Dan Baker, nationally known speaker, teacher and consultant to the trucking industry, discusses his theories on why this latest generation of drivers needs to be handled differently than past generations of drivers.
With the old guys and gals, loyalty, commitment, dedication, experience and hard work supplied them with their internal personal culture. Today, however, our younger generation of drivers needs an external source of belonging, value and importance. Thus, Company Culture has become a much bigger issue today than in years past.
It all has to do with your visible attitude toward your people. Inclusion, friendliness, warmth, and encouragement: they all play a huge role in making this new generation. Companies that take make the effort to focus on their Company Culture will reap the rewards.
Good question. When standards are set too high, and mistakes are seen as a breach of those standards, you will have fear in your organization, as well as in the Driver Manager/Driver relationship. Fear doesn't fix anything. When someone is scared, you get about 10% of what they're capable of, and when they're not scared, you get about 90% of what they're capable of.Do all you can, with as much encouragement as possible, to help the drivers on your team develop their skills. People are often under the misconception that a permissive attitude toward mistakes only encourages more mistakes. But the opposite is in fact true: when mistakes are accepted as a part of the learning process, they can be utilized, not hidden. When they are hidden out of fear, they fester and poison the water.
During the work-ethic generation, mistakes were considered bad, wrong, something to be avoided. Managers saw themselves as the ones responsible for catching mistakes, resulting in most mistakes being hidden and blamed, and often punished. An old unspoken belief was that we are good because we punish ourselves for being bad. A more innovative method for dealing with mistakes is to use them as lesson material. Everything is lesson material that can be used to make us better. When you see yourself as a teacher and mistakes as lesson material, you see mistakes as opportunities for improvement as opposed to something to be avoided and punished.
Remember, the trucking business was built on the backs of the old Mossback generation of work-ethic guys. So much of our history and tradition has been built on an image of the tough, hard-working, no-nonsense driver. We still have a few of these old timers, and they are worth their weight in gold. But today, with the newer generation, we're dealing with a much more self-directed, leisure-ethic type of driver. Today's Driver Managers don't necessarily come out of a trucking background, and they need to see themselves more as a teacher and a coach; they need a much higher degree of people than previous Driver Managers.
Why is Company Culture so important to the younger generations?
With the old guys and gals, loyalty, commitment, dedication, experience and hard work supplied them with their internal personal culture. Today, however, our younger generation of drivers needs an external source of belonging, value and importance. Thus, Company Culture has become a much bigger issue today than in years past.
It all has to do with your visible attitude toward your people. Inclusion, friendliness, warmth, and encouragement: they all play a huge role in making this new generation. Companies that take make the effort to focus on their Company Culture will reap the rewards.
What role does fear play in a workplace?
Good question. When standards are set too high, and mistakes are seen as a breach of those standards, you will have fear in your organization, as well as in the Driver Manager/Driver relationship. Fear doesn't fix anything. When someone is scared, you get about 10% of what they're capable of, and when they're not scared, you get about 90% of what they're capable of.Do all you can, with as much encouragement as possible, to help the drivers on your team develop their skills. People are often under the misconception that a permissive attitude toward mistakes only encourages more mistakes. But the opposite is in fact true: when mistakes are accepted as a part of the learning process, they can be utilized, not hidden. When they are hidden out of fear, they fester and poison the water.
What can Driver Managers do to deal with mistakes without hurting the system?
During the work-ethic generation, mistakes were considered bad, wrong, something to be avoided. Managers saw themselves as the ones responsible for catching mistakes, resulting in most mistakes being hidden and blamed, and often punished. An old unspoken belief was that we are good because we punish ourselves for being bad. A more innovative method for dealing with mistakes is to use them as lesson material. Everything is lesson material that can be used to make us better. When you see yourself as a teacher and mistakes as lesson material, you see mistakes as opportunities for improvement as opposed to something to be avoided and punished.
How can our Driver Managers deal effectively with this younger generation of drivers?
Remember, the trucking business was built on the backs of the old Mossback generation of work-ethic guys. So much of our history and tradition has been built on an image of the tough, hard-working, no-nonsense driver. We still have a few of these old timers, and they are worth their weight in gold. But today, with the newer generation, we're dealing with a much more self-directed, leisure-ethic type of driver. Today's Driver Managers don't necessarily come out of a trucking background, and they need to see themselves more as a teacher and a coach; they need a much higher degree of people than previous Driver Managers.
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