22. Don't be a Dick

Andrea and Griff discuss our most infamous value, including the backstory and how we can all work together through disagreement. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome to Load It, the Haun Ready Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer, Griffin On, and producer Lex.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

How's it going today?

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Great. It's a hot one today.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

It's hot. Lex, how are you feeling? You were out there at the at the night work last night that was not.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Yeah. Still hot at night, huh?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Yeah. Still hot at night. Steve, it's great when you get up in the middle of the night for a port to cancel. That's fun. Yeah, it's my favorite. It's it's it's the best. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I just had that feeling yesterday that that was somehow going to happen. And even when I I drove by at six or seven o'clock last night and they were working on it, and I just still thought, ugh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Gosh. It's night work is such a such a tricky, hard thing to do for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

No fun at all. Absolutely. What do you got for announcements this week?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

I have been uh working in Davenport on the key project, the key problem. And I just really appreciate everyone's cooperation and patience with that. I know it's annoying and a hassle, but I'm so proud that on the very first night, every single key made it back in. And I never expected it to happen that way, but it made my work so much easier. It is taking longer than I thought to do the rest of the steps, so I still need to have them coming in. But I do really appreciate everyone helping me out.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

I thought it was pretty funny when I was leaving yesterday and I didn't realize you were still here and I was locking up the front door and you came sprinting down the hallway, so I didn't lock you in.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

I was locked in with the alarm on, so I was concerned.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah. I I thought that was funny.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

It's really hard to manage keys while they're out in the trucks during the day. So it has to happen before and after normal business hours, which are all day and all night, apparently.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Especially right now.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Right. Well, it it's like that right now because it's so hot.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

So that was my announcement was it's hot. So take precautions. Make sure you're drinking lots of fluids if you're working, you know, outside, and um stay cool. It can be it can be very dangerous, especially today. We're recording this on Wednesday. It's really bad. Um, but even early next week when this comes out, it's it's supposed to be real hot then too.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Thank you for this obvious announcement. I've actually been teasing my kids. I'm trying to get them to stop complaining so much. So when they complain, I say, is this a complaint or an announcement? And they say, This is an announcement of my problem.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Thank you for announcing our problem.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Should I try that with my wife, see how she likes it? I wouldn't recommend that. I don't think that's gonna go well. I'm gonna avoid that. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:50

All right. Well, I guess that's a a big turnaround here that now we're gonna talk about be positive.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Aaron Powell Yeah, that's our next tenant in the values groupings, I guess. So be positive.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

Go straight from announcing complaints to be positive.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah. Well, makes sense. We're positive about our complaints.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Well, I you know, be positive. To me, this is about having a place where people want to work. That's the I think the most succinct succinct way to say it is that we want people to want to come to work. We want people to enjoy their coworkers and the jobs they do. Yeah, that's that's really be positive is simple. I mean, everybody know understands what that means and it's just about having a good workplace.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Aaron Powell Yeah. We spend so many hours a week at work that if if it's a miserable place to be, it makes your whole life miserable. And that we do we do strive to make it a place where no one has to be miserable.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Aaron Powell And and that kind of thing is contagious. Negativity is contagious. So it just takes one person that is not positive, that's got a negative attitude, and and that can turn a whole plant area or whole division or whatever into unhappiness and and and not liking their day-to-day job. So let's be contagious with being positive, because that that also works.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yes. So when we started writing this section of the values, uh there was one very obvious quote that started it. I did I didn't know if you researched any quotes for this episode today, but oh no, I did not.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

No quotes.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

I thought that everyone should know that this uh first value within be positive is a direct quote from you.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Yeah. Well, I can tell that story a little bit, I guess. Yes, yes, you should. So the first value is don't be a dick. And we actually get, you know, we have these values posted around, and anytime people visit, that it it's invariably every single time someone says, I love that. I love that you just boldly put that on. Put that on your values. But this was obvious to us because it came from an event. And so at the beginning of COVID, so this would have been probably mid-2020, that was a stressful time for a lot of reasons. There was a lot of uncertainty, you know, mask mandates going around and people working remotely when they could, and social distancing, all these things that none of us want to think about anymore. That just created a stressful work environment. It's just a stressful time to be alive, you know.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Yeah. People were feeling tense with life. Yes. And then ad work on top of it and all of the additional complications that COVID brought us.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Yeah. I remember I called Wayne up and Wayne Lawson, um, but most of you remember him. But in case you didn't know, or in case you're newer, he was our executive vice president. And I called Wayne and I said, God, we have like five different manager pairings that are in feud with each other right now. And just everybody's snapping at each other all the time. It's just, I said, we got to do something about it. It's it's not, we can't get anything done because we're at each other's throats. And it was all, I think, a symptom of that stressful period, right? And Wayne said, okay, do something about it. All right. So we we called a Zoom meeting, kind of the first time we've ever done it. All hands manager Zoom meetings. All the managers.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

