Leading From the Drivers Seat

This post was published in the November 2015 edition of Truck News

Last month I coined the phrase, crisis in leadership, to stimulate some conversation about how the continuing trend of mergers & acquisitions by large trucking companies affects the driver on the front line.  The trend of bigger is better in order to compete in the global economy isn’t going away. So this month let’s take leadership out of the boardroom and put it in the driver’s seat.

There is no doubt in my mind that truck drivers are the face of the trucking industry. As such we are leaders of the industry in the eyes of the general public. Our actions as drivers and how we conduct ourselves behind the wheel reflect on the company name plastered across the rigs we drive and on the industry as a whole. The expression ‘Knights of the Road’ sums up perfectly not only the high level of leadership qualities drivers exemplify as they go about their daily tasks but also the pride drivers take in their profession.

Let’s take a look of a few examples of what goes in to the mix when we are looking for excellence in leadership from the driver’s seat.

• ·         Drivers as leaders choose to be the face of a safety driven culture not the face of recklessness.
• ·         Drivers as leaders choose to be the face of courtesy not the face of road rage.
• ·         Drivers as leaders choose to hold themselves to a higher standard of skill & awareness than the general public they share the road with.
• ·         Drivers as leaders choose to take actions that inspire respect & trust not mistrust & fear.

So those are just a handful of traits that we associate with being a leader, being a professional, being a Knight of the Road. You’ll notice that I framed those traits as conscious choices we make. Those choices inspire or discourage the people around us. As a driver there is no escaping the fact that you will be judged by the public as a whole on the choices you make whether you accept your role as a leader within the driving community or not.

But in this changing world drivers represent themselves and the industry in another way. Across social media. It’s an interesting conundrum. There are a lot of younger drivers that have broken in to the trucking industry with a minimal amount of training and mentoring.  This younger generation of drivers are the heaviest users of new technology. This often results in bad experiences in the field being aired across social media. That’s bad for all of us.

That point brings me to my favourite topic and its powerful role in developing leadership. Training & mentoring. This is at the root of all the major issues within the industry. There is a focus now on mandatory entry level training. (MELT) That’s important but it needs to go so much further than that. In order to refresh that Knights of the Road mentality we need to integrate driver education into the driving position from cradle to grave.

As a driver it is important not to underestimate your value as a leader in this industry but it’s something we do all the time. It’s easy to be reduced by large corporations to just a worker that picks up and delivers freight. This is a problem that leaders in the boardroom recognize that but have difficulty feeding that back to you in the driver’s seat. Most often it is simply a failure of a large bureaucracy to deliver some simple messaging in a meaningful way. That message is that you are important. The success of even the largest transportation company is wholly dependent on the individual leadership of each driver in the field.

So as a driver where do you go from here? Over half of us have a lifetime of experience as drivers leading this industry and are dealing with feelings of being left behind, of low morale, and of shrinking income as we head in to our twilight years. It’s not enough for a guy like me to say hey, it’s all about your attitude and how you lead this industry from the driver’s seat. That is meaningful but it’s not enough. There are certainly no easy answers, if there were I’d share them with you.

There are a lot of opinions out there of what leadership is, what it looks like, and what it’s impact is on you as an individual driver but there is no doubt in my mind that doing this driving job right and to the best of your ability is not only fulfilling on a personal level but is beneficial to all the other drivers in the field. I just keep slugging away.