovin' feelin'. You've lost that loving feeling, now it's gone, gone, gone. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, boom, boom. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, boom, boom. Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, boom, boom. That's gonna do it for us today.

I'm sorry if your ears are bleeding. That was from me, not Josh. Till next time. Peace.

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