Episode 101: The Fire Alarm Accountability

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All right, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, running a solo episode today. So last week we just finished our Fleet Success Summit 2.0, and I got to tell you, it was awesome. You know, if you weren't there, you definitely missed out. We had a good, good crowd of people there, and I can't tell you how many people came up and just, again, The whole reason we were doing it is because nobody's getting training like this. And a lot of people came up and told me that very same thing. So it was really cool to do that, to meet with some of my peers, some of my friends, listeners of the show, clients and non-clients alike. It was really cool. Shout out to my buddy Adam from Italy who flew all the way over here just to come to the summit. Okay, no, not really. But while he was out here on this side of the ocean, He decided to stop in and spend 2 days with us. So it was really cool. I got to hang out with a lot of great people. So yeah, so today's episode, I wanted to talk about something that happened actually a little bit before Summit. I even like sat down and was going to record a whole episode, not realizing that I had my boys Tony and, and Jeff recording a whole episode on right-sizing. So this is a 2-week late story from a couple weeks ago, but it was pretty awesome. It was a good story. And so the story goes like this. I took all of my family and everything. We went out, went down to Bisbee, went up to Tombstone, did kind of like a southern Arizona tour, which I, you know, I'm an Arizona native if you didn't know that, and I've never been to southern Arizona before. And so as I'm going through and we were having a ton of fun, you know, we went and saw the copper mine, which is an awesome experience if you've ever gotten to do that. Went through, you know, old Tombstone, you know, where they had the shootout at the OK Corral. You know, they've got a movie based off on it. Walked down that very same street. It was really cool to go see, be a part of this history and almost like this town that was frozen in time, which was cool. But that was not the, not the highlight of the trip, not by any stretch. No, the, the highlight of the trip actually was when we were in Tucson and we went down to the Pima Air and Space Museum, which you haven't— if you haven't had a chance to go down there and see that, it's absolutely worth it. It's incredible, especially if you're an aviation nut kind of like I am. There's just something cool about walking around and looking at machines that were built to fly, right? And there's so many military, you know, military jets there and helicopters. You know, my favorite, the Pavlo, was there. The, you know, I also love the F-18 Hornet, which is amazing. I guess I should call it the F/A-18. Sorry. But it was just incredible walking around and seeing all these, all these machines and, and everything and showing my kids. And they loved it, right? There's World War II bombers. And, you know, one of my sons is really big into World War II right now. So he was walking around these B-24s, B-17s. They even let you kind of climb up into a couple of them so you can see what it looks like on the inside of these machines. And as we're sitting there, this is a good story right here. We're eating lunch, we're just wrapping up, we're just, you know, throwing all the, all the food away and everything, you know, getting it all cleaned up. And we start sending kids to the restroom. Well, just as, you know, I turn around and see a couple of my kids coming back, just as they start coming back, the fire alarm starts going off, which you're just like, oh no, what's happened? You know, like, where's it going? And my first thought is to actually look at my 2-year-old. And sure enough, wouldn't you know it, he's actually standing by the fire alarm. But very quickly I realized, well, he's not tall enough to reach it and he doesn't have the strength to flip the lid on it, to pull it down. So it wasn't him. So I'm like, all right, good. And if, and if you're parents and you've been in this situation before, you know the feeling that I'm going through right now, right, as you go through this. Um, and so I'm going through this scenario, and what ends up happening, I look over and coming out from the bathroom is my 7-year-old son. Right? He's got that look on his eyes like, I know what happened, but I don't want to say what happened, right? And any of you who have kids who have done something wrong, you know this look that I'm talking about, right? This look of guilt and fear, right? Like guilt and fear, like I don't want to admit that I was the one who did this. So we pull him in and we start talking and we ask him, you know, like, hey, what's going on? You know, did you pull that fire alarm? Did you do it? And one of the other moms is like, oh, one of these kids, you know, they did it, right? Well, we got 8 kids, so we probably like have all the kids in this place right now. So as we're sitting there, right, and we're trying to get it out of him, he's like, you know, shaking his head a little bit and, you know, just