Episode 122: Are You a Thermometer or a Thermostat? The Mindset That Changes Everything

In this episode of Keep Trucking Personal, Tyler Kivi talks about the difference between reacting to your surroundings and choosing how you'll respond. Every day in trucking brings challenges, from delayed loads and traffic to equipment issues and difficult conversations. Tyler shares why your attitude has a bigger impact than you may realize and how staying calm, professional, and solution-focused can make a difference for everyone around you.

Leadership isn't reserved for managers or owners. It shows up when you help another driver, communicate well during a stressful situation, or refuse to fuel negativity. Tyler encourages listeners to take ownership of what they can control, become someone others can count on, and bring that same mindset home to their families. The challenge this week is simple: pay attention to the energy you bring into every room and choose to leave people better than you found them.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Keep Trucking Personal. I'm Tyler Keevey, a third generation trucker, and my purpose is simple: to make sure the definition of trucking doesn't get lost in the culture this industry is driven toward. This podcast is about real stories, the hard lessons, and the standards that built this business long before apps and algorithms. If you believe trucking is more than freight and it's responsibility, you're in the right place. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Hey guys, welcome back to Keep Trucking Personal. My name is Tyler and I'm your host. Today I want to talk about two types of people, and there are thermometers and there are thermostats. And the thermometer walks in the room and tells you what the temperature is. And if the room is negative, the thermometer becomes negative. And if people are complaining, the thermometer joins in. And if morale is low, the thermometer reflects that. But a thermostat is different. A thermostat changes the temperature. It doesn't just report the environment around it, it influences it. And I want every one of us to ask the question today is simple. Are you a thermometer or are you a thermostat? And it's easy to walk into a driver's lounge where everybody is complaining and start complaining too. That's easy. That's just joining right in. It's easy to hear frustration and dispatch and become frustrated yourself. And it's easy to let traffic, delays, weather, equipment issues, a tough customer, a crazy driver all determine your attitude. That is what a thermometer does, and it just reacts. You react to your environment and absorbs whatever is around it. And before long, one bad attitude becomes two, then three. Then the whole room feels super heavy and negativity just keeps spreading and spreading. But so does leadership on the other side of this coin. The thermostat does not ignore the temperature, it recognizes it and it understands what's happening and makes an adjustment. That is the difference. Being the thermostat does not mean pretending everything is perfect, it does not mean smiling through every problem or avoiding heavy conversations. It means you decide what you are going to bring to this situation. And I mean like calm, focus, encouragement, solutions, professionalism. And when everybody else is getting worked up, you stay steady. And when everybody else is complaining, you start to look for the next step, the next thing to say. And when everybody else is pointing fingers, you ask, What can I do to help? This is important, and how you change the temperature. And trucking has plenty of thermometers, and I see it play out more than you know. And when I get the opportunity to talk to so many drivers, I get to see the two sides of the coin here. And there are many drivers that are not afraid to tell you what is wrong. They're going to tell you the freight is bad. Dispatch does not care. Customers take too long, and the shop is too slow, and the weather is terrible, and traffic is ridiculous, and the company should do this, and somebody should fix this, and they should have ordered the trucks this way. And frustrations, they may be valid, right? There's probably a lot of truth to those, but identifying a problem is not the same as solving one. And that's the difference. Anybody can point at the temperature. Leadership begins when somebody is willing to change it. And that's what I've noticed a whole bunch recently. There are so many drivers that have the opportunity to be a thermostat, but find themselves surrounded by people that are like thermometers that are feeding all this negativity and complaining and all of the things that are wrong into their mind, and you become so ingrained. And so picture two drivers dealing with the same situation, both arrive at a customer and find out the load is delayed, which happens a lot. And it's funny, this isn't anything we do, but I've spoken to a lot of reefer drivers lately, and that is something that is super common in that sector. And so I've been learning a bunch about reefers just because I'm curious. And that is the thing I hear a lot. Loads are delayed, dock time is different than what was expected, but nonetheless, you get where I'm headed with it. That just popped in my head. And both of those drivers lose several hours. Now, time is money in trucking, and both have their plans disrupted. The first driver immediately starts complaining, and he calls his dispatcher super frustrated. And you can imagine I've done that. I'm