In this solo episode of the Fleet Success Show, host Josh Turley reflects on the intersection of strategic "blood flow"—the intentional allocation of time, energy, and money—and clear communication within fleet leadership. He introduces his guiding mantra, "to be unclear is to be unkind," and explains how vague expectations erode accountability. Turley shares a recent incident where an assistant’s request for ownership went unanswered, prompting him to examine whether his own direction was sufficiently explicit. Rather than reacting defensively, he paused, assessed his clarity, and engaged the team in a co‑creative dialogue to improve communication, define the assistant’s authority, and reinforce ownership. The episode underscores the importance of setting clear priorities, delegating responsibility, and using clear language to foster proactive, accountable behavior across the organization. Listeners are invited to share their own experiences of unclear communication via email.
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Hey, welcome back for another episode of the Fleet Success Show. I'm your host, Josh Turley, running solo today. Today, as I was kind of thinking about, well, what do we want to talk about? I know last week's episode, we talked a lot about blood flow, you know, and this idea of strategic importance. How do you decide what to dedicate your time towards? You know, the week before, we were talking a little bit about culture and how important that is in your organization. And I wanted to kind of bring those two together a little bit and talk about this concept of, you know, it's a mantra that I've kind of lived by over the past several years as a leader, especially is this concept of to be unclear is to be unkind. Right. And for our, you know, for our listeners, if you've read the Fleet Success Playbook, if you followed me for any kind of time, you know that this is something I get really passionate about is as a leader, how are you showing up for your team? And when you're deciding things like where do we spend our time, what is the priority right now, how do we go and execute against a vision, right? And your responsibility has to be casting that vision. You can't go do the work for your team. You can't step in and turn every wrench. You can't step in and order every vehicle. You have to rely on your team members to do that work. But it falls on you to create that clarity around what needs to be done, how important it is and where they should be spending that time, that blood flow. And I say this because, you know, just recently in the last week or two, there was an experience where I noticed that there was something going on in the weeds. And my first reaction, having grown up in the business, is to, I wanna get into it, right? I wanna go into the weeds, I wanna go micro, I wanna think small and try to fix that problem. Right? We have a natural tendency to try to fix problems and fix pain when we're, you know, anybody, when we're hurt, right? What's the first thing we do? We grab the place where it hurts. And in business and leadership, running a fleet, it's no different. It's all the same. So for us, I think about, have I been clear enough, right? When there's pain in the business and I feel myself wanting to dive in and go micro, have I been clear enough with my team so that I can stay out of the fray and help guide and direct efforts, dive as I need to, but only so deep. Because if I'm heads down, I'm not focused on the rest of the picture. I'm not looking at what matters most and making sure that the team's staying focused. Instead, I'm distracted. Right. So tell you a little story. You know, this, this past week, you know, we— I had my assistant send out a, you know, a note to the team that says, hey guys, we've noticed this issue. Right. And in order for me to stay out of it, I need to know that somebody else has got this and is taking ownership of it. Right. A couple of days go by. I'm out of the office, so I don't necessarily follow up. But these are executives. They can handle it, put it on their lap. I know that it's going to get taken care of, except Monday comes around and I look at it and nobody's taking ownership of the issue. Right. It hasn't been dealt with yet. Now, my first reaction, and I think many of you would probably be in that same thing, if you've asked somebody to do something and they haven't done it yet, your first reaction is, what's going on? Why haven't they done this yet? Why are they ignoring me? Right? And you make it about you, you get defensive, you get, you know, maybe you get pissed off, right? And you have to take a second and pause and ask yourself the number one question, which I led off the podcast with, which is, to be unclear is to be unkind. Have I been clear enough with my team about the things that I'm expecting from them? Right. And in this case, have I really gotten clear about what my expectation was when I said I need somebody to own this and to really, you know, take this project on or to make sure that this issue gets fixed? And as I look through it, you know, I realized there was areas that I saw we could have improved and I could immediately jump out and try to make excuses for them. But instead, I would challenge you if you're in that moment, in that situation, you know, kind of pause and do a little bit of what I did. And I paused for a long time. This was not something I did in the space of 5 minutes. You know, I addressed it immediately with the team. Hey, this isn't going to work. But I didn't immediately go into how do I fix this? So you guys start taking ownership, right? I gave myself several hours to think on that before I came at it. And tried addressing the problem. And I'm glad I did because my approach then turned into a co-creative approach, which was, hey, this isn't working. It seems like lately, you know, there's been not necessarily a lack of ownership, but a lack of communication or something's not getting through correctly. How can my assistant and I handle this better in the future to spur you on to kind of take the momentum, take the initiative? right, and use the momentum of the moment when it's urgent, it's painful, to take ownership of a problem and fix it. And it was amazing, as I did that, instead of coming out of the team and saying, you guys are terrible, and all this, recognizing that it was my own lack of clarity that caused their confusion, and then asking them for their input and help in co-creating a solution to that confusion. It was amazing to see the accountability that came forward from that. Right, to see that as they were looking at the problem and they were able to take a non-defensive— because it wasn't coming at them hard, you know, I was throwing truth at them, but I wasn't coming at them and making it personal. They were able to look at that and say, you know, based on this, I should have said XYZ. I didn't. I apologize for that. Next time I will do a better job of this. I recognize that in this situation, I saw this was from your assistant. And didn't give it as much credence as say, if it had come from you. And that was something else that we looked at and realized, wow, we haven't been very clear about when is my assistant speaking as me and when is she speaking as her to know how much weight to throw into her request. And that shouldn't be a thing, but it is, right? You don't know necessarily, is the CEO asking for me to do this or is this, you know, something that she's personally asking me to do? We could have been more clear about that, right? And that was a reflective moment for me as well. There was some of the language that somebody mentioned that, oh, we could have used stronger language to suggest how important this was. Totally true. But it was really a fun moment to see them recognize where they had fallen short, and to see them then rise up and say, I can do better next time, and this is how I'm going to do better next time. And for us to realize that we could have been clearer. And again, just come back to that same statement, which is to be unclear is to be unkind. Right? And what is the most important thing that we need to be working on right now? What's going on in the business that needs, you know, that pain that we need to clutch our knee for? What is that thing that we should focus on to make sure that it gets addressed? And it gets addressed not in a way that, okay, we got a little brace on, and we'll be fine for a couple days. But it gets addressed in a way that prevents further injury, you in the future, right? That's more proactive. And I really liked that discussion as we talked about blood flow last week, was because it's really about us being intentional with our time, with our energy, with our money, and really sending it to the areas that need our attention and need growth and need investment. And just being very clear with the rest of the team about where that is and where that pain needs to be. So that's my podcast episode for this week. I would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions or comments on that. If you've had a time in your fleet where maybe you weren't very clear, maybe you weren't very kind, and come back and email that to us over at podcast@rtafleet.com. Love hearing from you guys. As always, keep the shiny side up and we'll see you next time.