It was stressful in itself because none of us were frequent Zoom users at the time.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah. And nobody had any idea what we were going to talk about, right? So so this Zoom meeting we had, I think the meeting was about two and a half minutes long. And the gist of it was the way that we were treating each other was unacceptable. And we weren't going to tolerate it anymore, and we needed to find ways to come together to solve problems. And frankly, it was time to stop being a dick to one another. So I ended the meeting with don't be a dick or don't work here. And then I hit end meeting, which was one of my more fun mic drop moments of my life, I think.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

It was a mic drop moment, and especially having a succinct message from you is unusual. So it caught it caught us all off guard.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, you did text me afterwards, best meeting ever. So yeah. But it we needed it at that moment. And but it's a good thing to always remember. And and I think in for the most part, we do great at this and people really get along well. But it's always good to remember that it's easy to slide back into that moment where we were back in 2020, where we were at each other's throats and and not being cooperative.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah. And it really it caught on. It stuck with us.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

When I was thinking back to when we created these values, I remember that we tried to turn this around. Like it isn't common that when you state your values, you state them in the negative. Like don't do something. Right. But no matter how many times we tried to rearrange this, it didn't fit us the way that don't be a dick does.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Well, let's be honest. We're pretty irreverent around here and coarse. Right? So we're not afraid to swear, even though we've kept this podcast clean.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

And I also thought about that. Like, what different crowd are we going to attract with this podcast title?

SPEAKER_00 8:28

Good. Well, our people. That's who we're attracting. Our people. You know, I listened to some of these other uh podcasts and in you know in our industry or outside and and they just lean into like these higher ideals. And I'm like, well, we're just we're just in in it. We're just in it, right? And very real. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

So what I thought we could talk about going into this further is what it means, what it looks like to not be a dick, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Do you want to go first or do you want me to do mine first?

SPEAKER_00 9:01

You do yours first and I'll tag on.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Okay. So my first one that I actually just talked to Griffin about before we walked in here is one of the easiest things you can do is listen. It takes patience and it takes time. But it always pays off.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

What were you saying?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Not surprising there. The second level of listening is listening out of curiosity and holding back your judgment. I think so many times when people go into a conversation, they kind of already think that they know what the story is going to be and they're ready to judge the response that they get. Or you're spending the time when you should be listening, framing up your response and just really being curious and putting yourself in that person's shoes and walking through, you know, what happened before, what happened after, what were you thinking? You learn so much and you get so much further, and it like prevents you from snapping on someone.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

Yeah. Active listening is I'm not great at it. Let's just put it that way. Yes, but that that is a great point. That is a great point. That genuinely hearing other people's complaints or point of view or issues or or opinion is is critical.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yeah, it's very rare that someone is trying to do a bad job or trying to be a malicious or has bad intentions. So being curious will almost always help you figure out what happened.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, can I do one?

SPEAKER_01 10:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

All right. My favorite thing, and we with this this came, and we've talked about it here before, but this came from Steve Ott, but is assume positive intent. So often we view conflict. That is, conflict is going to happen. We have a very difficult industry where things change quickly. It seems like all the variables are continuously changing and always not in our favor. And so conflict is going to happen, and we have roles where people are set up to be in conflict with another role because they have different responsibilities, kind of different groups. You know, a salesperson is advocating for the customer and the dispatch is advocating for how do we get the most effective use of our equipment or, you know, getting guys off the clock when they've been at work too long or whatever. And those things can are naturally sometimes in conflict with one another. But if we understand each other's point of view and understand that they're working for the best outcome for the people or the groups that they are representing and advocating for, and for the organization as a whole, then a lot of times the compromise between that conflict is the best place for Han ReadyMix and is the best place for our team. So that that that realization, I think, is a big deal that we can see conflict, see difference, and understand that there's a positive intent coming from those. And that if we keep that in mind, it changes the lens that we view every single conflict that happens.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah, you can get a long ways by like reminding yourself this is a good person. Like this is someone that I work with every day, and we're friends all the time. Like I know they're not doing something intentionally to wrong me or to wrong someone else. So thinking that through, and I would add on to that. So assume positive intent from everyone else, but don't assume that everyone else understands your positive intent, right? So you know what you're coming at it with is a positive intent, but you can't assume that it's received that way.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Gotta talk through it.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