guilty of that. I got you know hot and bothered over a load and let everybody know and made it well known that I was not happy. And then, like I said, 45 minutes later, after that happened for me, I realized what I had done. But you can see that type of driver, right? He's blaming everybody, somebody should have known, somebody should have done this better. He tells every driver nearby how bad the company is, or you know, now it's the company's fault. And by the end of the day, he's made that situation so worse for himself and everyone around him that nobody wants to hear it, right? Now they start to say nobody will answer my call. Well, people in dispatch, we know this circumstance, and it you can see how it's super hard to take that phone call over and over and over again, or the driver is just giving it to you, giving you the beans. And so then the driver says, Well, nobody's answering their phone, or this person won't respond to me, or the dock worker won't talk to me anymore. And you can see why, right? Now, the second driver here, naturally, he's frustrated, he's not happy with the situation either. But he stays calm and he communicates with dispatch, he adjusts his plan and starts to replan for the alternative. Maybe he's going through his truck, checking over his truck, he's making sure his paperwork's good, he's gonna get something to eat or make something in the truck, uses his time productively, maybe walking around the trailer, maybe get some active time. Right? So we have the same delay, the same amount of time lost for both of these drivers, two different temperatures. And the second driver did not control the customer, he controlled what he brought into the situation, and that is being a thermostat. That's the difference between letting the circumstances control you or you controlling what you can control. That's the difference. And so every time you walk into a room or you climb into your truck, you call dispatch or arrive at a customer, you bring something with you. And it's so important that you know you bring something with you, even though you may not recognize it. You are bringing energy, you bring an attitude, you bring in either confidence or frustration, and you bring either calm or chaos, and people feel it. It's there is nothing to hide, and and that's in the physical, right? In the flesh, you can be that same way through the phone as well. And so your attitude is not just inside your head, it's gonna affect the people that you bring it to. It's gonna affect the mechanic around you, it's gonna affect that other driver that's sitting next to you if you're the one that's going off the hook, and it affects the dispatcher, right? And it affects your family when you call home, it affects other drivers listening to you, whether it's on the phone or just not even at the same company, right? It doesn't matter, it affects so many people because you're influencing the environment, whether you mean to or not. And I can't tell you how many times when somebody has called, and I try to take things very personal when something goes wrong and it just eats you up. But when someone really digs in, man, you don't forget that. You definitely don't forget that you remember how they made you feel, and that's not a good feeling. So remember, it might not even seem that big to you, and it might be just who you are, but people feel it and people remember. And so when people hear the word leadership and think it only applies to managers or you know, owners higher up, right? You hear that word all the time. That's the opposite, that's not true, and you do not need a title change to change the temperature. A driver who helps someone back into a dock or back into a parking space, you're being a leader. The mechanic who stays patient with a frustrated driver is leading. And the dispatcher who keeps a calm voice during a difficult situation whether a driver's delayed, any type of emergency, you're leading. An employee who refuses to join the complaining is leading. Leadership is influence, you guys, and you can influence other people, anyone in this industry. And the question just is, how are you doing it? And so remember that you have the opportunity to lead anyone. I see it all the time when we have drivers in groups of drivers, there's always one or two unique drivers that start helping or they become a common theme. You know, I hear compliments. Hey, they help me do this, they help me load, they help me chain, they help me put my banners on, help me review my permits, help me know if I'm a new driver what to do. And you have influence. You have so much impact. And one of the most valuable things you can learn in trucking is not to add heat to the situation that's already burning red hot when your truck breaks down, right? Or your permit is wrong, or customer is gonna change the plans. It's nature of the beast, or your load is actually behind schedule. You got there at the right time, and everybody communicated at the right time, but it's not ready. People start to get stressed who are already stressed, and the last thing a situation needs is another person losing control. Can you see where I'm heading with this? It needs someone who can lower the temperature and someone who can say, Let's slow down, let's figure out what happened, let's follow some processes here, let's call people that can help us, let's solve the problem. Because being loud does not make you the strongest. If you think that, you're already missing the mark. And being able to remain steady, calm