Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
A podcast for the employees of Hahn Ready Mix
Loaded: The Hahn Ready Mix Podcast
78. Ted Lasso
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Andrea and Griff discuss the leadership and life lessons from the show Ted Lasso (check out the show too, it's great).
Also watch for kids going back to school and keeping trucks clean.
Welcome to Loaded, the Han Radio Mix podcast with Andrea Meyer. And guess who's back? Griffin.
SPEAKER_00Woo-hoo.
SPEAKER_01And Lex is here.
SPEAKER_00What's up?
SPEAKER_01Although he's kind of already warned us that he's not really gonna contribute today.
SPEAKER_00I haven't said such a thing.
SPEAKER_01Big surprise.
SPEAKER_00He's right. He didn't say such a thing. It's just when you asked him and he didn't respond, that was a good indicator that he's an implication that he was gonna largely set this out.
SPEAKER_01At least you're here. We appreciate that.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Your encouragement just by being present. I think Darren's listening to Lord of the Rings or something.
SPEAKER_01There is some weird music happening.
SPEAKER_00That's the that's like the music they play when they return to the Shire. The Hobbits do.
SPEAKER_01So if you say so.
SPEAKER_00If that's the background of the podcast, it's the background of the podcast. It just is what it is.
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, welcome back. What's uh what's new?
SPEAKER_00Uh I don't know. Not a lot. I was in uh went to a wedding in Vermont last week, and I've never been to Vermont. I don't know that I ever really planned to go to Vermont, but it's delightful. I would definitely go back.
SPEAKER_01I have driven through Vermont before, but not it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00It was like high of 73. It was great.
SPEAKER_01Great.
SPEAKER_00I did get bit by a tick and probably have Lyme disease. Oh boy. Uh you know, other than that, it was great.
SPEAKER_01Good. Well, you missed rain days here. Yes. Dreadful week.
SPEAKER_00What did we get? Eight inches last week? Yeah, something like that.
SPEAKER_01It was we're back at it this week.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's good to be busy. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01This uh speaking of back at it this week, kids are going back to school tonight. I know the Illinois kids are already back, and Iowa kids are Meet the Teacher Day today, and we'll be when this podcast comes out, they'll be back in school. So everybody be mindful of those uh crosswalks, uh speed zones, not passing the buses in any lane, all of that safety stuff back on top of our minds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. Are your kids excited to get back to school?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes and no. There's mixed emotions at our house.
SPEAKER_00My Isaac was not excited because apparently there's a very strict teacher. And until he found out that he didn't have that teacher, trepidation. He really, really was not excited about school. And then as soon as he found out he didn't, he's he's up to it. Everything's good. Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I have one of mine is very excited because she loves sports and she gets back to you know, volleyball practice starts day one of school, so she's super excited.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And my other one signed up for all of these leadership roles and now has some anxiety about all of her jobs that she has at school. So I'm sure she'll be fine once she gets set.
SPEAKER_00Well, leadership's a good segue, but before that, um uh the only announcement I have is I it seems like our trucks are starting to look really dirty, I feel like. And I know we've had a lot of rain days. Uh I know the days that haven't been raining, we've been really busy. There's not a lot of time to clean on trucks. But um, if your truck needs it, please ask dispatch for time to clean on your truck. We will give it to you. We the some of the trucks are kind of embarrassing that are driving around.
SPEAKER_01Are you seeing a lot of buildup on the back or what?
SPEAKER_00But just even some of them, the cabs are filthy. They don't even look red because they're so filthy, you know. So and definitely it's not all of them, right? There's there's a lot of people that take very good care of their trucks and and put a lot of time and attention into keeping them clean. But uh, I would just say kind of as the average, uh I just feel like we're we're falling behind where we ought to be with keeping the trucks clean. So we need to work on that. We ready to dive into today?
SPEAKER_01Yes. We're happy to have you and your all of your words back on the podcast with us.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So the idea for this week is kind of a goofy one, but uh stick with me on it because I do think it's it's worthwhile. Have either of you seen the show Ted Lasso? Yes.
SPEAKER_01I think that I attempted to watch this on your recommendation and then promptly bailed on my efforts.