So my next one adds on to that with communication in general. So there's a lot of times where you can be right. I can be right. Let's assume we're talking about me. Sure. There's a lot of times when I'm right, but the way I communicate it can come across as being a jerk.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

No, you're supposed to say no, that never happens.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

So managing your delivery, asking questions, getting pe make sure that you're getting people to come around to your true core thought.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Without bashing them.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Yeah, you can tell someone that they messed up or you disagree without treating them like trash, right? You can um you can give feedback, right, without snapping. And and we can disagree without disrespect, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

So in fact, feedback is very kind. Like talking about someone not to them is is being a jerk, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

But telling someone directly or asking them questions is the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Mm-hmm. I think a lot of times when people are being difficult or being a dick, they're having an emotional response. And some of this goes down to like if if you have a disagreement about one of your core beliefs or something that you kind of include in your identity, then it can feel like a personal attack that somebody disagrees or has done something, uh taken some action that you disagree with, whatever. So when we this ties into assuming positive intent, but and the way we communicate, but if we can try to dampen those emotional responses. We talked a little bit about not letting the emotional elephant get away from you, right? Then we can control the things we say and how we say them a lot bit a lot easier. So not letting ourselves be ruled by emotions is important.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I totally agree.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

And then I think there's always the unknown. We don't know what everyone else is dealing with, right? So being forgiving of someone that's snapped and not snapping back because we don't know what's happened in their home life or their health or anything else, right? So those things play a major part in how we communicate and and show up for ourselves and just having some empathy and some understanding that we don't know what all is happening with each other and giving the benefit of the doubt in those situations. That's really important because life is hard and we're all dealing with different things. Everyone's dealing with something. And let's let's just give each other some grace, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Yes, I had a a good story um from your dad actually on that topic. Used to be a tough dynamic for me that I sat right where you could see me when you walked in the front door. And Brian would pull in and I swear he would count how many trucks were parked across the street, and he would walk straight into me and say, Why are there eight trucks parked across the street? Where are those people?

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Uh and I would get frustrated and defensive and you know, try to say, I'm hiring as many people as I can, and I have, you know, we're doing the best we can. And I I don't remember what I said, but I remember at some point he said, you know, a lot of people that are coming to work here have to overcome more in their morning to get here than most of us face, you know, in a week or a month or a year. So like be conscious of the challenges that everyone's facing. And like we're asking them to do a lot to get here at a time that's set at 5 30 the night before, and they have no idea how long they're gonna be here for that day. Like, there's a lot of complications in logistics that go into that schedule. Uh no, I don't I don't know if you would agree with the flexibility that we offer now in that response, but I think it has worked out for us to really consider the challenges that we're asking people to work through.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

100%.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Another thing I thought of in this category is as a team, we fail and win together. So blaming someone when something goes wrong always makes it worse.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

