A More Perfect Trucking Company
According to the 2023-CCJ What Drivers Want Report, 56% of polled respondents said that the reason fleets are having a hard time finding drivers is because “They don’t respect drivers and the job they do enough or treat them as part of the team.” In the same report 60% of respondents listed the same reason for why fleets are having a hard time retaining drivers. There are many reasons that can lead to a lack of felt respect, but in this article we will look at a specific area of communication- how drivers are directed by driver support staff, and ways that we can improve it.
In Abraham Maslow’s 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Needs,” he helped us understand how we are naturally motivated towards obtaining the elements of his Hierarchy of Needs pyramid in an upward direction to improve the happiness and success for, not only ourselves, but also for the group/s that we are members of. Not feeling respected by others tends to have immediate negative effects on one’s self-esteem, confidence, achievement, and respect of others. From there, the elements from other levels are affected. The assumptions listed below some pictures are from Maslow’s book Maslow on Management.
By keeping mutual respect high, we also keep psychological safety high. Pairing this with high performance standards, we end up in the learning zone with a collaborative atmosphere which leads to high performance.
In the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, Liz Wiseman tells the story of how a group of recruits were asked to join in on a major project before their training was over. They performed well, but when they were back to take their final test with a different leader who was not skilled in communication, they failed. They could not focus because the way in which they were directed reduced their psychological safety. Luckily, they got another chance with a skilled communicator, and they passed.
Of the seven elements that Julian Barling covers in arguably the very best management book, the first he lists after the all-encompassing high-quality leadership is autonomy. Autonomy is high when a person feels involved in decisions about what to do rather than just being told what to do. Barling points to a study that found that police officers had higher incidences of heart attacks if they had reported low levels of autonomy while at work.
In Amy Edmondson’s 2012 book, she speaks to lack of autonomy from employees being “told what to do” as a barrier to team development. She also mentions “the right leadership mindset” which we will get to shortly.
Throughout this reading, we should understand that we are just humans with a strong tendency to be driven by our instincts. We see a problem, or something that needs to be done and we tend to want to address it as quickly as possible, sometimes not thinking over the words we use beforehand. We should also take into consideration that the society in which we live has a shortage of role models with healthy mindsets and good communication skills, but an abundance of what may be considered the opposite.
So, what does being “told what to do” look like? Surely, everyone has observed a parent at a public place who must consistently tell their child/children what to do. What we find is that the sentences start with action verbs. Although it is common that sentences starting with action verbs are combined with an asking voice, it is just not a good practice. This is especially important during trying times, when speaking to strangers, and/or when communicating through messages. When we lead with action verbs, it tends to slowly or quickly break down mutual respect. Similarly, hitting potholes while we are driving can slowly or quickly damage our tires. To reduce the chance of damage, we can put effort into avoiding them.
While the origins of “the difference between a boss and a leader” remain a mystery, it can be found within John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader Within You 2.0. Although there is a lot that we can learn from this template, for now we will look at the last line. Since our goal is to keep levels of autonomy high, it is important that our words clearly reflect that we are asking, or more specifically, asking if. For example, instead of saying “Go get the trailer,” we could ask “Can/Could you go get the trailer?” If we are unsure if a person is able to do something and/or to increase our chance of getting a reply, we could ask “Are you able to go get the trailer?”
Asking is important for creating a synergy in a relationship/group. People feel respected. They in turn respect their leader and their role in making certain decisions. This is also important because people may avoid asking for help with important decisions if they feel continually talked down to.
Relationship coaches Dan and Carol discuss the importance of asking instead of telling in this blog, along with similar ideas on how to ask.
Another method we can use is to make factual statements. This works good with the combination of the word “we.” An example of this would be “We will need the trailer” or “We need a volunteer to go get the trailer.” The team building capabilities of the word “we” should not be underestimated. In a healthy team atmosphere, employees need only to know that something needs to be done. They volunteer to serve the interests of the group.
Concerning the word “please”, here is an excerpt from one of Joanna Faber and Julie King’s books: “If I started the session by telling you all to ‘Please sit still and stop talking’, how many of you would feel warm and cooperative?” No one raised a finger.” The reality of why we use the word “please” is simply that we do not feel right leading with telling words. Better would be a statement: “It is time for us to begin now” or asking: “Is everyone ready?”
In Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling, Edgar Schein talks about how most surgeons maintain a transactional environment with those they see as under them, consistently telling them what to do. In one instance, a surgeon accidentally removed the wrong organ. Others on the team knew that the surgeon was making a mistake, but the way in which they were communicated to left them fearful to share their ideas. I would describe Schein’s philosophy as- approaching others with humility in communication. Schein does make the case that team-building activities such as surgeons eating lunch with other members of their team instead of just with other surgeons can improve relations. This simply leads to surgeons starting to see their coworkers as people rather than part of a transaction, which leads to improvements in how they speak to them.
If you were wondering if this way of communicating can work with young people, Hunter Clarke-Fields makes the case for it in chapters 5 and 6 of her book Raising Good Humans. We should be mindful that the way in which we speak to children could influence how we speak to coworkers.
Concerning statements starting with “I am going to have you…” or “We are going to have you…”, this creates an I-vs-you or we-vs-you environment. Team building is about creating an us environment. Surely, many have heard the phrase “there is no I in team”. And looking over McGregor and Ouchi’s theories of management types in the following picture, could it be that theory X management tends to create theory X employees?
“Let” or “Let’s(Let us) is one action verb that is actually good at the beginning of a sentence if used in a certain way. Let’s say that a coworker comes to us with a question about what to do- “Which task do you think we should do first?” Instead of telling them what to do- “Do the big one first,” we could say “Let’s do the big one first.” By starting our response with “Let’s”, coworkers are much less likely to feel like they are being told what to do. The us in let’s has similar team building potential to the word we. We could even say “I would do the big one first” if the order was not of importance. Simply stating what we would do increases both autonomy and learning potential.
In James MacGregor Burns’ 1978 book Leadership, he differentiates between transactional leadership, where leaders see coworkers solely as part of a transaction; and transformational leadership, where leaders see coworkers as full of potential, who “can be lifted into their better selves”. We may find ourselves directing people who know nothing but being told what to do, which may even have caused them to be unable to think for themselves, but if we create a team atmosphere, we can bring out their full potential.
The following quotes are from Stephen Covey, the author of the popular book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He speaks of the role of servant leadership in creating a servant leadership culture. We should take in mind that people who have their roots in religion (arguably rightly) may tend to see unhealthy mindsets and poor communication as evil in nature.
In this next part, we can look to how power can move decent people towards not being the best leaders/team members. In the Power Paradox, Dacher Keltner talks about how his team found in their experiments that people under the influence of power became “more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view”. Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist also found that the influence of power “impairs a specific neural process, ‘mirroring’, that may be a cornerstone of empathy”. So, if we are experiencing a lowered level of empathy, we might not be as concerned about how we speak to others. Surely, some of this can be attributed to limits of brain resources. If our brains are using a lot of resources in making decisions, there may be less available resources for other areas. We cannot automatically put people who are not careful and clear with communication in the ‘problem with power’ box. We should consider that a lot of influential people get and hold onto power through ultra-competitiveness, even acts of sabotage of fellow team members, and the way they act and speak is often taken up by many followers. https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain
The following video is about Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s study of the Keekorok baboon troop. It can help us understand how, what some refer to as our reptile or monkey brain, is still a part of who we are even though we have evolved. Originally there were troop members who were under the influence of power: dominance hierarchy, competition, control, etc.; and it was a time of unhappiness and stress for all the baboons. Then, one day the problem baboons all ate some tainted meat and died. Suddenly the troop transformed into a place of happiness and low stress. Occasionally, a male from a different troop who had the bad behavior would join but would soon learn that things were different there. For decades now, happiness has remained.
Sadly, there are some books that are intended to teach people how to use the psychology of dominance hierarchy to gain more success than others. As we see with the Keekorok baboons, achieving success in this way tends to end up leading to unhappiness for everyone.
In summary, being careful in how we communicate is vital for building and maintaining mutual respect, which in turn is vital for building and maintaining healthy levels of psychological safety, which is vital for creating a highly productive team environment. If we are not careful communicators, we are more likely to end up with problems which sometimes may seem to be unrelated. To conclude, we can look to the words of Sir Michael Marmot: “What we are trying to create is a better society that promotes human flourishing.” Below can be found a few more quotes, including two longer ones from James MacGregor Burns’ Transformational Leadership.