SPEAKER_00Uh well that maybe this will bring me back to it. I think it should bring you back. I uh disappointed in you uh as usual. Um but Ted Ted Lasso is a is it's top of my or just came kind of on my radar again because the fourth season that wasn't going to happen just dropped last week. So it's brand new fourth season. And it's a show that, like you mentioned, I highly recommend to anybody that hasn't seen it. It's very funny and very kind of uplifting. But it's a show about an uh American college football coach who gets hired to be a soccer coach, a manager of a team in the English Premier League in England. So he goes over to England and doesn't know the culture, has no idea how the sport works, um, and kind of ensue hilarity, whatever. The show has it's kind of a dumb premise. The execution of it is excellent. And I've never seen a TV show that like makes you want to change how you are as a person and how you interact. And I I know that that is the effect that that show has had on a lot of people. And a lot of the things that um kind of come up are are kind of leadership topics or or ways to interact, you know, with other people. And so there's been uh studies done on the lessons to be learned from this show. And so I just thought it would be kind of a uh an interesting thing and hopefully a helpful thing to talk about some of the lessons from that show, as goofy as that sounds, and how we could use them here, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01Sounds great. I'm not concerned at all.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Like I said, the show is about a soccer team and soccer's not ready to mix concrete, but uh, I think a lot of the lessons can be kind of translated, so to speak. So anyway, the first lesson is one that I know that will be close to your heart, Andrea. Is actually it's a quote from Walt Whitman that Ted Lasso in the show.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say, I'm already offended that Ted Lasso's getting credit for this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's kind of like the in the office where uh Michael Scott uh steals like a Gandhi quote and sends this hits. It's kind of the same thing. Uh Ted Lasso kind of co-opts it, but he I don't think he ever claims it himself, if that helps. Be curious, not judgmental. The idea of this is that it is often easy to be aware of a situation or learn something and have kind of your preconceived notions instead of kind of asking questions, right? So this is something that I know that you utilize a lot, Andrea, in it's you it's definitely in like employee disputes, right? Where perception is reality for someone, right, when they are communicating or or or having a an interaction with somebody else. And so um, one person's perception and therefore one person's reality is different from the person across the table from them. And kind of an objective truth may be in between, but you don't find that or you don't find a solution without being curious, right? So there's a lot of times where something happens and we on the face of it, we go, oh, we're gonna have to have some specific reaction. But I know you always say, let's go into this with curiosity, because there may be things we don't know or understand.
SPEAKER_01There almost always are things that you didn't even think of. Yeah, when you're when you're going into a conversation with someone. And you also um, if you if you go in there with your plan or your judgment and you're not listening. It's not that you're not curious, it's just that you're not listening. Um, but if you there are so many other pieces that you're gonna pick up on if you are curious and you are listening, like the problem that you're going in to fix might be secondary to other things that you find out about if you ask the right questions.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. For sure.
SPEAKER_01I've learned that too many times.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, and a lot of times you hear about somebody that's got like an attitude problem. And what they really have is a person that's being affected by an operational problem. Right. So, and maybe that person isn't handling things the best way they could or or whatever, but there's a root cause that we can address with the system or or you know, whatever the situation may be. Um, so asking those questions and figuring out what the point of stress is is so important.
SPEAKER_01Yep. I love that too. Because you can think about if you swap out the person in that situation and the process doesn't change, you're probably going to run into the same problem again.
SPEAKER_00So exactly. And you know, if you make a judgment, then you you've kind of missed your opportunity to make improvements before you know all the information. And even, you know, kind of looking at an external way to look at this is we all have we all are know we have some customers that just they're going to complain about something every day, right? And it's easy to apply the boy who cried wolf to that situation, right? And and just kind of tune that out. And that is a hard thing not to do. But um, you know, from a technical side, uh, a a customer that calls and says the mix isn't finishing right, and he's complained every day, it's easy to say, uh, okay, sure, yeah, we'll look into that and not look into it. But then we may miss an opportunity where there's something has changed. You know, an aggregate has changed, uh, admixture has changed, we something happened at the plant, and we don't catch an issue because we were too easy or too quick to judge the situation rather than being curious and and finding out all the information.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think another place where I try to think of this is in uh just like one-on-one interactions with people, whether it's my husband or someone at work. And the if someone reacts in differently than you expect them to, I always try to like wonder why that happened. Like, I wonder what's happening that made this person react that way. Yeah. And then even asking about that and being curious about it rather than reacting to that reaction is yeah. Changes the dynamic a lot, whether it's a customer or somebody at work, if they're upset, I always want to wonder why.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Rather than handing it right back to them.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I hope my husband doesn't listen to this podcast.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna send it to him.