And giving yourself credit when something goes right also always makes it worse. So I try to make sure that we're recognizing the team effort across the board. And when something goes wrong, we all could have done more to make it go better.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah. I think about when we talk about rejected loads. Yeah. It took us years, and it's we still fall into this trap, but it took us years to we'd say, okay, what happened? And the focus was always on this was someone's fault or this was some group's fault. And trying to pin it on somebody. It's like, well, that that's not the point of this. The point of this is to learn what went wrong so that we can make adjustments to prevent it from happening again. Not to say, oh, it's it's X person that they're just a a dummy and doesn't know what they're doing. Like that doesn't that doesn't fix anything, that doesn't serve any purpose. So, you know, can we set up a process that that prevents that from happening? Can we give tools or education or, you know, those are the things we need to be focused on, not assigning blame. I also had another thing I wanted to bring up. I feel like a lot of times when I most of the time in my experience, when people are mad at each other and say things that they regret, it normally happens like via text or email or something like that. I think it less often happens face to face and somewhat less often, you know, with a telephone call. So my advice has always been if you're going to have a difficult conversation, to have it face to face, because then you get a fuller understanding of exactly where that person is because you can see their facial expressions. You you're going to approach that conversation more cautiously and more carefully than you would maybe firing off a text. So I I highly recommend that if you have a situation where something's been done that it's made you upset, it's made you mad, and you want to, you want to kind of lash back that don't do it via text. Don't do it in an email. Go sit down with the person and say, listen, I'm pretty upset about this and have a real conversation. And I think you can, by doing that, you can avoid the worst excesses of the way we treat each other and really nail down a productive conversation.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah, having a real conversation and even starting that conversation with, like, is now a good time to talk about this?

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Or even like slow rolling yourself, right? Like if you go into it when you're still hot with emotion, you're probably gonna drag that person into an emotional response also. So just Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Sometimes it's okay to take a day.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

You let yourself cool off, let the other person cool off, and and come back when you're not in an emotional state. That's a good point. Great.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Well, I don't think we had any really pressing loaded questions. So I have a loaded question relevant to the don't be a dick topic. If you're not going to be able to do that, can I do a final?

SPEAKER_00 20:08

I want to do a final note on the don't be a dick. All right. I think it's important to say that this value isn't about being soft, right? It's about being strong enough to stay cool. And positivity is a choice. And so is being a decent human. So when things heat up, let's cool it down and don't be a dick. All right, now we can go to your loaded question.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

All right. My loaded question is if you feel like someone is being a dick, what should you do?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

So I think that it is what we just talked about is the most pertinent. Giving a little time and space if the if the situation allows it to let them cool off. And then having a face-to-face sit-down meeting. You know, if it if it opportunities is, hey, let's go, let's go chat for a second, or let's go to lunch, or let's do whatever, let's get away from other people and just have a one-on-one talk. And and I think a lot of times it helps to, you know, lead with a compliment. You know, some I I really respect you, but we're clearly not on the same page on this. And so I just want to I want to preserve our relationship. I want to, I want to identify how we can do this differently that works for both of us. And and just really cool things down there. Also, you've talked before about, you know, starting with curiosity and say, okay, I don't, I don't understand. Can you just run me through your thought process on this? And that allows the other person to express whatever it is is on their mind or or what led them to that decision or action or or disagreement. I think that's the best way, but I I again really encourage that if at all possible to happen in person.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah. I this is sort of tricky because to an outside observer, if you came in here, you might think that we are all being rude to each other. Like there's a lot of you know, ribbing and teasing and uh calling out that happens in a really natural way that's re comfortable for people that work here. Yeah. Uh but to someone else it might feel too rough, right? Which I think lends itself to this really well. Like if someone's being a dick and you can say, like, wow, don't be a dick. Like we do that a lot. And it's really effective. And it just, you know, checks someone in the moment and redirects the conversation and everybody moves forward. And, you know, we just gotta let it go. Where other places where it's not polite to say something like that, yeah. You know, then rifts get bigger and things get exaggerated even more. So I think that's a really cool thing about this place and something that makes it a place that we like to work.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah. And I, you know, I'm fully leaned into the teasing each other and and you know, that I participate in a lot of that. So far be it from me to say that it's not appropriate appropriate. I I like that about, I like the relaxed nature, the atmosphere we have here. But we've got to make sure it doesn't go somewhere malicious. Yeah. And and it's it's kind of up to all of us to put the guardrails on when we see something and be like, well, well, that was a little too far, you know, and there's things that are obviously inappropriate that ha that can't happen at work. And and so we need to be watchful for those things. But I want us to be able to not feel, you know, I know that there's companies where people feel like they can't say anything for fear of HR coming down on them for saying something inappropriate or or say, you know, joking around, and you know, that's not what we want this place to be. We want to have fun, we want to joke around, but there are lines that can't be crossed. So we've got to be cognizant of that.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Very good.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

We all said. I think so. That was a good episode.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. Please share this episode with your friends or maybe someone you think needs to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Yeah. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks so much.