doesn't want to say a lot. So there's nothing we can do at this point. So we continue, we pack everything up, and like everybody else that was currently eating lunch in the cafeteria, which, if you were there that day, I'm sorry. You know, we make our way outside away from the ear-piercing sounds of the fire alarm. You know, we take the kids out to the playground, and again, you know, just we pull my son aside and we just have a quick little chat and what really happened. And so I'm just like really curious. I'm like, you know, I didn't see him by the fire alarm. But I'm gonna go walk over there by the bathrooms. And sure enough, I walk in by the restrooms, and right next to the restroom door is a fire alarm, and it's been pulled and it's been popped. And they actually, they can't figure out how to get it off. They can't figure out how to turn the thing back off, and they're sitting there messing with it, you know, and trying to get it to disarm. And so I knew, I knew right then, yeah, that was totally my kid. My kid did it. And now we've got to go figure out how to, how to take some responsibility for this. So my lesson for today is actually going to, is going to follow the rest of the story. Uh, but it's going to be one that I hope as you hear it, that you think about the moments in your life. And it doesn't even have to be your kids. It could be the moments in your life that you're dealing with one of your employees, uh, or, you know, with maybe a manager or something like that, or just a tricky situation for yourself. Maybe you were the kid who popped the fire alarm, metaphorically speaking. And so what do you do in this situation? So the first thing that, that I want you to think about, right, is as you looked at, you know, the different options in front of you, right, were you looking for opportunities to teach this person? Right. My initial reaction, as you know, as a dad of a kid who just did this, is to be totally embarrassed. Right. It's to— it's that fear. You know, whenever you have that fight or flight response, fear plays immensely into that. A fear of judgment, fear of guilt, fear of shame, whatever. And it's this idea of like, how do you respond to that when those moments come? Are you pausing? And taking a moment to think about, okay, how do I turn this around? How do I use this as an opportunity to teach? I will tell you that my first reaction is not that, right? By default, my first reaction most of the times is, you know, is like, is to get upset, is to like feel it and be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe, like, seriously, we're going through that? We're doing this again? This is the first time it's happened, but you know, like just dealing with bad choices, right? And, and issues like this again. And so as we're, we're dealing with it, I realized that in the moment it actually gave me a little bit of time to think before I— because I didn't know exactly what had happened yet. Um, and so I was grateful for that because it also made me pause and say, wait, hold on a second, maybe there's an opportunity here. There's an opportunity for him to learn something that I wouldn't be able to teach him otherwise. So the first lesson is pay attention to how you react in bad situations. What's your natural tendency? And see if you can just like pump the brakes a little bit, right? Just pop the brakes just a touch. Just slow down for a second and think through the situation and see how you can make the most out of anything that's popping up, right? Like in this case, how can I make the most of the fact that my son just flipped the fire alarm in the middle of lunch hour? At the Pima Air and Space Museum, right? In this case, I decided that, you know, this is a good opportunity for him to learn something about public accountability, right? Like taking accountability and, you know, taking some ownership for, for a mistake that he made, a decision he made, and an action, right? And face some natural consequences besides just the fact that You know, he popped the fire alarm and it was ear-splitting. So we took him back inside and, and he didn't want to do this. Right. And so this is, this is my second, my, I guess my second, third lesson is let your subordinates, let them grow. Right. And it's going to be uncomfortable for them to do this and it's going to be uncomfortable for you, but you have to lean into that discomfort. And let them grow, let them fail a little bit, let them come and take some public accountability. And it may not be that they have to admit they did something wrong. Let them step into the limelight and take credits for something that went right. Right. But the idea is like, give them space to grow and don't rush in to try to insulate them from whatever it is they're going to feel. And in this case, what we did is I took him back in and we walked up to, you know, to one of the waitresses who was clearing tables. We walked over to a janitor who was still in the room and had to, you know, mop up after people. We walked over to the cashier. We walked, you know, to some of the cooks in the kitchen. And the idea was that I wanted him to personally see the people that he was