when everything around you is chaotic, that makes you strong. That makes you impactful. And it might not be glamorous, but when you're with somebody who's got a calm head and a good process to work with people that can help them, everybody feels it. And so think about the people you're working with. Think about your driver specialist, or think about your manager, think about just your coworker. There's gonna be certain people that will call you when things go wrong because they know you will help settle that situation down, and the other are people you avoid because you know they will make it worse. And so which one of those are you? When your name comes up, do people think he's gonna go hard, he's gonna help us figure it out, he's gonna stay there, he's gonna somebody that's in it for the long haul. She will stay calm, he will stay calm, they're great to work with, they're team players, they communicate when it's needed, or do they think, well, let's make sure he or she doesn't find out because there's more drama? And that may sound really harsh. That's the truth of this game, it's a relationship game, and you have to understand that everybody has an opinion. And so your reputation is being built every day by the temperature you bring into the room. And you cannot control the freight market, you cannot control the weather, you cannot control the traffic, you cannot control every customer or coworker, your manager, or even your driver if you're in an office-level position, but you can control your response and you can control your effort, you can control that communication you give to everybody involved, and you can control whether you make the environment better or worse. And that is where your power is. When you spend all your time reacting to things you cannot control, you become a thermometer. When you take ownership of what you can influence, you become the thermostat. And this matters at home too. This does not stop when you get out of that truck and you park it for the weekend, you're 34, maybe a vacation. You bring that into your house too. You bring that into your home. And when you call your spouse after a bad day, what do you bring into that conversation? When you spend time with your kids, are you there? Are you able to be present? I know for me it's something I challenge, uh challenge myself all the time, right? It's very hard when you have a rough day at work to disconnect and say, you know, I'm gonna give you my time now. It's circling in your head, you can't get it out, it's always there. And you walk through the door, is everyone having to go, we gotta prepare for this guy. He's gonna be a real treat tonight. And we all have those difficult days, and we know that. Like there's not gonna be just a perfect week and a month and a year. There might be great weeks and great months and great years, but you're gonna have difficult days. But when we show the people that we love when we get home, then we let them have all that frustration, it's not good, it's not good for anyone. So remember, be the thermostat and take a breath, take a minute, recalibrate your mind before you make that call, before you walk in the door. Understand that you can impact the energy in the room, and remember that your family needs the best version of you, but not whatever the day left behind. So, my challenge for you this week is pay attention to the rooms you walk into. Feel when you walk into that driver's lounge, or you walk into the shop, or you walk into any office, or you walk into the customer location, or when you're getting home after a long day, a long week, a long month, before you say something, ask yourself, what temperature am I bringing into this room? Am I adding frustration? Am I putting gas on the fire? Am I repeating complaints that I heard from another driver and I'm just saying it because that's what I heard? Am I making the situation worse? Or am I bringing calm? And am I bringing something that encourages somebody to help to win? Even in a tough situation, you can bring encouragement. And I'm moving the conversation towards a solution here. Is there an actual end solution that could help everybody win? And you do not need to give no fancy speech. This isn't this is very subtle. You do not need to become overly positive where it's fake. And sometimes changing the temperature is simple as refusing to add more negativity. It's that easy. And so at the end of the day, the world has plenty of thermometers, plenty of people willing to tell us what's wrong, and plenty of people willing to reflect the frustration around them. And what we need is more thermostats, more people willing to bring calm into that chaos. That's what we need. We need more people willing to encourage others, and we need more people willing to solve problems instead of simply just repeating them. I hear that so often. And that's like the telephone game you learn at school. You hear one thing and it just keeps getting changed and manipulated. And by the time it makes it through 10 people, it's completely different. So we need more people willing to take responsibility and help create a positive environment because you may not control the room, but you can always contribute to it. And so when things get difficult, ask yourselves Am I reporting the temperature or am I helping change it? Be the thermostat friends. Thank you for listening to Keep Trucking Personal. Until next time, stay safe.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

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