SPEAKER_01He's gonna refute this.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna send it to him. Um, okay. So the next um kind of principle that is pervasive through the Ted Lasso show is that positivity is contagious. And that's something in the show that he enters uh with, you know, a group of really kind of dour British people who are, you know, angry at the world and and his just relentless positivity completely changes the culture of that place. And there's something kind of naive about being always positive and and fake. So that's not really what we're talking about. But having a positive outlook uh can change yourself. I think we talked a little bit about that um earlier this year after the ReadyMix Association, but it also can have a major effect on other people. Um so you know, the the opposite side of that coin is negativity is also contagious, right? You can bring everybody down, you know, if you sit in your office with your hood up all day or something like that. That means fuck off. Then we have to call it explicit. Anyway, the the idea is that uh if you look through your life and your experiences with a positive lens, that you can have a an impact on other people. And you know, we all want to be happier in our jobs, we all want morale to be good, um, and and having a glass half-full outlook, you know, really helps with that.
SPEAKER_01I'll I'll give you credit on this one. You're you are the best here at this particular skill. Um you are definitely always looking for the most positive angle that people are taking when they're making decisions or when things happen. I would say you're not an overly, but like you don't walk in here uh sunshine and rainbows, but in general, you're looking for the best.
SPEAKER_00So I used to be a lot more upbeat than I don't have the energy for that now that I have kids. So yeah, yeah. Um I don't it's funny.
SPEAKER_01I don't notice it, I don't notice it for myself when I'm being positive, but I definitely notice it if I go negative, everybody will follow me that way.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah, it's definitely there's there's something if you're you're if you're too positive or or not realistic, there's something naive about that. But it's the other side of the coin is there's a lot of really great things that happen even in tough situations and even in a tough industry like this one. So yeah, I think you gotta you gotta celebrate those things. You know, part of that is is using positivity to lift other people up, right? Everybody has their own challenges and um things going on in their life, at work or outside of work that are influencing how they get through the day. And so any kind of encouragement, gratitude, admiration, enthusiasm we can show our coworkers, and that includes our customers, that includes our vendors, everybody we work with, you know, they're all part of our team that makes us successful. So if we can be positive, that makes a huge impact. And I think this shows up a lot for drivers, especially new drivers that don't really know any of our customers. You know, if they show up and they're quiet and timid, um, it's harder to develop those relationships that are going to allow, you know, our customers are more likely to yell at somebody they don't know or are don't have any kind of positive history with. Well, if you come with a positive attitude and, you know, hi, I'm Griffin. It's great to meet you. It's my first day. I'm out here. Uh, I'm learning and I'm really excited to help you. You know, um, they're gonna be a lot more forgiving and and they'll remember you for sure. And then that makes every other time you visit so much easier.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think having a fresh start, like viewing every day as a fresh start, is a way to implement this positivity. Um, it's easy to get into a rut of just like dragging through the same day over and over again. Yeah. Um, so I do try to think hard on my way to work about having a fresh start every day. My my family even says that I have like uh an hourglass that flips over when I head to work every day. And then by the time I get home, there's nothing, there's no positivity left and the sand has drained out.
SPEAKER_00I get I'm I appreciate that you bring that we get the positivity. That's great.
SPEAKER_01If they saw me earlier in the morning, I would be happier.
SPEAKER_00But yeah. That's a great transition to our next principle, which is um Sam often tells uh, or sorry, Ted often tells Sam, one of the characters in the show, uh, to be a goldfish. He's a a young kid playing defense and he makes a mistake and he gets in his head, right? And he's uh he makes more mistakes because he's thinking about the last mistake he made. And so he says, be a goldfish, because a goldfish has uh, I think it was a five-second memory, right? So uh they don't remember past five seconds. So I this one we've got to be careful with because uh it's important when we make mistakes to extract the lesson from those those. We don't want to be a goldfish and forget the lessons that are learned from mistakes. But we we definitely don't want to hold on to those mistakes and assign blame or shame if it's towards ourselves. That just tends to snowball and we have more mistakes and more issues and more problems. So yeah, so I think it it's totally valid to be a goldfish, to be like, okay, I learned my lesson. I had a tough time with this customer or on this job site or with this situation. I'm gonna remember what I learned from that, but I'm gonna forget the emotional feelings around it and put my best foot forward on the next one.