“Leadership self-actualization is pursued through a process of mutual actualization with others, motivated in the words of political theorists Agnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér “by commitment to a value or a purpose that stands higher than the person.” When I wrote my book “Leadership” in 1978, I described this process as one of “leading by being led.” The leader’s self-actualizing qualities are turned outward. They emphatically comprehend the wants of followers and responds the them as legitimate needs, articulating them as values. They help followers transform them into hopes and aspirations, and then into more purposeful expectations, and finally into demands. Leaders, I hypothesized, rise one step ahead of followers in this political hierarchy, but continued progress depends on their ability to stay closely attuned to the evolving wants, needs, and expectations of followers; in short- to learn from, and be led by followers. And it requires a commitment to a process in which leaders and followers together pursue self-actualization. Their wants for belongingness, for esteem, are recognized and satisfied, efficacy is enhanced, and the potential for self-fulfillment- to become everything that one is capable of becoming, as Maslow put it, is activated. What leaders and followers become above all are active agents for change, capable of self-determination, of transforming their contingency into destiny.” -James MacGregor Burns
“The ultimate attainment of happiness is a cherished dream, but as a goal of transforming leadership, we must view it more as a process, a pursuit. The impoverished or suppressed person lives in stasis with meager hopes or expectations, but with acutely felt wants. A leader addresses these wants with challenges to things as they are, with solutions and the ways and means to achieve change, and if this initiative hits powerfully and directly, it will motivate the person in need to action. The leader may be only a family member or a concerned friend, a local cop or a social worker, a freedom leader, and the change at first- only a small step up, but lives begin to be transformed. The psychological process may be as critical as the material. A leader not only speaks to immediate wants, but elevates people by investing in them a sense of possibility, a belief that changes can be made, and that they can make them. Opportunity beckons where none had appeared before, and once seized upon, opens another opportunity, and another. So a pursuit of happiness, happiness as more than a chimera, more than pleasing sensations or gratifications, but as something substantial, something essentially good begins. This pursuit will take many forms amid confusion and uncertainties and setbacks, but one factor is consistent, the needs are defined and their satisfaction sought on the needing person’s terms. The crucial factor in this dynamic comes into play at the outset, the building of efficacy. The wanting person initially suffers not only material but also psychological and spiritual deprivation, feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness, and powerlessness. Nothing seems to work and nothing can be done about it, but as possibilities appear and are realized, feelings of efficacy are nourished. A sense of empowerment fuels the pursuit of happiness. The desire for self-fulfillment is activated, which Abraham Maslow described as people’s need to develop to the full stature of which they are capable. As individuals draw together into action to achieve their needs, their collective efficacy unites them into a transforming force that may surpass the causal role of the original leadership. In this way, people make change, and eventually make history. All this is change from the ground up. In the broadest terms, transforming change flows not from the work of the great man who single-handedly makes history, but from the collective achievement of a great people. While leadership is necessary at every stage, beginning with the first spark that awakens people’s hope, it’s vital role is to create and expand the opportunities that empower people to pursue happiness for themselves. Lau Zi’s wrote in the Tao Te Ching- “Bearing yet not possessing, working yet not taking credit, leading yet not dominating, this is the primal virtue.”” -James MacGregor Burns
Maslow’s assumptions from Maslow on Management(Eupsychian Management), Enlightened Economics and Management chapter:
- We assume everyone is to be trusted.
3. We assume in everyone the impulse to achieve, that they are for good workmanship, are against wasting time and inefficiency, and want to do a good job, etc.
4. We assume that there is no dominance-subordination hierarchy in the jungle sense or authoritarian sense.
5. We assume that everyone will have the same ultimate managerial objectives and will identify with them no matter where they are in the organization or in the hierarchy.
6. We assume good will among all the members of the organization rather than rivalry or jealousy.
11. We assume an active trend to self-actualization — freedom to effectuate one’s own ideas.
12. We assume that everyone can enjoy good teamwork, friendship, good group spirit, good group homonomy, good belongingness, and group love.
13. We assume hostility to be primarily reactive rather than character-based, i.e., that it will be for good, objective, present, here-now reasons and that it is therefore valuable rather than evil, and that it is therefore not to be stifled and discouraged.
15. We assume that people are improvable.
16. We assume that everyone prefers to feel important, needed, useful, successful, proud, respected, rather than unimportant, interchangeable, anonymous, wasted, unused, expendable, disrespected.
17. We assume that everyone prefers to like and respect their supervisor.
18. We assume that everyone dislikes fearing anyone.
19. We assume that everyone prefers to be a prime mover rather than a passive helper, a tool, a cork tossed about on the waves.