affecting, right? He could already see the families that all had to leave, but walking back in there and seeing an empty cafeteria, and it's only you know, 1 o'clock in the afternoon. I wanted him to see that, and I wanted to see the frustration on their faces, right? And maybe you say, well, that's public shaming, you shouldn't do that as a parent. I don't know, I just wanted him to— it was a safe place for him to be able to learn and see and experience a little bit of empathy, right? And that's really what I'm trying to get out of this, is I want him to experience this and see it through their eyes and see the people that have been affected by a decision he made. And it was really uncomfortable. It was like extremely uncomfortable to walk in there and say, hey, my son has something he would like to tell you. And then to sit there and wait for him to get the courage up to say, I'm sorry, it was me. Right. And it's uncomfortable for these people, too. They don't like it. They don't like seeing this little kid kind of squirm and wonder like, oh, you know, like because he didn't want to do it. He was fighting it. But at the same time, I was like, hey, you've got to say it. You've got to take some responsibility here and admit that what you did was wrong, and you're going to learn from it. And I'll tell you is that the staff there were great. They were very gracious. One of them was a little bit passive-aggressive and snippy, but I'm going to give her a pass because, you know, it must have been a long day. And, you know, a 7-year-old just popped the fire alarm, so it couldn't have been fun. But the idea was, is that, you know, they, they did a really good job, um, you know, kind of handling the situation and doing exactly what I needed them to do, which was, yeah, but that was a really bad thing. You know, like you need to make sure that's a very serious thing. You can't do that anymore. Right. And they reemphasize that message with them, which was awesome. Look for those opportunities, right? Let your subordinates lean into that discomfort and you're, you know, like you have to take a step back. And let them know that you're there and you're supporting them, but that they need to do this right, and that they need to experience it and they need to feel it, but— and that you feel it too, right? That, that you wish it hadn't happened, and, and ultimately you're going to have some of your own accountability that you're going to have to go through. My last lesson is this, is that there are some things you just can't fix, right? And that was the other thing that I needed him to understand, is that he popped the fire alarm but he couldn't put it back in and he couldn't figure out how to make it stop. You know, now I honestly don't know that he's ever heard a fire alarm before. And so that was kind of a first thing for him as well. But at the same time, there are some times where we make decisions or our subordinates make decisions and you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube, right? The genie doesn't go back in the bottle and you can't put it— you can't undo it. You can't fix it. And so you have to figure out, how do I learn from this and make this as right as possible, knowing that I can never put it back the way it was, right? And I think we've all made mistakes like that before, and it's tough and it's hard. But I think we have to let each other feel that and experience that a little bit because it's part of our growth. It's part of us growing and learning, and we have to let our subordinates go through that same thing. And recognizing that, yeah, you made a decision and you can't put it back together. It took them hours, by the way. They didn't know how to turn it off, which, you know, maybe I guess in some ways, like, they should be thanking us because we made them put their fire drill to the test and they didn't have the people around that were ready for it. Um, at the same time, I feel kind of bad about that. So, but be open with that, right? Look for those opportunities where you may not be able to fix it. But let them be uncomfortable. Let them try to grow and learn, and it doesn't have to be always a safe spot for them to do it, but, you know, try to have them fail in a way that, that works and, and make the most out of a bad situation. So that's going to do it for our episode today, a nice little short one. Hope you enjoyed it. Hopefully you guys aren't like me and haven't had your kids throw off fire alarms in public places before. If you have, or if you've had subordinates that have really messed things up for you or done something really dumb, I would love to hear your stories. You can email us at podcast@rtafleet.com. Otherwise, we'll, we'll be seeing you out in the trade show world. I know I'm heading out to NAFAA personally here in a couple of weeks. You're going to see us over at GFX and Fleet Pros. Pretty sure we're heading to some of the ATA conferences, you know, some of the PWX, Public Work Expo coming up at the end of the summer. Hopefully we'll see you out on the trade show circuit. If not, you know where to find us. And until next time.

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