SPEAKER_01I think that's one of the best things about working here as compared to other places that I've worked. Like we do not spend any time on blame or shame, like you said. Like we're just move forward. And there's so many places where it's very political and everyone likes to point out everyone else's mistakes. And yeah, I just love not having to deal with that.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's one of the things I view is one of my roles is if I see that kind of happening, I try to step in and say, you know, this that's just not how we're gonna operate because it it there's no positive ending to the blame game, right? So yeah, so that's a good one. All right, the next one, embrace vulnerability. So how this shows up in the show, Ted Lasso ends up having uh panic attacks, right? So everybody on the show is kind of leaning on him to be their source of positivity, and he he kind of crumbles and has panic attacks and ends up being, you know, sharing with the rest of his team that he's having this issue or whatever. And it's uh they're going to this whole thing about mental health, and it's it's it's interesting, although not the most entertaining, you know, funny part of the show for sure. But it is important. I think one of the major issues with the construction industry as a whole is there's a real um avoidance of looking vulnerable, of not knowing or not being capable, or not uh like any type of insecurity is weakness. Correct. Yeah. So it it's like we're everyone in the industry is supposed to be omniscient and um knowing.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely know everything, seen it before, done it before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Done it 10 times harder than this before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. And and I think that really gets in the way of learning and growing and gets in the way of problem solving, right? So if we say I don't know is a weakness, then we fake an answer, right? And so if we if we fake an answer, we make mistakes. And that costs us money, that costs us relationships, costs us projects, it could it cost people jobs, right? So that is such an important thing. And I think, especially for all the leaders here, it's important for a leader to admit that they don't know something or they haven't seen something or they don't know how to do something. Because that gives the entire organization, everybody that works with them, permission to say the same thing. And my experience is definitely that when a customer calls and says, you know, I need, I need you to help with this, or I need uh, what do you know about this? If you say I don't know, it's not like they get mad. It's not like they go, I can't believe you don't know this. It's like, let's find out. We'll figure out the answer, we'll we'll research, we'll ask other people that may know. We'll we'll get to the bottom of it. I everyone is going to give that time and that grace when you say I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Except for your dad. I just had a talk with him today, and he does not like it when I don't know. If he has seen something, he thinks I should have already seen it and already know exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_00So we're not gonna unpack that one today. Uh so anyway, I just think it's it's really important. The leader, especially, who makes up an answer and and is wrong by chance, you know, that they're gonna lose trust, they're gonna lose respect, they're gonna lose credibility. And in a relational business like we have, for our employees, trust and credibility is all we have. For our customers, trusting, you know, we don't we don't sell concrete in in most cases because we're the cheapest, we have the relationships. So if we put those relationships on the line because we make stuff up, or you know, we try to make ourselves seem like some we're something we're not, um, it's really counterproductive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's just the greatest opportunity to learn. Like that's a key to my success here, I guess, has been always saying that I don't know and wanting to learn from everyone. Yeah. Um, if I had acted like I knew anything, I wouldn't have learned everything that I did.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, and you think about it from a driver's perspective, this is a driver that says, you know, when they go, Do you know where you're going? They go, Oh, yeah, even though they don't. Or uh they're like, How does that slump look? And they go, It looks great, even though they don't know what slump it is. Right. Um, it's okay to say, Hey, I'm not sure. Uh oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01There's some yeah. Every time someone tells me you go south, I say, what way is south?
SPEAKER_00Like, we know you're directionally challenged.
SPEAKER_01Ask the question every time.
SPEAKER_00You couldn't possibly hide that fact now. We we know you're directionally challenged. Okay, so that was uh embracing vulnerability. The next one is kind of related to others we've talked about, but is value everyone and and specifically try to fix the people before the problem. This shows up in uh the show as well their their Star Striker is a guy named Jamie Tart, and he's just really a real jerk and kind of mean to everyone and arrogant. And uh, but he has the the skill set that nobody else on the team has. And everyone in the organization was telling Ted Lasso that, you know, you got to get rid of this guy. It doesn't matter how good he is. He's killing the culture, he's killing everything. And kind of Ted takes it on himself as like, I'm gonna connect with this guy. I'm going to, I'm going to find out what makes him tick and win him over and put his talents to good use for the team. Right. So I think uh it's a good story about first of all, finding roles that put people in places to be successful and then working through issues with people. You know, I in in as an organization, it's like we don't just jettison folks right away the first time we have an issue. We really try to help develop people to understand um what they're what their needs, what they want, how we can help them. And and I think that that is just a really important thing to do organizationally is is value everyone. You see that in the way that people grow in the company, right? So you can start as a driver and then move to QC and then be a batch person and then be an area manager or whatever. Um, that story has been told a bunch of times. And so we have to value the potential that everybody has, even if you know the it it could be a struggle from you know a relational standpoint at the beginning. We need to find out how we get them on board. All right. And the last one I think is really important, and I think it's uh a lot of who we are and comes up in our values, but uh is be kind. And this is kind of the the positive side of don't be a dick, right? So um the polite way to say it. Yeah, so we, you know, I think it's important that we make a decision to be kind in the way we interact with people, right? Um we're all on the same team, again, with our customers, with our vendors, with each other throughout the organization. We're on the same team. I just strongly believe this that yelling, screaming, demeaning, insulting language, all those things, they're they're not productive. They don't help us.
SPEAKER_01No one starts doing a better job when you start yelling at them.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yes. And then it's funny in the show Ted Lasso it takes on for a day to kind of show them what it could be like and what things could be like. He takes on this That would be so fun. Lots of takes on a per persona and he just yells and screams, and everybody's like, what is your problem? What are you doing? And it's really funny. And it's like he switches a flip in his uh, you know, a light switch in his head, and it's one of the funnier scenes. But uh it's it was so obvious with that juxtaposition, how ineffective that other way to operate was. And, you know, I I think about this. I learned this from Wayne Lawson, who uh most of you will remember was executive vice president here for a long time. And I heard Wayne yell, I think one time at work. And for him, it was a big deal. Like, if I yell every day, you're not gonna listen to me when I yell, it's not going to make an impact. But the one time he yelled, there were we made some mistakes in dispatch. I was sitting back there and he came back and lit us up, and it was like, oh gosh, I've never in my life paid more attention or understood the gravity of a situation more because he used it so, you know, uh specifically when it was the gravity was necessary. And so I think in the same way, like if I'm yelling at someone, it it I want their immediate attention that there's like an immediate safety repercussion or something is happening. Like that is I want to be able to grab someone's attention in that situation, not you know, it's just doesn't ignore him.
SPEAKER_01He yells all the time.
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly, exactly. I just think the way we interact with each other, uh being kind is is it's the same thing with positive ease contagious. It is so important. Um, it makes this a place where people want to work, and it makes this a place that people want to work with us, which is what we're all about. So uh I think that's really important. The only thing I'll add to that my my dad had a great line. He always would say, kill him with kindness. And it is a great kind of tactic, especially with somebody who's not bandkind. Right in the show, Ted Lasso goes out to dinner with a reporter who was just eviscerating him all the time. And they had a talk and he just absolutely killed him with kindness, and that reporter was just kind of left weaponless from that point on. And he actually then writes another article that's really critical, but says, I just can't help but root for this guy. He's great. And uh so it just kind of changes the whole uh dynamic of how this reporter was uh responding to Ted. So uh it's a great lesson. So, anyway, those were the six takeaways I had from the show. Again, uh highly recommend everybody go watch it. It's a lot of fun. Um, but I have a challenge for everyone to kind of close this. So this week, when we're dealing with someone difficult or a difficult situation, I challenge everyone to ask a question before you decide what that situation means, because it may change your reaction.
SPEAKER_01Very good. Thanks for listening to Loaded the Hon ReadyMix podcast. We'll talk to you again next week.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much.
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